Federal agents served longshot Alaska Senate candidate Gerald Heikes a grand jury subpoena days before the midterms, escalating a probe into Democratic-linked efforts to recruit ballot spoilers.
FBI agents found Gerald Heikes hours from home on a Saturday, helping a friend hang drywall, and handed him the papers. The conservative drywall contractor from Palmer, Alaska, had drawn roughly 2 percent of the vote and sat in third place in the still-undecided Senate race. Federal prosecutors ordered him to appear before a grand jury and produce any electronic and paper records tied to political groups and other candidates in the contest.
CNN reported that the subpoena was dated one day after a New York Times story alleged links between Mary Peltola’s campaign and a recruitment push. A top leader of the Justice Department’s civil rights division in Washington, D.C., signed it, not a prosecutor based in Alaska. The Department of Justice declined to comment.
Prosecutors are accelerating a criminal probe into whether operatives aligned with Democratic candidate Mary Peltola sought to recruit spoilers into Alaska’s Senate race. The demands cover communications related to Peltola’s campaign, the Elias Law Group, and numerous political action committees. Elias Law Group represents both the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Peltola’s campaign.
Heikes told CNN in a Friday interview that agents wanted him to explain how he was recruited. He rejected the premise outright.
"They want me to appear and tell them what I know and how I was recruited, but I wasn’t recruited. I just took a chance,"
Heikes said. He described an earlier meeting this year with an out-of-state operative whose name he does not know. The man pitched a Senate run. Heikes said he had already aimed at public office and decided on the Senate after that conversation. God, he said, first inspired him to seek office about two decades ago when he eyed the governor’s race.
He framed his own motive in plain terms.
"I did it out of fascination... I wanted to see what would happen,"
Heikes said. He added, “If they think I’m an operative, they’re wrong.” He said his intention was never to peel votes from Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, whom he prefers over Peltola, and that he knows nothing about the PAC money spent on his behalf.
Agents, he said, kept the encounter civil. “They were very polite and then they left.”
Alaska uses ranked-choice voting, a system that can reward vote-splitting and name confusion. Another longshot candidate, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., shares a name with the sitting Republican senator. Prior CNN reporting described newly created PACs, tied to an out-of-state operative, that spent millions attacking Sen. Sullivan while backing Heikes. The Justice Department had already sent target letters to more than a dozen people it believes helped recruit Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., including leadership at Elias Law Group.
That same name-game tactic sits at the center of earlier coverage of a Democrats’ second Dan Sullivan plan on the Alaska ballot. Peltola has denied any knowledge of efforts to recruit other candidates. President Trump posted that votes for Heikes and Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. should automatically go to Sen. Sullivan and referred to Heikes as a “slug.” Heikes brushed off the insult: “I’ve been called worse. I’m a sheet rocker. I’ve spent over 40 years in trade, so I know every curse word there is. He’s kind of lightweight.”
State officials moved on a parallel track. Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy ordered an investigation into Peltola’s campaign after the Times reporting on Democratic operatives recruiting a same-name candidate to confuse voters and aid Peltola against the incumbent Republican in the ranked-choice system. Both Dan S. Sullivan and the copycat Dan J. Sullivan remained on the ballot with Peltola after a court ruling. A federal grand jury investigation and a related Justice Department suit over the copycat candidacy are ongoing.
National Review carried Dunleavy’s statement on the evidence of an organized effort.
"Today’s New York Times reporting reveals disturbing new evidence of an organized effort to manipulate Alaska’s elections by recruiting candidates, including one with the same name as an incumbent U.S. Senator, to deliberately confuse voters and misdirect their votes,"
Dunleavy wrote. He added that Alaskans have a fundamental right to vote for the candidate they actually intend to support, and that deliberately tricking voters into casting ballots for someone else strikes at the integrity of elections.
The subpoena’s origin in the civil rights division, rather than an Alaska U.S. Attorney’s office, underscores how far the matter has traveled from a local filing. Prosecutors want records that could show ties among Peltola’s campaign apparatus, the PACs that spent heavily against the Republican incumbent, and the candidates who entered late or ran as longshots. No charges or arrests have been announced. The public record so far is target letters, a grand jury subpoena, a state investigation, and a separate federal suit aimed at certification questions if the activist Daniel J. Sullivan appears in the results.
Readers following the federal pressure can see the same thread in reporting on how the Justice Department ramped up its criminal probe of Alaska’s second Dan Sullivan. Ranked-choice rules and same-name candidacies create obvious incentives for operatives who want to siphon first-choice or confused votes. When outside PACs then flood the zone against the incumbent while boosting a 2-percent candidate, voters are left to sort real campaigns from engineered noise.
Republicans have described a longer pattern, including a yearlong decoy Sullivan scheme charge aimed at national Democratic leadership. Heikes insists he is not part of anyone’s operation. The grand jury will hear what records and testimony show. Peltola’s denial of knowledge sits beside a subpoena that specifically seeks communications with her campaign and the law firm that represents it.
Certification itself has become contested ground. The Justice Department has already moved in court to limit how results are finalized if the activist Daniel J. Sullivan remains a factor, a step detailed in coverage of the suit to stop Alaska Senate certification under those conditions. Meanwhile Heikes, a sheet-rocker with four decades in the trades, is under federal order to produce what he has and appear. The agents who found him on a job site were polite. The legal process is not a courtesy call.
When operatives treat ballot lines like props and voters like marks, a subpoena days before an election is the predictable result, and taxpayers should demand the full record, not another shrug from the people who designed the confusion.
