Democrat wins Alaska governorship as Senate race still counts, Kreiss-Tomkins takes first Democratic governor since 1998 while Peltola leads Sullivan
GOP midterm bloodbath already fractures Vance's 2028 path before primaries begin
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Trump defends Vance's post-midterm critique, but wanted him to add important statement
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Vice President JD Vance speaking at White House
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U.S. Vice President JD Vance walking across the tarmac to board Air Force Two at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.
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Trump Vance
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Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins has won the Alaska governorship, giving the party its first governor there since 1998, while the state's US Senate race — where Mary Peltola leads incumbent Dan Sullivan by nearly four points in the latest count — remains uncalled under Alaska's ranked-choice tabulation.
The result closes out a midterm in which Republicans lost their majorities in both chambers of Congress, with at least 30 GOP House members defeated. Alaska's slow count has become the election's most revealing clock: the same ranked-choice system that delays results also strips winners of any claim to a broad mandate, since second-preference flows decide contests the first round cannot.
The aftermath has opened an early fight over 2028. Vice President JD Vance, long treated as the heir apparent, blamed the Iran war as the main reason for the defeats in a November 4 post on X — 'The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night' — a line Trump said he accepted, while adding Vance should have said they would do it again. Representative Randy Fine of Florida, who is Jewish, told Fox he would definitively not support Vance in a 2028 primary and compared the remarks to '1932 Germany' rhetoric. Vance did not blame Jewish people explicitly, and his office declined to respond to Fine's characterization.
Allies have reportedly urged Vance to consider sitting out 2028, according to the Wall Street Journal, while others close to him still expect him to run, the Washington Post reported. Representative Marlin Stutzman of Indiana told Fox he is 'all in' for Secretary of State Marco Rubio as a unifying figure. Pence, meanwhile, delivered his own scathing assessment blaming Trump-era policies for the losses.
Trump defended Vance's critique of the war's political cost, but the defence itself concedes the premise: the administration's own polling on the conflict was the party's central liability. INSA-style national surveys are one thing; Alaska's ballot data, counted preference by preference, is another.
Alaska's remaining count will decide whether the Senate map gets one more Democratic seat, and whether the man Republicans were told is the heir apparent starts his campaign by explaining why the king was wrong.