U.S. Senate candidate Dan Sullivan from Petersburg says a state investigation into his bid for office is baseless and inappropriate.
“It’s a little bit chilling in a way, in some ways, that they would go after somebody like me,” he said in an interview Wednesday afternoon.
The candidate shares a name and Republican party designation with Alaska’s incumbent senator, whom he’s running against. That kicked off a lot of Republican complaints and the state’s investigation.
Sen. Dan Sullivan has accused the challenger of colluding with Democrats to intentionally confuse voters. Last week, the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent a letter to the state asking that Petersburg Sullivan be taken off the ballot.
Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, the state’s top election official, announced Monday that the state was opening an investigation into the candidate.
“I’m troubled by the allegation that you filed for office in coordination with another campaign with the intention of confusing Alaskan voters in a way that will benefit one candidate over another,” she said in a letter addressed to the challenger. “If true, it suggests that your declaration of candidacy, which was submitted under penalty of perjury, was not genuine and not properly filed.”
The candidate responded forcefully by letter on Wednesday, saying Dahlstrom had provided “no evidence whatsoever” to back up her allegation, which he says is false.
“The law forbids your office from denying me access to the ballot just because Senator Sullivan and the NRSC would prefer I not be allowed to run,” he wrote.
He called the investigation “an unprecedented affront to my rights as a candidate and the rights of Alaska voters to select their own representation in the U.S. Senate.”
Dahlstrom asked Sullivan to answer a list of seven questions about his name, campaign, and party affiliation. His letter does not reply directly to each one in list form.
In an interview Wednesday afternoon with KFSK, he reiterated that he’s running to provide an alternative to the senator.
“I think I’ve been pretty emblematic of what a good citizen should be in a community,” Sullivan said. “If that doesn’t give me the right to stand up and pursue this goal that I’m after, then I mean, I don’t know who is eligible to do this.”
The NRSC complaint says the challenger is intentionally copying Sen. Sullivan’s campaign materials to confuse voters.
“When he filed his campaign logo, his campaign letterhead, his fundraising letterhead, it stole my campaign logo,” Sen. Sullivan said in a Newsmax interview. “It’s a clear violation of not only intellectual property, but just again, trying to confuse Alaskans on who he is.”
Petersburg Sullivan said he chose his blue-and-gold branding based on the Alaska flag. His photo is prominently displayed on his website’s homepage. He said he does not look like the incumbent and voters should be able to tell them apart.
“I followed every rule, every procedure. There was nothing on there about how your website design has to look like this or it can’t look like that,” he said. “So it really is from out of left field that I have to kind of document this kind of stuff, and no other candidate seems to have to document their websites.”
The Republican challenger has also defended his relationship with Amber Lee, a political consultant who has worked for Democrats and nonpartisans and who agreed to help him launch his campaign.
Republicans point to her as a link to the senator’s Democratic rival, Mary Peltola. Petersburg Sullivan said Lee is not working for Peltola’s campaign. He said he sought advice when he decided to run.
“Her name came up,” he said. “I googled her, and I made a connection because she writes middle school literature, and I taught middle school literature for many years, reading and writing.”
He figured she’d be a good fit for his campaign. He plans to begin raising money to operate his campaign but so far, she’s worked for free.
Petersburg Sullivan said he’ll continue to run for Senate. If the state tries to strike him from the primary election ballot, he said he will look into “legal options.”
Alaska Public Media’s Liz Ruskin contributed reporting.
