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One of the starkest contrasts in Alaska’s federal races for Senate and House this election season is about money.
Two of the candidates, from rural Alaska and running to the left of two Republican incumbents, have few assets to their name.
Mary Peltola, a Democrat running for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan, reports as little as $47,000 in assets, according to the financial disclosure she was legally required to file as a candidate.
Bill Hill, an independent challenging incumbent GOP U.S. Rep. Nick Begich III, reported assets valued at as little as $119,000. (Candidates are not required to report their personal residences.)
Begich and Sullivan, meanwhile, are both multi-millionaires.
The contrast is figuring into both campaigns, as progressives call out what they describe as Sullivan’s “soaring” stock portfolio and attack Begich as an “Epstein class elite” with “billionaire buddies.”
We wanted to share more of the hard facts about each candidate’s financial situation, so we dug deep into their disclosures. Here’s what we found.
For challengers, few assets but substantial income
For candidates, it’s not exactly the best look to pay yourself a salary from your campaign; donors, presumably, would rather see their money spent on stuff that translates directly into votes.
But the Federal Election Commission allows it, and both Hill and Peltola are doing so. Hill says it’s a necessity.
The only candidate who agreed to be interviewed about his finances, Hill lives in the Bristol Bay salmon hub town of Naknek, where he has a home. For the campaign, he’s relocated to Anchorage, where he acknowledged — a little reluctantly — that he’s living with one of his children to save money.
Paying himself a small salary, some $700 a week, was a “tough call” and something he’d prefer not to do, Hill said. Nonetheless, he added, “trying to live on the road and maintain a life back in Naknek is just not doable, with what we’re taking home.”
Hill has stressed his financial situation on the campaign trail, where he inveighs often against “the billionaires” and calls himself as a “thousandaire.” But, like Peltola, while he reports few hard assets, he did report substantial income in 2025.
That includes $244,000 from his commercial fishing operation last year, which Hill stressed was a gross figure. He paid his crew more than $100,000, he said, and there are other expenses — insurance and fuel, plus required payments on more than $200,000 in loans he took out to buy his boat and upgrade his engine.
Hill also reported an annual pension of $82,000 from his years working as a school superintendent and teacher. But he says his income only goes so far in rural Alaska, where costs are high: Gas in Naknek, he said, recently went from $6.70 a gallon to nearly $9.
“When your food prices and your fuel prices go up, we all feel it,” he said. “I think I have a clear perspective, unlike any other candidate in this race, on the impact that decisionmaking in Washington, D.C. has had on Alaska lives.”
Peltola also reported significant income on her financial disclosure, which covered 2025 and part of 2026.
That income included $342,000 from Holland & Hart, the law firm she worked at after losing her 2024 bid for re-election to the U.S. House — plus $95,000 from two different fellowships. The salary she’s collecting from her campaign is some $1,300 a week.
“Mary has spent her entire life fighting for Alaska communities, and she will continue to do so in the United States Senate,” Peltola spokesperson Harry Child said in a short prepared statement. “Mary has been taking on the rigged system in D.C. that has been propped up by Sullivan and his special interest backers.”
Incumbents push back
Both Republicans rejected the idea that their wealth puts them out of touch with the needs of everyday Alaskans.
“Congressman Begich’s personal finances have no impact on his legislative decisionmaking process,” Silver Prout, a spokesperson for Begich’s congressional office, said in an email.
A spokesperson for Sullivan’s campaign, Nate Adams, said that “representing Alaskans isn’t about what’s in your bank account, it’s about what you do for theirs.” He also rejected attacks that Sullivan has personally profited from his position in the Senate, saying that “the bulk” of the senator’s investments are in mutual funds that any American can purchase.
“And, his investments have underperformed the market during his time in the Senate, which is hardly the portfolio of someone gaming the system,” Adams said.
On top of his $174,000 U.S. Senate salary, Sullivan reported roughly $100,000 in additional income largely in the form of dividends, interest and capital gains on investments.
Much of Sullivan’s wealth is tied up in RPM International, a publicly traded company founded by his grandfather in which the senator holds between $1 million and $5 million in stock, according to his financial disclosure.
The New York Times reported earlier this year that Sullivan had sold as much as $800,000 in company stock in the past eight years.
Begich, by contrast, reported a diverse array of investments spanning conventional stocks to cryptocurrency to holdings of gold and silver. He owns stakes worth at least $1 million in a software company that he founded, FarShore; a fund called Listen Ventures III that’s invested in companies making prepared Indian meals, an emotional wellness app and indoor hydroponic gardens; and an Austin based health-care and telehealth company.
In total, Begich’s assets are worth at least $7.4 million, according to his disclosure. He reported at least $310,000 in income in 2025, plus that he’d sold a minority stake in a construction management software company for at least $250,000.
Prout, Begich’s spokesperson, did not respond to an email requesting details about some of his holdings.
But in a previous email, she said that Begich “has not bought or sold any individual publicly traded stocks during his time in Congress, in order to expressly avoid any real or perceived benefit from his own policy work.”
“Congressman Begich believes that congressional service is an opportunity to give back and to serve the people of Alaska and the nation, not to obtain greater wealth by trading on inside information,” Prout said.
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