Alaska's already tangled Senate race just added another layer, former Anchorage Mayor Dan A. Sullivan stepped in to endorse incumbent Sen. Dan S. Sullivan over a same-named rival now facing a grand jury investigation.
The former mayor posted his endorsement on Facebook, calling himself "the OG Dan Sullivan" and urging voters to back the sitting senator. The move came days after Alaska's all-party primary, where Sen. Sullivan finished second with 43 percent of the vote behind Democratic former Rep. Mary Peltola, who pulled 48 percent with ballots still being counted. A third man sharing the Sullivan surname, retired teacher Dan J. Sullivan, drew just 2.4 percent but still advanced, NBC News reported.
Under Alaska's primary system, the top four finishers move on to the general election regardless of party. The November contest will then be decided by ranked-choice voting, a format Sen. Sullivan himself has criticized. That setup is exactly what makes the second Sullivan on the ballot so dangerous to the incumbent, and why Republicans suspect the candidacy is no accident.
Sen. Sullivan and other Republicans have alleged that Dan J. Sullivan was placed on the ballot specifically to confuse voters and siphon support from the incumbent, and that the retired teacher is effectively working with Peltola's camp. Dan J. Sullivan denied coordinating with the Peltola campaign. Peltola, for her part, denied any involvement with his candidacy.
But the denials have not satisfied investigators. State and federal prosecutors in Alaska have been probing whether the race could involve a conspiracy to mislead voters. A grand jury issued subpoenas this month to compel information from witnesses linked to Dan J. Sullivan's campaign. The state Division of Elections originally disqualified him from the ballot, but the Alaska Supreme Court reversed that decision last month and ruled he could stay on.
Fox News reported that progressive consultant Amber Lee, who previously supported Peltola, helped author some of Dan J. Sullivan Jr.'s campaign materials, a connection that deepens Republican suspicions about the candidacy's true purpose.
If the allegation is accurate, the scheme is a straightforward one: put a name-alike on the ballot, bank on low-information voters marking the wrong box, and let ranked-choice voting do the rest. In a race this tight, even 2.4 percent could decide the outcome.
The incumbent has pointed directly at Alaska's election system as the root vulnerability. In a statement carried by Breitbart, Sen. Sullivan said:
"Like many others who did not support ranked choice voting in 2020, I still believe that this new election system has created unnecessary confusion among voters."
That confusion is the point, Republicans argue. An all-party primary that sends four candidates forward, combined with a ranked-choice general election, creates precisely the conditions where a spoiler candidate with a familiar name can do real damage. The Cook Political Report rates the Alaska Senate race a toss-up, a designation that would have seemed unlikely a cycle ago for a Republican incumbent in a red-leaning state.
Democrats view the seat as one they could flip in November, and the broader Senate map already presents challenges for the GOP majority. Alaska is not the only battleground where Republicans are playing defense.
Enter Dan A. Sullivan, the former Republican mayor of Anchorage, who shares the surname but has no stake in the race beyond wanting the incumbent to win. His Facebook endorsement was blunt:
"As the OG Dan Sullivan, I urge Alaskans to vote for Sen. Dan S. Sullivan. He's been great for Alaska."
The endorsement is designed to do one thing: help voters tell the Sullivans apart. In a ranked-choice system where ballot confusion could hand the seat to a Democrat, even a simple public statement from a well-known local Republican carries weight. The former mayor's intervention is a signal that Alaska's GOP establishment sees a genuine threat.
President Trump has also endorsed Sen. Sullivan for re-election, AP News reported, underscoring how seriously national Republicans take the race. The contest is considered one of a handful of Senate matchups that could determine which party controls the chamber.
Dan J. Sullivan, meanwhile, has tried to draw a policy contrast with the incumbent. He criticized the senator for embracing Trump's endorsement and said the president was "more interested in raising tariffs on our allies than in lowering the cost of groceries, housing and energy." Whether that message or the name recognition is doing the real work on the ballot is the question prosecutors appear to be asking.
The record fundraising by Senate Republican groups suggests the party is preparing for expensive fights in exactly these kinds of races. Alaska, once considered safe, now demands resources and attention that could be deployed elsewhere.
The investigation adds a criminal dimension to what might otherwise be a quirky local story. Grand jury subpoenas are not issued casually. Prosecutors are compelling testimony from people connected to Dan J. Sullivan's campaign, and both state and federal authorities are involved. The scope of the probe, whether it targets the candidate himself, his advisers, or outside operatives, remains unclear.
Several questions hang over the race. What specific grounds did the Division of Elections use to disqualify Dan J. Sullivan in the first place? On what basis did the Alaska Supreme Court overrule that decision? And what evidence, if any, links the retired teacher's candidacy to Democratic strategists beyond the Amber Lee connection Fox News identified?
None of those questions have public answers yet. But the fact that a grand jury is now involved suggests prosecutors believe there may be more than coincidence at work. If the investigation produces charges before November, it could reshape the race entirely. If it doesn't, the name confusion will persist on the ballot, and ranked-choice voting will sort out the rest.
Democrats have struggled in other Senate contests this cycle. In Maine, Chuck Schumer backed away from a troubled candidate, and internal divisions have complicated the party's strategy in multiple states. Alaska offers them a rare pickup opportunity, but one that now carries the stain of a potential voter-manipulation scheme.
Senate Republicans, meanwhile, have demonstrated they can push major legislation through the chamber when unified, giving the party a governing record to defend. Losing a seat to a name-game stunt would undercut that momentum in the worst possible way.
Alaska voters deserve a straight fight between candidates with different ideas, not a ballot designed to trick them into picking the wrong Sullivan. If prosecutors find that someone engineered this confusion on purpose, accountability should follow. And if ranked-choice voting is the mechanism that made the trick possible, Alaskans might want to rethink the system before the next cycle.