Gerald L. Heikes

Deep Dive

Gerald Heikes is a Republican on Alaska's ballot for the U.S. Senate on November 3, 2026. He is a drywall contractor from Palmer who has run for office in Alaska repeatedly since 2014, for governor and for the state's single seat in the U.S. House. He took 1.0 percent of the vote in the August 18, 2026 open primary and finished fifth; the fourth-place finisher withdrew on the day the results were certified, and Heikes took the place that opened.

What he has said on this subject is one answer, given to a candidate questionnaire in 2024, when he was running for the U.S. House. The Alaska Beacon asked what the United States should do to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict, and he answered: "Support Israel. Get the hell out of the way and let Israel finish the job." Read as an answer to that question it says the United States should not restrain the government of Israel's military campaign. It names no weapon, no sum, no aid program and no condition, and he has not returned to the subject in that form since.

The rest of the same answer is his account of what the war is about. He wrote that the underlying issue is "Islam is not a religion of peace but of subjection. Those Gazans or any Arabs has no choice, but to kill in the name of Allah." The answer then turns to demonstrations in the United States: "Ignorance of the true issue, is shown on the streets and American campuses. If it were up to me those protesting for Gaza would be rounded up and shipped to Iran so they can join that mob for judgement." The spelling and grammar are his; the page that carries the answer says it is printed as he wrote it.

On what the United States should send, the record is empty, and there is one clear place where an answer was invited. For this year's election Alaska Public Media, KTOO, the Alaska Beacon and the Anchorage Daily News put a joint questionnaire to every Senate candidate, and one of its questions asked each of them to finish the sentence "U.S. military aid to Israel should be ____". Against that question, and against every other question on the form, his entry records that several attempts were made to reach him and that he did not respond. In a telephone interview published on September 9, 2026 he spoke about the war with Iran, health care and abortion; that interview is on his research page and it reaches neither American weapons nor American money for the government of Israel, and nothing at all on aid to Palestinians.

You are better placed to close that gap than we are. Ask Heikes directly, or at a candidate forum, and send us the reply: it goes on this page in his own words, which is worth more than anything we could write about him.

The money

Checked the five lobbying groups we track; no direct 2026 support found

In their words

Research log

The notes behind this card: what we looked at, what we found, and where each item came from.

Every page named below was opened and read on 2026-09-20 unless the entry says otherwise. Bands: Position (2024-01-26 onward), Reaction window (2023-10-07 to 2024-01-25), Earlier record (before 2023-10-07), Undated. He has never held federal office, so none of the congressional votes this site tracks are his, and the committees this site tracks record no funding on this record.

U.S. military aid and weapons to the government of Israel

• Nothing located, at any date. No statement of his was found on arms transfers, weapons shipments, Foreign Military Financing, the memorandum of understanding, security assistance, a dollar figure, a condition on aid, or any bill or amendment on those subjects.
• [Position, read 2026-09-20] The one place a direct answer was invited and not given. The 2026 voter guide built jointly by Alaska Public Media, KTOO, the Alaska Beacon and the Anchorage Daily News put the same questionnaire to every candidate for this seat, and one item asks each candidate to complete the sentence "U.S. military aid to Israel should be ____". His entry answers that item, and all twenty of the others, with the guide's own line: "We made several attempts to contact the candidate, but the candidate did not respond." The guide records no campaign website for him and gives his address, from the state's candidate list, as Palmer, Alaska. The guide carries no publication date of its own and is dated here to the day it was read.
• [Position, 2024-07-29] The nearest thing to a direction is the first half of his 2024 questionnaire answer, quoted under characterization below: "Support Israel. Get the hell out of the way and let Israel finish the job." It is an answer to a question about what the United States should do, and it names no weapon, no program and no sum.

U.S. aid to Palestinians

• Nothing located, at any date. Neither the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, nor humanitarian funding for Gaza, nor the aid pipeline appears in anything of his that could be read. The 2024 answer speaks about Gazans and about people demonstrating in the United States; it says nothing about American aid reaching Palestinian civilians.

Characterization of the conflict

• [Position, 2024-07-29] The Alaska Beacon's 2024 candidate questionnaire, reproduced in full on his Ballotpedia page under the heading "Interview with Alaska Beacon". The question is printed as "Israel-Palestine: What should the United States do to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict?" and his answer reads, word for word as the page prints it: "Support Israel. Get the hell out of the way and let Israel finish the job. Ignorance of the underlying issue, Islam is not a religion of peace but of subjection. Those Gazans or any Arabs has no choice, but to kill in the name of Allah. they are taught this from theirs mothers t---. Jews or gentiles, are in the crosshairs. Ignorance of the true issue, is shown on the streets and American campuses. If it were up to me those protesting for Gaza would be rounded up and shipped to Iran so they can join that mob for judgement." The three dashes in the middle sentence are printed on the page; the wording behind them could not be read, so that sentence is quoted nowhere on the card. The page carries a standing note that the text is quoted from the original source and that any inconsistencies belong to it, which is why the spelling and grammar are left exactly as they stand. Ballotpedia's citation for the answer is the Alaska Beacon's 2024 U.S. House race page, dated July 29, 2024, and that date is used here.
• [Position, 2026-09-09] In a telephone interview for the Alaska Independent's account of where the four Senate candidates stand, by Josh Israel, he defended the American military action against Iran and said of the Iranian government: "He believes that they are a nuclear threat. If they ever get it, they will use it, they will bomb Israel out of existence". He added, "He’s the president and he’s made a decision on things that we don’t know about." The subject of the piece at that point is the war with Iran. It is not about what the United States sends the government of Israel or sends Palestinians, and it is carried on the card in no form.

Related rhetoric and lobbying

• [Position, 2024-07-29] The closing sentences of the 2024 answer, quoted in full above, are about demonstrations in the United States rather than about any American program: "Ignorance of the true issue, is shown on the streets and American campuses. If it were up to me those protesting for Gaza would be rounded up and shipped to Iran so they can join that mob for judgement."
• Nothing located on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, on any other advocacy organization working on this subject, or on money connected to any of them.
• Worth recording as a fact about the race rather than about this subject: the Anchorage Daily News reports that a political committee formed this year, Right For Alaska, spent more than $400,000 promoting Heikes in an effort to weaken the incumbent, and describes it as part of a wider strategy of spending on candidates with little support of their own. None of that money is connected to this site's subject, and none of it is on the card.

Safety and antisemitism (context, not a position on what America sends)

• [Position, 2024-07-29] One sentence of the 2024 answer, "Jews or gentiles, are in the crosshairs.", describes who he says the ideology he names is aimed at. It is context and it is not treated as an answer to what the United States sends.
• Nothing else located: no statement of his on antisemitism, on hate crime enforcement, or on the safety of any religious community.

What the campaign site and his own pages say

• [Read 2026-09-20] No campaign website could be found for him. Ballotpedia lists none in its contact block, the joint voter guide records that it has none for him, and a search returned none. The one account this record holds is a numbered page at https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008278090205 , which opens as a personal profile named Gerald Heikes; nothing on it ties it to the candidate, so it is treated as unread and nothing is claimed from it.
• [Read 2026-09-20] Ballotpedia's page for him records that he has not completed its Candidate Connection survey for 2026 and did not complete it for 2024. Everything in his own words that the page carries is the 2024 Alaska Beacon interview set out above, which also covers Alaska's biggest need, what a member of the U.S. House can do for Alaska, oil and a post-oil future, congressionally directed spending, procedural obstacles in the House, disagreements with his own party, and transgender Alaskans. Of those, only the Israel-Palestine answer is in scope.
• [Read 2026-09-20] Ballotpedia's summary of federal disclosures for this race records no receipts and no disbursements for his campaign in this cycle.

The race

• [Read 2026-09-20] The general election for Alaska's Class 2 seat in the U.S. Senate is on November 3, 2026 and is decided by ranked choice voting, for the second time in a Senate general election in Alaska. Ballotpedia's page for the race gives the field, as read on 2026-09-26: "Incumbent Daniel S. Sullivan, Mary Peltola, Gerald Heikes, and Dan Sullivan are running in the general election for U.S. Senate Alaska on November 3, 2026." The record holds the same four: Dan S. Sullivan, the Republican incumbent; Mary Peltola, the Democrat; Gerald Heikes, a Republican; and Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a Republican.
• [Read 2026-09-20] The open primary was held on August 18, 2026 and the results were certified on August 31, 2026. Ballotpedia's certified table reads Mary Peltola 49.5 percent and 82,244 votes, Daniel S. Sullivan 41.4 percent and 68,726, Dan Sullivan 2.5 percent and 4,107, David Leslie 1.1 percent and 1,850, and Gerald Heikes 1.0 percent and 1,741, out of 166,004 votes cast among sixteen candidates. The page adds, as read on 2026-09-26: "David Leslie (D) withdrew from the race ahead of the deadline. As a result, fifth-place finisher Gerald Heikes (R) advanced to the general election instead."
• [Read 2026-09-20] The Anchorage Daily News reported the withdrawal on September 1, 2026, in a report by Alex DeMarban: Leslie withdrew on the deadline day, which elevated Heikes, who had finished 109 votes behind him. Heikes told the paper, "We’ll see what happens," about his plans for the campaign, and "I’ll be doing interviews in a couple of weeks." Wikipedia's article on the race sets out the same field and the same primary shares.
• [Read 2026-09-20] His earlier campaigns, as Ballotpedia's page records them: the Republican primary for governor in 2014, the Republican primary for the U.S. House in 2016, the 2020 general election for the U.S. House as a write-in, and the 2024 primary for the U.S. House, in which he did not reach the general election. This is the first time his name has been printed on a general election ballot.
• [Read 2026-09-20] Heikes had also filed for Alaska's at-large seat in the U.S. House this year. Ballotpedia lists him among the withdrawn or disqualified candidates for that primary, and he does not appear in that race's general election field.
• The other three candidates' records belong on their own cards and are not narrated here.

Places that could not be read, so nothing is claimed from them

• The Alaska Beacon's own copy of the 2024 candidate questionnaire, https://alaskabeacon.com/race-details/u-s-house-of-representatives-candidates-election-2024/ , which is the original of the answer this card quotes. Three different ways were tried on 2026-09-20 and the site's security check stopped every one of them. The Internet Archive answered with a rate-limit error rather than a yes or a no, so no archived copy could be confirmed either way. The wording used here is therefore taken from Ballotpedia's reproduction, which states that it prints the answers as the original gave them.
• https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008278090205 , the only account this record holds for him. Read on 2026-09-26, it opens as a personal profile named Gerald Heikes, listing the University of Alaska Anchorage and East Anchorage High School, with a note that others share the name. Nothing on it ties it to the candidate, so it is treated as unread.

Not on the card, and why

• His remarks of September 9, 2026 about the war with Iran, including the sentence that mentions Israel. Iran is a different question from what the United States sends the government of Israel or sends Palestinians, and the sentence is about a nuclear threat rather than about an American program. Quoted on this page with its address.
• The sentence in the 2024 answer that the page prints as "they are taught this from theirs mothers t---." The source's own text is broken there and the wording behind the dashes could not be read, so it is printed on this page as it stands and quoted nowhere on the card.
• The rest of his 2024 questionnaire answers: Alaska's biggest need, what the U.S. House can do for Alaska, oil and a post-oil future, congressionally directed spending, procedural obstacles in the House, his disagreements with his own party, and transgender Alaskans. Out of scope, and listed so the absence on this subject can be checked.
• His 2026 answers on health care, the Affordable Care Act credits and abortion. Out of scope.
• The outside spending reported on his behalf. It is about domestic campaign money in this race, not about what the United States sends anyone.
• The records of Dan S. Sullivan, Mary Peltola and Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. Another candidate's positions belong on that candidate's own card.

Sources retrieved for this card (address; opened or could not open; date)

• https://ballotpedia.org/Gerald_Heikes (opened; 2026-09-20; carries the 2024 Alaska Beacon interview in full)
• https://alaskapublic.org/news/2026-alaska-primary#/alaska-us-senate/candidate/gerald-heikes (opened; 2026-09-20; his entry in the joint 2026 voter guide)
• https://alaskaindependentnews.com/elections/where-the-alaska-us-senate-candidates-stand-on-the-issues/ (opened; 2026-09-20; published 2026-09-09)
• https://www.adn.com/politics/2026/09/01/alaskas-4th-place-us-senate-finisher-drops-out-elevating-gop-candidate-to-ballot/ (opened; 2026-09-20; published 2026-09-01)
• https://ballotpedia.org/United_States_Senate_election_in_Alaska,_2026 (opened; 2026-09-20)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_United_States_Senate_election_in_Alaska (opened; 2026-09-20)
• https://alaskabeacon.com/race-details/u-s-house-of-representatives-candidates-election-2024/ (could not open; 2026-09-20; three ways tried)
• https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008278090205 (could not open on 2026-09-20; opened on 2026-09-26 as a personal profile not tied to the candidate)
• This is a record of what was checked on 2026-09-20, not a claim that no other statement exists.