Alaska Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign was behind an attempt to recruit a challenger with almost the exact same name as Republican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, both of whom will appear on the ballot in next week’s midterm elections, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
Republicans condemned the presence in the race of two candidates named Dan Sullivan — one a two-term U.S. senator, the second a retiree living in southeast Alaska with little political experience — calling the newcomer a ploy by Democrats to cost the incumbent president’s re-election by dividing his supporters.
Peltola’s campaign has denied any involvement with the other Dan Sullivan, but the Times reports that his officials, along with the party’s campaign arm, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), worked to find other Dan Sullivan appointees in Alaska and encouraged them to run. Their reporting is based on interviews with Peltola’s former campaign manager and other sources, as well as documents and text messages related to recruitment efforts.
“The voters of Alaska need to know,” Elisa Rios, whom Peltola fired in August, told the Times, which added that she later tried to recant with the outlet.
Nate Adams, a spokesman for Sullivan’s campaign, said, “Alaskans deserve the truth.”
“No one involved in this operation acted in good faith with Alaska voters. Mary Peltola and her campaign spent months putting Alaskans on edge, denying a scheme they had been running all along. We always knew this was a concerted effort to deceive Alaskans, and Mary Peltola hoped it would stay hidden until after the election,” he added.
Donald Trump shared a link to the Times article on Truth Social, calling it proof of “voter fraud.”
“I don’t think Mary Peltola, after perpetrating such a terrible plan, should be allowed to run,” he added. Last week, he admitted to ordering the Justice Department to file a lawsuit to try to block certification of the election results, if Sullivan lost.
A spokesperson for Peltola’s campaign said, “The Alaskans for Mary campaign is not involved in any of Sullivan’s campaigns. Like Mary, our campaign is focused on cutting costs and fixing the rigged system in Washington, DC.”
Sullivan’s bid for a third term in the U.S. Senate against Peltola, a former U.S. congresswoman, is one of the most important matchups in next week’s midterm elections. Alaska is one of the few states with Senate elections this year that Democrats are targeting to regain a majority in the House, where they hold 47 seats to the Republican Party’s 53, and recent polls put Peltola in the lead.
State election officials tried to disqualify fellow Dan Sullivan before the August primary, but the state Supreme Court ruled he could appear on the ballot. Along with Sullivan and Peltola, the challenger was one of the top four vote-getters in the nonpartisan primary.
On the general election ballot, the senator will be listed as “Sullivan, Dan S. (registered Republican) incumbent” and the challenger will be listed as “Sullivan, Daniel J. Jr.”
At a rally in Alaska this month, Trump urged the senator’s supporters to vote for the “real” Dan Sullivan, and warned that erroneous votes for the challenger could cost the senator his re-election.
“DSCC is not involved with Dan J. Sullivan,” said a spokesperson for the Democratic Senate campaign arm. They added that “Republicans have a long history of recruiting and supporting candidates in an effort to boost their own campaigns,” including in Senate elections in Alaska and Ohio this year, and in previous elections in North Carolina and Montana.
The Times reports that Democrats have begun thinking about ways to put a spoiler candidate on the midterm ballot in summer 2025. The DSCC introduced the Peltola campaign to a political operative from Ohio named Jerid Kurtz who specializes in such activities, which are generally legal. Help without success approached another potential candidate, who did not share a name with the senator, and ultimately recruited the other Dan Sullivan, the Times reports.
Peltola campaign officials also talked with the DSCC about creating a right-wing party to field a candidate in a race, but that was unsuccessful, according to the Times. After a second Democrat reached the August primary, the operative met with him and convinced him to drop out. He was replaced on the ballot by another Republican, Gerald Heikes, who told the Times that he was recruited to run “by a guy from the Midwest,” although the person didn’t look like the Democratic operative from Ohio.
Heikes is a perennial candidate, having previously run unsuccessfully for governor, U.S. senator and House representative.
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