When Sen. Dan Sullivan comes up on C-SPAN with his familiar sunset poster, a sigh of relief runs through Washington.
“It’s that time again,” he says, standing next to a mountain scene aglow with orange, pink and purple.
This is “Alaskan of the Week,” the only speech in the Senate that elicits gleeful tweets from jaded floor watchers. They know what it means for the chamber — and pre-pandemic, their evening plans.
Business is usually done and almost everyone is gone. The last thing left to do is sit back and hear tales from the 49th state.
“Alaska is dotted with small villages, without roads, freezing cold temperatures,” the Republican said earlier this month as he praised two doctors, Ellen Hodges and Elizabeth Bates, for their efforts to deliver COVID-19 vaccines.
“Our health care workers are jumping on boats, single-prop airplanes, snow machines and yes, in a couple cases, dog sleds,” he said.
Every senator wants to brag about their home state, but Sullivan has made it a regular event, giving dozens of speeches that often fall at the end of the legislative week. The series has a cult following on the Hill and little competition, especially after Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse discontinued his recurring “Time to Wake Up” speech about global climate change. (The Rhode Island Democrat decided 279 speeches was enough.)
Sullivan got the idea when he first came to the Senate and had to take his turn in the presiding officer’s chair. New senators in the majority have to preside more frequently, and Sullivan said he listened to a lot of his colleagues make speeches about constituents who died. It might be nice to honor Alaskans while they’re still around to hear it, he thought.
He gave the first speech in 2017 and kept going. “We try to highlight people who are doing something really good for their community or the state or even the country, but who really have not gotten the recognition,” Sullivan said in an interview.
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