ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Thousands flocked to Alyeska Resort in Girdwood Saturday for the first of a two-day celebration centered around blueberries in bloom.

“We have been blessed with beautiful weather today,” Alyeska Director of Special Events and Partnerships Arab Ginnett said. “This is for all of our blueberry enthusiasts or people that just want to support the local community.”

The festival has 75 vendors, all of whom are local to Alaska selling a variety of wares, many of them blueberry-related.

“It’s been great,” first-time vendor Dana Mathews of Dana Mae’s Cookies said. “What time is it? Noon? And I’ve sold over half my product already.”

Some vendors also sought to give back to the Girdwood community hosting the event.

Several students at Girdwood Elementary School ran a blueberry-themed frozen lemonade stand to support their biannual class trip to the east coast.

“We want to travel and see the world,” student Rudy Gelinas, one of many hoping to go to Washington, D.C. and New York. “We live in Alaska and we’re used to the same stuff and we normally don’t go traveling that often.”

The festival opens its doors from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on both Saturday and Sunday.

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Alaska US Senate candidate Mary Peltola has rejected the support of Kamala Harris, her fellow Democrat, after the 2024 presidential candidate sent out a seemingly unsolicited fundraising appeal on Peltola’s behalf.

Harris, who lost Alaska – typically a Republican-voting state – by 13 points during her unsuccessful White House run, on Wednesday sent an email from her political organization to supporters of Peltola, a former US House member.

“If there’s anyone who can flip Alaska and secure the Senate majority for Democrats – it’s Mary,” the email, which was signed “Kamala Harris”, said. “But she cannot do it alone.”

It asked recipients to donate to Fight for the People Pac, which Harris set up last year. Donations would be split between Harris’s organization and Peltola, the email said.

It was a fairly innocuous message and didn’t explicitly endorse Peltola. But the unwanted help was swiftly batted away by the Alaskan’s campaign.

“Mary isn’t seeking endorsements from anyone from the Lower 48 – her focus is and always will be Alaska,” a Peltola spokesperson said in a statement to KTUU that invoked a term for the contiguous US. “That’s why she’s proud to have the endorsement of [the American Federation of Government Employees], the Alaska [American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations], the Alaska [International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers] Local 1547 and more than 10,000 Alaskans who have signed up to volunteer with the campaign.”

The campaign was right to be concerned because Peltola’s Republican opponent almost immediately used the email to try to tie Peltola – a moderate Democrat whose campaign has focused on Alaskan issues rather than party politics – to Harris.

“Kamala Harris supported the Biden administration’s disastrous anti-Alaska agenda, which is why Alaskans rejected her by double digits,” Nate Adams, a spokesperson for the Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan, said in a statement. “Alaskans can see exactly whose team Mary Peltola and Kamala Harris are on, and it isn’t Alaska’s.”

The episode suggests Harris remains a divisive figure within the Democratic party, even as the former vice-president weighs another run for president. Earlier this year, Harris, who also ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, left the door open when asked about her future ambitions.

“Listen, I might, I might. I’m thinking about it, I’m thinking about it,” Harris said, when US civil rights leader Al Sharpton asked if she was planning to run again.

Harris replaced Joe Biden as the Democratic 2024 presidential candidate after questions and concerns about Biden’s fitness as he initially ran for re-election became inescapable. With only 107 days to run her campaign, she lost the electoral college and the popular vote to Donald Trump to hand him a second presidency.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Alaska’s primary election is barreling toward a record early vote, with ballots received by the state Division of Elections climbing to 17,314 as of Friday afternoon, fewer than 1,000 votes shy of the all-time primary high set in 2022.

The division’s running tally, updated at 3:24 p.m. Friday, puts this year’s early vote within striking distance of the 2022 record of 18,267, with the weekend and Monday still ahead before polls close.

Mail-in ballots stood at 5,129 received by the division as of Friday afternoon.

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