Tale of two Sullivans: Alaska Senate race spotlights legality of political tricks

In politics, there’s a gray area between playing dirty and breaking the rules. In Alaska right now, that gray area lies between the first name “Dan” and the last name “Sullivan.”An already pivotal race for a U.S. Senate seat in Alaska has become one of the most controversial races in the country, after a news report surfaced evidence that one campaign recruited a spoiler candidate to run against their opponent.The race pits incumbent Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan against Democrat Mary Peltola, a former member of Congress. A third candidate, a retired teacher named Daniel J. Sullivan (hereafter known as Mr. Sullivan), is the subject of the recent controversy. A New York Times investigation published on Wednesday found that members of the Peltola campaign recruited Mr. Sullivan to run as a means of siphoning votes from Senator Sullivan through voter confusion. The race is one of a handful of contests expected to decide which party controls the Senate for the remainder of President Donald Trump’s term.On Thursday, the Republican governor of Alaska launched an investigation and the Department of Justice reportedly issued subpoenas for a criminal investigation. The Trump administration had already filed an unusual lawsuit preemptively challenging the results because of Mr. Sullivan’s presence on the ballot, which the DOJ amended to allege that the Peltola campaign lied in court documents. Kerry Tasker/ReutersSen. Dan Sullivan makes an appearance at the Alaska Federation of Natives Convention in Anchorage, Alaska, Oct. 22, 2026. The governor of Alaska has launched an investigation into allegations that the campaign of Sen. Sullivan's opponent recruited a spoiler candidate. The controversy has raised the possibility of a civil or criminal case against the Peltola campaign less than a week before Election Day, along with the potential for a protracted legal dispute after Nov. 3. It has also revealed gaps between what’s legal and what many voters perceive as unethical.“There’s no law on the books that’s violated by this conduct,” says Scott Kendall, an Alaska attorney who has worked in Republican politics and knows both leading candidates personally, but hasn’t donated to either campaign. “Something can be really, really lousy ... without being criminal conduct,” he adds.How did two Dan Sullivans get on the ballot?The Times story reports, using text messages, emails, and an interview with a former Peltola campaign staffer, that members of her campaign found Mr. Sullivan and convinced him to run in a practice known as ballot stacking. Ms. Peltola denies knowing about a recruitment effort and Mr. Sullivan maintains he entered on his own accord.The state’s electoral process in fact makes ballot stacking easy, requiring only that you be a U.S. citizen, an Alaska resident, and over the age of 18 to appear on the ballot.The Division of Elections, the state agency that oversees elections, “isn’t looking beyond those surface criteria for whether you’re qualified,” says Libby Bakalar, a former assistant Alaska attorney general who represented the election agency in court. Kerry Tasker/ReutersRepublican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan and Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mary Peltola participate in a debate in Anchorage, Alaska, Oct. 15, 2026. The two are in a close race that is one of a handful that will determine which party holds control of the U.S. Senate following the midterm elections. Except, in the case of Mr. Sullivan, the Division of Elections did go a bit further. A few weeks after he filed to run, the agency rejected his filing on the grounds that it was not “an actual good-faith candidacy” but was instead “filed with a purpose to confuse or mislead and to thereby compromise the ballot’s fairness or neutrality.”Mr. Sullivan appealed the decision, and in June the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that the state had to include his name on the ballot.On Oct. 23, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit arguing that the state of Alaska should not certify the results of the Senate election if Sen. Sullivan loses by less than the margin of votes that went to Mr. Sullivan. While the election maneuvering may be politically questionable, it doesn’t change the weak basis of the DOJ lawsuit, some legal experts say. No federal law that overrides Alaska’s role in administrating elections was cited and the part of state law the DOJ says was violated is its preamble, which isn’t legally binding.The Times story “makes the Democrats look bad, but on the [DOJ lawsuit] it doesn’t make any difference,” says Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Los Angeles.“Voters can decide for themselves”Given that the Constitution entrusts states with the power to run elections, any legal challenge to the Senate race in Alaska will likely be in state court – and will not be easy to win.The language on the ballot would make it difficult to argue that voters were confused by seeing two “Dan Sullivans,” according to Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.The ballot, altered by the Division of Elections after the state Supreme Court ruling, reads: “Sullivan, Daniel S. (Registered Republican) Incumbent” and “Sullivan, Daniel J. Jr.” with no party affiliation. That “informational remedy,” says Mr. Olson, allows for limiting confusion without empowering courts, or state officials, to gatekeep who gets to run for political office.Giving courts or officials a “robust power to strike a candidate for confusion or for bad motive is a power that is likely to be overused or misused,” he adds. Haven Daley/APVoters stand in line at an early voting location in a mall in Anchorage, Alaska, Oct. 21, 2026. On Oct. 23, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit preemptively challenging the results if incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses by a narrow margin. The sight of such hardball politics might raise ethical issues for some, legal or not. U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican who endorsed Senator Sullivan but supported Ms. Peltola in a previous campaign, rejected the notion that being lawful equates to being acceptable.“While some may try to write this off as just how politics works now, ballot-stacking should have no place in our electoral process,” she wrote in a social media post. “Alaskans deserve the honest truth from Mary and her campaign.” Others, meanwhile, don’t see ballot stacking as that far removed from a candidate running an attack ad that mischaracterizes or lies about an opponent, or amplifies a false rumor.“All of those things are fine to report on and voters can decide for themselves,” says Mr. Olson. ALREADY A SUBSCRIBER? LoginReal news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.The Christian Science Monitor was founded in 1908 to lift the standard of journalism and uplift humanity. 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