The New York Times on Wednesday published a story substantiating what Republicans and the campaign of Alaska U.S. Sen. Dan S. Sullivan have alleged for months: The other candidate on the ballot named Dan Sullivan was recruited by operatives aligned with Democratic challenger Mary Peltola.
“Alaskan voters need to know,” Elisa Rios, a fired Peltola campaign manager, told the Times. “There was a lot of speculation, and voters should get the full picture when making their decisions.”
The Times reported on secret efforts by the Peltola campaign, its lawyers and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, an arm of the national Democratic Party, to recruit Dan J. Sullivan of Petersburg and other challengers, with the aim of drawing votes away from the Republican incumbent. It’s a tactic political operatives call “a ballot composition” project. The point was to dilute Republican support and advantage Peltola, according to the Times story.
Alaska Public Media has not independently confirmed the Times’ reporting.
According to most polls, Peltola has a slim lead, but new revelations emerging less than a week before Election Day could be enough to tip the political scales.
The Peltola campaign responded to the story by email.
“The Alaskans for Mary campaign has no involvement with either Sullivan campaign,” it said. “Like Mary, our campaign is focused on lowering costs and fixing the rigged system in DC.”
(The press release did not say whether Peltola herself was involved in the recruitment. “Alaskans for Mary” did not file a statement of organization until January of this year, after many of the incidents in the Times story occurred.)
Campaigning in Soldotna Wednesday, Peltola called the story a distraction.
“Nobody’s waking up worried about ballot composition,” she said. “Not even me. I’m worried about my bills. I’m worried about affordability in health care.”
The Petersburg candidate didn’t respond to inquiries by public radio station KFSK on Wednesday.
The Peltola campaign and the DSCC have previously denied involvement in recruiting Dan. J. Sullivan to enter the Senate race. The Times reports that both issued denials again before the story published but neither addressed a list of detailed questions from the paper.
The Petersburg Sullivan has also said his campaign had no connection to Peltola’s.
A lawsuit looms
President Donald Trump, among other Republicans, has contended for months that the same-name challenger had coordinated with Democrats. That claim culminated in a lawsuit the Department of Justice filed Thursday seeking to block certification of the election if the incumbent Sullivan were to lose by a margin less than the number of votes the Petersburg Sullivan gets.
The state Division of Elections, the Peltola campaign and the League of Women Voters, among others, say there’s no law that would allow that kind of federal intervention. A judge is expected to rule on motions to dismiss the case as soon as Friday afternoon.
Following the Times story on Wednesday, President Trump weighed in with a post on his social media network.
“Mary Peltola should suffer the Legal and Political consequences for what she has done, A FRAUD ON THE AMERICAN PUBLIC, and Dan Sullivan should be allowed to run without either Mary Peltola or FAKE Dan Sullivan on the Ballot,” the president wrote.
Trump called for the prosecution of Peltola, but did not explain for what crime.
Attorney Libby Bakalar used to work for the state and represented the Division of Elections. She also posts left-wing political commentary on social media. She said what the Times uncovered doesn’t matter much from a legal perspective.
“Not a single illegal thing happened here,” she said by text. “Anyone has the right to strategically recruit candidates in a system where there is open ballot access. Alaska’s courts don’t interrogate the ulterior motives behind running for office, because the Division of Elections is not a detective agency tasked with investigating the political machinations of every candidate and voter.”
Super PACs spent more than $2 million this summer to try to elevate political unknowns to Alaska’s general election ballot, not to help them win the office, but to disadvantage one of the major candidates.
Murkowski demands ‘honest truth’ from Peltola
Nick Poche, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said the second Sullivan strategy was different because, he said, it had the potential to confuse voters. And he said that if a super PAC worked in tandem with the Peltola campaign on the Sullivan recruitment, that would be a federal campaign finance violation.
Poche said the behavior described in the news story is “shameful.”
“At the end of the day, her campaign lied about her involvement,” he said. “They’ve been lying for months, and now here we are with evidence that, you know, hey, they did it.”
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski also weighed in, saying recruiting candidates to stack the ballot is wrong.
“Alaskans deserve the honest truth from Mary and her campaign — what has been revealed is a pattern of lies and coverups and a culture of deception that belongs nowhere in our elections or among our elected officials,” she wrote.
Murkowski has endorsed Sen. Sullivan for reelection to the U.S. Senate. In 2024, she endorsed Peltola’s bid for reelection to the U.S. House.
Nate Adams, spokesman for Sen. Sullivan’s campaign, also said in a statement that Alaskans deserve the truth.
“Mary Peltola, her campaign, and her senior advisors colluded with the (Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee), national Democrat lawyers, and Alaska Democrat operatives to recruit candidates to deliberately deceive and confuse voters, and then repeatedly lied about it,” Adams said.
The Times story was published less than a week before Election Day, with early voting already underway. Alaska’s U.S. Senate race is one of a few nationwide that could decide which party controls the chamber.
According to the Times, Democratic candidate Mary Peltola’s campaign was involved in an effort to recruit a second Dan Sullivan to the race to peel votes away from incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan. Campaign aides reportedly instructed a Peltola staffer to find as many people as possible named Dan Sullivan in Alaska. Retired teacher Dan J. Sullivan of Petersburg later announced his candidacy.
News of the Times investigation has drawn mixed reactions from voters across the state. Some dismissed the allegations as unsurprising, while others criticized the reported effort as an example of dirty politics.
Keven Kleweno, a registered Republican planning to vote for Peltola, said he was unsurprised by the news, given Republicans’ prior claims of Democratic involvement in Dan J. Sullivan’s campaign.
“That’s nothing that we haven’t heard before,” he said.
But at the same time, he suggested that Rios, Peltola’s former campaign manager who spoke to the Times about the campaign’s involvement, was a disgruntled ex-employee who “didn’t like being laid off.”
“I just feel it’s another way to, you know, slander Peltola and try to make sure Dan worthless Sullivan is reelected,” he said.
In Petersburg, some voters defend Dan J. Sullivan
Petersburg residents who have known Dan J. Sullivan for decades had a hard time reconciling the picture the Times painted with the man they know.
Erica Kludt-Painter said she doesn’t believe he worked behind the scenes with the Democrats to stack the ballot.
“I just don’t see him being involved in a national conspiracy,” she said. “I’m sorry, I just don’t. I know him to be a man of integrity who cares about his community and the people in it.”
Petersburg Vice Mayor Jeigh Stanton-Gregor said the community knows Dan J. Sullivan is a man of “high character,” and he doesn’t see the Times story changing anyone’s opinion of him. He said he was disappointed in the article.
“I just wish at this stage of the game, the New York Times was talking about substantive issues that really impact people in Petersburg’s lives and Alaskans’ lives, whether it be gas prices, foreign wars, etc,” he said. “Things that have real-world consequences, as opposed to a distant three- or four-place candidate.”
Other Alaska voters said the Times report did little to change their views.
Adam Lees of Anchorage is registered nonpartisan and supports Peltola. He said his opinions of the Senate race were already “mostly baked in.” Still, he said, the reported effort to stack the ballot is “not the best look.”
“It does give — I think as some of the kids would describe it — icky vibes,” he said. “But at the same time, I think voters are intelligent and can figure out how to rank and can figure out which Dan Sullivan is their person.”
Amber McClelland, a registered Democrat and former Libertarian living in Anchorage, said she agreed. Politics wasn’t always this “dirty,” she said — recruiting a candidate just to draw votes away from an opponent “should not be a thing.”
“It’s kind of messed up,” she said. “But in the past, Republicans have done everything that they can do to win, including cheat.”
Distinguishing between Dans
D.J. McBride, an independent voter living in Willow planning to vote for Peltola, was taken aback by the suggestion that Alaskans couldn’t distinguish the senator from the retired teacher.
“Both sides play pretty dirty pool, and if you’re stupid enough that you can’t tell the difference between an incumbent and a non-incumbent, I don’t have any patience for you,” she said. “Alaskans are smarter than that.”
Fairbanks doctoral student Eric Evans said he was frustrated the controversy was drawing attention away from more important issues, such as the war with Iran. He said he had yet to make a final decision on who to vote for in the race.
“I think it’s really, really unfortunate that the state Supreme Court of Alaska ruled on this months ago, and that this is what we’re talking about at this critical point in time, when, really, we should be talking about, how are we going to solve things?” he said.
Geoff Kennedy, a retiree living in Anchorage who is registered as nonpartisan, said it was “absurd” to think Alaskans would be confused by the two Dan Sullivans. He said he didn’t expect the controversy to have much impact on the race.
“It doesn’t look like it’s going to make that much of a difference,” he said.
Several voters compared the Peltola campaign’s link to the same-name challenger to Republican groups’ spending in support of Eric Hafner, a federal prisoner in New York who was the lone Democrat to advance in Alaska’s U.S. House race. Democrats have instead backed an independent candidate, Bill Hill.
Alaska’s election system makes it relatively easy for spoilers to access the ballot, by finishing in the top four in the primary. No signatures or party endorsement is required.
But the ranked choice ballot also provides a means to eliminate the spoiler effect. If a voter, for instance, ranked both Sullivans, the vote would count for the candidate with the most votes. In every race, though, some number of voters choose not to rank their ballots.
Alaskans are already voting early at a record-breaking pace. As of Wednesday, more than 60,000 Alaskans had cast their ballots, according to state elections officials, already more than the total number of early votes in 2022. Roughly 267,000 Alaskans voted in the most recent midterm, and more than 340,000 cast ballots in 2024.
KFSK contributed to this report, originally published on Alaska Public Media. This is a combined version of two articles published Wednesday.
