Democrats in Alaska built a secret plan to recruit a second Dan Sullivan for the Senate ballot, and the Justice Department is moving to stop certification if voters get confused.
Breitbart News reported that Alaska Democrats created an internal “ballot composition project” aimed at placing another candidate named Dan Sullivan on the general election ballot opposite Republican Sen. Daniel S. Sullivan. The race pits the incumbent against Democrat and former Rep. Mary Peltola in a contest that could shape control of the U.S. Senate.
The New York Times, citing interviews, text messages, and documents prepared for a potential lawsuit, found that Peltola’s team worked with people trying to recruit the second Mr. Sullivan to run. Campaign lawyers and senior aides at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee took part in the effort, which included secret trips across far-flung Alaskan communities and pitches over beers at brew pubs.
A mysterious Midwestern operative used a fake name while working the state. Advisers held regular conversations from Washington to Anchorage. They even discussed forming a new political party to pull conservative voters onto the ballot and away from the sitting senator. The second candidate, Daniel J. Sullivan, has since advanced and will appear alongside Peltola, Sen. Sullivan, and Gerald Heikes.
Peltola’s campaign has repeatedly denied any involvement in Daniel J. Sullivan’s decision to announce. That denial sits uneasily beside statements from Elisa Rios, who previously managed Peltola’s campaign and spoke in a series of interviews about the project.
Rios said people in Alaska “need to know.” She told reporters Peltola “was not directly involved in the project” yet was “definitely aware” of it. Fox News reported additional detail on how the operation worked, including searches of voter rolls for Alaskans named Dan Sullivan and recruitment of a retired teacher who later switched his party label to Republican before filing.
"There was a lot of speculation, and voters should get the full picture when making their decisions."
That is how Rios framed the need for disclosure. Fox News also identified Democratic operative Jerid Kurtz as the figure who used aliases such as “Zane” when meeting potential recruits and offering financial backing meant to split the right-leaning vote. Internal planning, the reporting said, considered a fake “MAGA party” and pressure on a progressive candidate to drop out.
Daniel J. Sullivan earlier told the Times he had “voted for the Democrat nominee in the last three presidential elections and did not vote for the senator in his previous two campaigns.” The profile matches a liberal activist more than a conventional Republican challenger, yet his name now sits on the same ballot as the incumbent. Related coverage has tracked a Democratic plot to muddy the Alaska Senate ballot with the decoy name.
Alaska’s election rules made the scheme workable. The state uses a jungle primary in which the top four finishers advance regardless of party, then ranked-choice voting in the general election. Those changes passed by referendum in 2020. The New York Post noted that the second Dan Sullivan advanced with only 2.5 percent of the primary vote, enough under the current system to reach the general election ballot and create name confusion in a tight race.
The Post called the decoy candidacy a clear danger to voter intent in a pivotal Senate contest and labeled the state’s electoral design a travesty that enables perverse outcomes. Sen. Sullivan appeared at a get-out-the-vote event at a farm in Palmer, Alaska, on Aug. 17, 2026, as the campaign season intensified. The ballot now presents voters with two Dan Sullivans, Peltola, and Heikes.
Name confusion is not a theoretical problem. When two candidates share the same common first and last name, hurried or less-informed voters can mark the wrong line. In a ranked-choice system, that error can cascade through later rounds. Democrats who designed the ballot composition project understood the mechanics. They planned around them.
The Trump administration’s Department of Justice is not waiting for Election Day fallout. Breitbart’s Matt Mercer reported that the DOJ is seeking to preemptively block certification of Alaska’s U.S. Senate race if the state certifies results “tainted by the inclusion” of the second Dan Sullivan. Separate reporting has covered how the Justice Department sued to stop certification if activist Daniel J. Sullivan appears in the final tally.
President Trump stated the Democratic conduct in blunt terms.
"The Democrats cheated! They found a man named Dan Sullivan, put him on the Ballot, then lied to the Court... That’s perjury."
Fox News carried that assessment alongside the Times findings. The administration’s legal posture treats the decoy candidacy as more than hardball politics. It treats the name placement as a threat to the integrity of the certified result. Parallel scrutiny has included a criminal probe of Alaska’s second Dan Sullivan on the Senate ballot and a watchdog FEC complaint alleging illegal coordination with a liberal group targeting the incumbent.
Peltola answered the Times story at a Soldotna rally on Oct. 28, 2026. She did not dwell on the recruitment details. She attacked the press for chasing the wrong story. RealClearPolitics carried her response as she tried to reframe the race around cost of living and foreign policy votes.
"Nobody at the New York Times cares about affordability in Alaska."
She added that the coverage amounted to “another distraction, it’s another diversion” and said every day brings “some new, you know, look over here moment.” Peltola also criticized Sen. Sullivan for voting for war in Iran 14 times while Sen. Lisa Murkowski had stopped supporting that approach months earlier. The candidate’s message was clear: ignore the ballot scheme and talk about prices and foreign policy instead.
That pivot does not erase the paper trail. Campaign lawyers, DSCC aides, voter-roll searches, alias-using operatives, and a second candidate with a documented Democratic presidential voting record all sit on the public record. Rios’s own words place Peltola as “definitely aware.” The denials cover direct operational control. They do not cover knowledge.
Alaska voters will decide a Senate seat that matters in Washington. They will do it on a ballot that includes two men named Dan Sullivan because Democratic operatives worked to put the second one there. The same party that lectures the country on democracy engineered a name-confusion play in a system its own reforms made possible. The Justice Department is trying to keep a tainted result from being locked in. The Alaska Senate race has already drawn national attention, and the decoy candidacy is now part of that fight.
When party operatives hunt for a namesake, fund the confusion, and then call the exposure a distraction, voters can see the priority list for themselves.
