Reporting from The New York Times reveals that almost six months into the price-hiking war in Iran that Dan Sullivan has voted for twelve times, Alaskans in rural parts of the state are “having to choose between feeding their families and having a warm home.”

“Rural Alaskans are staring down a long winter of being forced to choose between food and fuel, and Dan Sullivan won’t stop voting to increase gas prices,” said Alaska Democratic Party Chair Eric Croft. “Sullivan only cares about enriching himself while Alaskans are paying the price.”

More than 190 rural communities in Alaska depend on diesel for electricity and heat. For rural Alaskans, the price-hiking war is causing some of the highest diesel prices in the nation. The Sullivan-backed war is driving up “energy, heating and transportation costs in places that can least afford them.” Some Alaskans cook on a wood stove in the winter to bring down their monthly energy bills, as a few hundred dollars “can be life-altering.”

Dan Sullivan has now voted for the price-hiking war a staggering 12 times (3/4/26, 3/18/26, 3/24/26, 4/15/26, 4/22/26, 5/13/26, 5/19/26, 6/16/26, 6/23/26, 6/24/26, 7/23/26, 7/30/26). Despite this, Sullivan has been caught “beg[ging]” for gas money from the very constituents he’s leaving out in the cold, and dismissing Alaskans’ energy costs as mere “externalities.”

Read more about how Dan Sullivan’s price-hiking war is putting rural Alaskans in an impossible position:

The New York Times: ‘A Dying Community’: An Energy Crisis Worsened by the War Strains Alaska

By: Anna Griffin

• But no amount of conservation can solve the problem that Ms. Jervsjo and tens of thousands of other Alaskans are facing. A state rich in oil is in the middle of an energy crisis worsened by a war on the other side of the planet.

• More than 190 rural communities in Alaska depend on diesel for electricity and heat. 

• Alaska pumps more than 400,000 barrels of crude oil a day, but much of the diesel burned in remote villages comes from crude drilled and refined in other parts of the world. Higher global oil prices boost state revenue, but they also drive up energy, heating and transportation costs in places that can least afford them.

• Rural Alaskans are “having to choose between feeding their families and having a warm home,” said Dominique Pride, a deputy director for research at the Alaska Center for Energy and Power in Fairbanks. “We wouldn’t accept that in New York or Miami,” she added. “Why is it OK up here?”

• People in Manley hold three or four jobs, and during the long winters, they gather for craft nights and dances at the tribal hall. Many still haul water from the community well and shower and do laundry at the town “washeteria.”

• A local pilot first generated electricity with a diesel generator for his home and hangar in the late 1970s before gradually extending power lines through town. In 1981, when Ms. Redington wanted lights at her house a mile from the center of town, she had to buy the poles and dig the holes herself.

• Like most rural Alaska communities, Manley is powered by a microgrid, with two diesel generators maintained by a staff of two, who also answer late-night outage calls and clear fallen trees after storms. Only one works full time.

• Even with a state subsidy, electricity in Manley is among the most expensive in the country.

• “You’re always thinking ahead: If I do this, it will cost me this. If I do this other thing, it will cost less,” said Heather Redington, Pam Redington’s daughter. “Every choice matters.”

• A few years ago, Ms. Jervsjo’s household used around 700 kilowatt-hours of electricity a month, shy of the national average. That cost her between $500 and $600 each bill. Now, she tries to stay below 300 kilowatt-hours a month, enough to bring her bill down to $300 or even $250. In the winter, Ms. Jervsjo cooks on a wood stove.

• “It’s everything I do, everywhere I go,” she said of her extreme conservation. “It’s the only way to afford to live.”

• Business owners, who aren’t covered by the state’s residential subsidies, have it even worse. John Dart farmed in Manley for 18 years but was paying more than $1 per kilowatt-hour — the average U.S. business pays 13 cents, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and the average commercial rate in Alaska is about 26 cents.

• “I can’t lose tens and tens and tens of thousands of dollars,” he said.

• Electricity is only half the equation. Heating is largely unsubsidized in rural Alaska, and Manley homeowners typically burn hundreds, sometimes thousands, of gallons of diesel each winter. 

• How much to buy is a guessing game. Last winter, after three weeks when temperatures never rose above 50 below, Ms. Redington ran out of heating oil and had to buy more in Manley, where fuel costs 23 percent more. 

• A few hundred dollars can be life-altering in Manley, where the median age is 75 and most live on fixed incomes.

• When much of rural Alaska was electrified in the second half of the 20th century, building on military power grids from World War II, diesel generators were the obvious choice as they were inexpensive, reliable and easy to maintain. Few questioned whether villages scattered across Alaska should depend almost entirely on a product that had to be imported and, in many cases, delivered by seasonal barge or airplane.

• Rural Alaska is important, even if “you get the sense some people wouldn’t care if places like this disappeared,” Ms. Jervsjo said.