Will Alaska Democrats’ Dirty Tricks Cost the Party a Senate Seat?

The Slatest Trying to trick voters isn’t nice. Getting caught trying to trick voters isn’t smart. Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Jacquelyn Martin - Pool/Getty Images, Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images, and Daniel J. Sullivan for Senate. This story is adapted from the Slatest newsletter. You can sign up here to get it in your inbox every day. Next week’s U.S. Senate election in Alaska could come down to one letter. Under the state’s unique balloting system, three candidates are running to unseat Sen. Dan S. Sullivan: Democratic former Rep. Mary Peltola, a bandana-wearing gadfly named Gerald Heikes, and … another Dan Sullivan. That other Dan Sullivan, whose middle initial is J, is a retired teacher who has previously voted Democrat, so his presence in the race quickly attracted suspicion. On Wednesday, the New York Times officially linked Dan J. Sullivan’s candidacy to Democrats, reporting that Peltola aides helped recruit him in a bid to siphon votes from the incumbent Republican. The subterfuge appears to be a blatant case of Democrats stooping to dirty tricks in a competitive race that will help decide which party controls the Senate. Yet as seamy as those tactics may be, they still don’t justify the Trump administration’s attempts to use the power of the federal government to help the original Dan Sullivan (the one who’s already a Republican senator, that is) win reelection. So like a salmon swimming up an icy Alaskan stream, let’s dive in. What exactly did the Times report? Last year, Peltola allies started looking for Alaskans named Dan Sullivan who might be open to running for Senate. The reported scheme, referred to internally as “the ballot composition project,” involved a Democratic operative named Jerid Kurtz clandestinely meeting with potential contenders. But Kurtz’s skullduggery appears to have paid off. In the small fishing village of Petersburg, he found Dan J. Sullivan, who apparently agreed to run if it would help Peltola win. (Dan J. Sullivan has previously denied any associations with the Peltola campaign, which in turn continues to deny any involvement with his candidacy.) How’d Peltola’s campaign get caught!? Some of the Times’ information came from Elisa Rios, Peltola’s former campaign manager, who spoke to the paper after she was fired in August. Rios first claimed that Peltola knew about the gimmick before trying to retract her comments. Yet the Times also uncovered other evidence that the recruitment plot was real, including text exchanges going back months. Could having another Dan Sullivan on the ballot really help Peltola win? The theory goes like this: Confused voters intending to throw their support behind the Republican Dan Sullivan (who has a chance of beating Peltola) may accidentally vote for Dan J. Sullivan (who has no chance at all). Trump’s Justice Department cited that possibility in a lawsuit it filed last week at the president’s behest that aimed to block Alaska election officials from certifying a Peltola victory. Sounds like Democrats got caught in a pretty ugly attempt to confuse voters. Does that mean the administration’s suit has merit? Although the DOJ sued before the Times’ story broke, there are a few reasons to doubt that the Peltola campaign’s gambit merits federal intervention. For one thing, Alaska Republicans have engaged in similar hijinks. In 2024, the state party helped keep a federal inmate who had never been to Alaska on the U.S. House ballot in a bid to undermine Peltola, who ended up losing. The DOJ’s case also rests on some questionable assumptions. The feds framed the suit as a bid to “protect the integrity of the electoral process,” but the Constitution gives states the power to set election rules, and the Alaska Supreme Court decided months ago that the other Sullivan could stay on the ballot. The ballots also clearly label Sen. Sullivan as an incumbent Republican, reducing the chances of confusion. Attorney General Todd Blanche, a staunch Trump toady, has nonetheless argued that a narrow defeat for Sen. Sullivan could constitute evidence that voter confusion tipped the race, hence the preemptive lawsuit. “There are a number of scenarios where it could be obvious that a voter was confused by the way they wrote down candidates,” Blanche told CNN on Sunday. Except the U.S. guarantees the right to a secret ballot, which means it’s pretty much impossible to tell what someone was thinking when they bubbled in their preferred candidates. Rather than evidence of confusion, a narrow Sullivan defeat could just mean that Alaskans narrowly preferred Peltola as their next senator. Assuming a judge rejects the DOJ suit, how might Alaska voters respond to all this? One possibility is with a shrug. Without minimizing what the Peltola campaign reportedly did, there’s a difference between political trickery and lawbreaking election interference, and the Times story doesn’t assert that Peltola’s allies crossed that line. (Not that that’s stopped the president from claiming otherwise: On Wednesday, Trump cited the Times story in a Truth Social post arguing that Peltola “shouldn’t be allowed to run, and neither should the FAKE Dan Sullivan!”) Many voters may also have long assumed that the other Sullivan was a Democratic plant. Since June, when Alaska’s top court ruled he could stay on the ballot, most polls have shown Peltola narrowly winning. On the other hand, voters may resent the Peltola campaign’s attempt to confuse them, which is both underhanded and more than a little condescending. In what’s projected to be a close race in a state with fewer than 1 million inhabitants, turning off even a few voters could be a big problem—and a really stupid way to blow a Senate seat. Tolga Akdoğan Let’s turn our attention to my colleagues’ ideas about what to read and (not) watch this evening: A great book, a bad movie: Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Klara and the Sun is strange and beautiful—but it might also be unfilmable. Laura Miller explains why Taika Waititi’s adaptation is shaping up to be a legendary box-office bomb. A reconsideration of Meta: It’s been five years since Facebook rebranded itself as Meta as part of Mark Zuckerberg’s pivot to the metaverse. That dream may be dead, but Meta lives on. Chris Stokel-Walker argues that the rebrand was the right decision—but made for the wrong reason. A new birth control option: Copper IUDs are a long-acting and nonhormonal form of birth control, but they do have some drawbacks. Luckily, if you hate your current birth control, Mia Armstrong-López is here to tell you about a new option that might be a better fit. The case for boring men: Dating in the modern era is a minefield, requiring you to deftly navigate the apps, tune out bad TikTok advice, and contend with the threat of ghosting. It’s not for the faint of heart. In a culture that pushes the promise of an exciting whirlwind romance, Alley Horn makes the case that boring men are a better bet. As a somewhat boring guy myself, I can’t say I disagree! See you back here tomorrow.