She has been to towns where paper towels retail for $40, a half gallon of oat milk goes for $21 and the cost of a new freezer can be quadruple what it is in the state’s largest city, Anchorage, simply because it’s so complicated to get there. Along the Arctic Ocean, she’s heard of communities where power bills have climbed to $1,500 a month because they rely on generators for power and the Iran war has pushed the cost of diesel to new heights.

“Nobody can afford that,” Peltola said in an interview.

Alaska, a right-leaning state that’s about twice the size of Texas but the third least-populous in the country, has always been among the more expensive places to live, and the price increases in the state’s rural areas haven’t necessarily been felt to the same degree in the more populous cities and towns.

Yet the state’s Democrats believe circumstances have aligned for them to win a slew of competitive elections in the 3 November midterms. The Senate seat currently held by two-term Republican Dan Sullivan is a top prize.

“In 23 short days, we’re going to be voting both [Republican congressman] Nick Begich and Dan Sullivan out of office, and they richly deserve it,” the chair of the state Democratic party, Eric Croft, said at a press conference last week.

“They are self-serving, self-dealing DC politicians who repeatedly voted to make life harder and more expensive for Alaskans.”

All signs indicate that Republicans are taking seriously the threat posed by Peltola, an Alaska native and former US House lawmaker who supports oil and gas and gun rights. Outside groups have poured in tens of millions of dollars into supporting both candidates, and last week Donald Trump made the long journey from Washington DC to the conservative Matanuska-Susitna valley to rally voters behind Sullivan, who has trailed in some recent polls.