A federal lawsuit, two Dan Sullivans and an unconventional Democrat: the crucial Senate battle in Alaska

The future of the U.S. Congress — and, by extension, the prospects for Donald Trump’s second presidency — may be decided by a handful of votes in the most distant U.S. state from Washington, D.C. — Hawaii notwithstanding. Alaska is electing a senator next Tuesday, November 3, and the fight for that seat, crucial while control of the Senate hangs in the balance, has played out like a thoughtful political miniseries, or perhaps more like an absurd parody.Four unlikely names appear on the ballot: Dan S. Sullivan, the incumbent Republican senator; Dan J. Sullivan, who bills himself as a moderate Republican and had no political track record before launching his May candidacy; Mary Peltola, the Democratic nominee, a former state representative in Washington and a veteran of local politics; and Gerald Heikes, another little-known Republican. Peltola leads the polls by a narrow margin.Until recently, the campaign had centered on fishing, a pillar of the local economy, and on oil extraction, the state’s other economic mainstay. Peltola’s apparent winning formula was to oppose industrial fishing in favor of small local fishers while supporting oil development as a revenue source for public services. An anti-Trump factor also played a role in a state with a Republican tradition that Trump won by 13 points in 2024.But in the last week the race has been upended and voters’ attention has shifted. A lawsuit filed by the Justice Department at the behest of Trump, and newspaper reporting that Democrats engineered a move to dilute the Republican vote, have muddied the campaign and promise to keep the outcome in doubt until the last possible moment, since Alaska — at the western edge of the continent — is the final state to close its polling places next Tuesday.What does Trump’s lawsuit say?On Thursday, the Trump administration filed a preemptive lawsuit calling for the Alaska Senate race not to be certified if Peltola defeats the sitting senator, Dan Sullivan. It argues that the presence of a candidate with the same name could confuse voters and siphon votes from the Republican’s official candidacy.The complaint asks that, if the senator loses but the combined total for the two Sullivans exceeds Peltola’s vote, investigators determine whether votes for the second Sullivan were actually intended for the first. It does not explain how that would be done, given that voting is secret.Alaska also uses ranked-choice voting: electors rank candidates and, if no one surpasses 50%, the lowest-ranked candidate is eliminated and their ballots transfer to the next preference. Thus, a voter who marks both Sullivans, even if they list the wrong one first, could end up voting for the senator if the other Sullivan is eliminated. The administration maintains the system could amplify confusion.Experts say the lawsuit is unlikely to succeed, because the Constitution leaves election administration to the states, and Alaska’s courts have already ruled on the matter. The Division of Elections disqualified the second Sullivan for not running in good faith, but a court overturned that decision in June and the state Supreme Court upheld the reversal before the primaries.Did Democrats really try to split the vote?On Wednesday, an investigation by The New York Times added fuel to the fire: the newspaper reported that Peltola’s team orchestrated the second Sullivan’s candidacy with that goal in mind. Peltola and Sullivan have denied the allegation.According to the Times, in the summer of 2025 Peltola’s campaign leadership asked a staffer for a list of every Dan Sullivan in Alaska’s voter records. It was the start of an effort they internally called the ‘ballot composition project.’ The paper says the aim was to recruit candidates who would subtract votes from the senator. They even considered creating a state MAGA party, but abandoned that idea in May.The central figure was Jerid Kurtz, a political operator from Ohio. Sources told the Times that Kurtz said in early 2026 he had contacted a Dan J. Sullivan willing to run if it would help the Democrat. After the primaries, in which the new Sullivan advanced to the general election, Kurtz also pressured Democrat David Leslie, who finished fourth, to withdraw. That opened the spot for Heikes, who told the Times he was recruited by a Midwestern man though he did not identify him as Kurtz. A pro-Peltola political funding group also paid about $87,000 to a Kurtz firm, though the group denies hiring him.Such maneuvers are common and generally legal: in 2024, the Alaska Republican Party backed a Democrat who campaigned from prison to remain on the ballot against Peltola, presumably to dilute her vote.Now even President Trump has weighed in. Speaking to reporters on his way to a rally in Ohio on Wednesday, he said: “They said they didn’t do it, and they did do it, and they got caught.” He said that Mary Peltola should withdraw from the race and be prosecuted.Who is Mary Peltola?Mary Peltola, 53, is Yup’ik, one of the Indigenous peoples of western Alaska. She grew up on the banks of the Kuskokwim River near the Bering Sea in a family that made its living by salmon fishing. Her father was a friend of Don Young, the Republican who held Alaska’s lone House seat for nearly half a century. After Young’s death, Peltola won that seat in 2022 following a decade in the state legislature. She was the first Democrat to hold that House seat in 50 years and the first Native Alaskan elected to Congress, but she lost re-election in 2024.She describes herself as a conservative Democrat: she supports the right to bear arms and oil extraction, and in Washington she co-chaired the House’s centrist Democratic group. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer recruited her as a key piece in the effort to regain the upper chamber. In the open primary in August that set the four names on the ballot, she beat Senator Sullivan by eight points. Less than a week before the election, her lead is just over two points, according to the EL PAÍS poll aggregator.And the two Dan Sullivans?Dan S. Sullivan, the senator, was born in Ohio in 1964 and is a retired colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve. He served as an undersecretary of state in the George W. Bush administration, as Alaska’s attorney general and as the state’s commissioner of Natural Resources. He joined the Senate in 2014 and was reelected in 2020. He is now seeking a third term. He sits on the Armed Services and Commerce committees and has been a reliable Trump ally. He voted to acquit Trump in both impeachment trials and opposed creating an independent commission on the January 6 Capitol attack.Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., by contrast, is a retired elementary school teacher from Petersburg, a fishing town southeast of Juneau reachable only by air or sea. He has voted for Democratic candidates, including Peltola, he has acknowledged. Shortly before the registration deadline he changed from unaffiliated to register as a Republican. He says he ran of his own accord as a moderate Republican dissatisfied with the senator. He won 2.5% in the primary, slightly more than the margin polls predict will separate Senator Sullivan and Peltola.Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition