The unlikely but plausible path for the Democrats to win back the Senate opened up Monday with former Rep. Mary Peltola’s (D-AK) announcement that she’s running against Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK), giving Democrats an outside shot at flipping the red-state seat in the midterms.

Peltola isn’t your typical Democratic candidate. She won two separate statewide elections in Alaska in 2022 for the state’s at-large House seat, defeating the state’s former governor and onetime GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. Despite compiling a moderate (and pro-Israel) voting record in the House, she narrowly lost her reelection bid to Rep. Nick Begich (R-AK), losing the 2024 general election by just two points.

In her launch video, she touted her campaign theme as “fish, family and freedom.”

Sullivan is a traditional conservative politician with a hawkish voting record, and will be favored to win a third term. But Alaska has become somewhat more competitive in the Trump era, with the president winning 55% of the state’s vote in 2024 and Sullivan tallying 54% in his successful 2020 reelection. 

One point in Sullivan’s favor: Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), the independent-minded occasional Trump critic who endorsed Peltola in both of the Democrat’s previous statewide campaigns, quickly got behind the senator’s re-election campaign — before Peltola’s announcement. 

Peltola’s candidacy matters because it gives Democrats four capable recruits to contest four GOP-held Senate seats — two in purple states, and two on more conservative turf. The path to a Democratic Senate majority — which remains a long-shot — increasingly is looking like it runs through North Carolina, Maine, Ohio and Alaska. 

In North Carolina, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) recruited a popular former governor, Roy Cooper, to run forin the open seat. In Maine, Democrats face an ugly primary between the state’s sitting governor, Janet Mills, and left-wing challenger Graham Platner, who has become a darling of the party’s progressive wing.  

Neither race will be easy for Democrats to win: North Carolina hasn’t voted for a Democratic senator since 2008, while Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) is among the party’s most battle-tested senators, regularly winning in a blue state under tough political environments for her party.

But if Democrats ride a blue wave, it’s not hard to see how the swing states could flip with solid Democratic recruits putting typically out-of-reach red-state seats in play.

In Ohio and Alaska, Schumer successfully recruited the only Democrats who have won recently in their respective red states, even as both were defeated in the 2024 election. Former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) was the only statewide Democrat that was able to survive the first Trump term, and only narrowly lost his bid for a fourth term. And Peltola, as noted above, is one of a small group of Democrats who have managed to crack the political code in the conservative state.

Schumer, for all the criticisms he’s taken from the progressive wing of his party, still understands the basics of politics that the party’s younger activists often overlook. It takes more-moderate candidates with the ability to win over independents (and even a small number of Republicans) to prevail in swing states. It’s why he can boast a strong recruiting class, which makes the Senate map more competitive, albeit one with mostly AARP-eligible challengers.

But it’s those experienced, pragmatic candidates that can win races and ride a wave if one ends up sweeping ashore. The activist flash can win the social media news cycle, but the fundamentals of politics still apply when it comes to winning back power.