A small-town Alaska fisherman has Republicans on the defensive as they try to keep US House majority

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — In the thick of Alaska’s primary election season this summer, independent Bill Hill took a break from his U.S. House campaign to return home to Bristol Bay. The world’s biggest sockeye salmon run was beginning, and that meant he needed to get back to work.

“I told my team that I have got to fish,” he said, adding: “Commercial fishing is the way that we pay the bills.” Hill, 57, grew up in a tiny southwest Alaska village where he said his family had no phone and had to haul water from a nearby lake for cooking and bathing. Today, while he no longer has to fetch water, his lifestyle is not much different. He lives in a remote fishing community of about 430 people that he has called home for nearly half his life.

A retired teacher and school administrator, Hill has positioned himself as a working-class candidate who can relate to Alaskans’ frustrations with high fuel and other costs. He has made affordability and pushing back against billionaires a central theme in his campaign against Republican Nick Begich, who’s seeking a second term in Congress. “We are pedal to the metal, making sure that every Alaskan knows about this campaign, every Alaskan knows what we stand for and every Alaskan knows that it’s really one of them going to Congress,” Hill told people at a campaign event this week in Juneau, wearing his standard campaign uniform of jeans, a zip-up vest and cap with a fishing company logo.

“I need your help getting there.” The race has become a concern for Republicans as they are trying to hold onto their majority in the U.S. Vice President JD Vance held a rally this week for Begich and Dan Sullivan, the U.S. senator who also is in a tight reelection race.

President Donald Trump is scheduled to do another in the coming week. Begich and Republican political action committees have ratcheted up ad spending in the House race since the primary. Planes, ferries and four-wheelers on the campaign trail Hill, a first-time candidate who is Alaska Native, faces an incumbent from a prominent family long associated with the state’s politics.

Begich’s late grandfather once held the state’s only U.S. Nick Begich is a lifelong Republican and has aligned himself with Trump, who has carried Alaska in his White House runs. Hill’s campaign said he has traveled more than 20…