Oct. 29 (UPI) — Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy said he is ordering an investigation into whether Senate;l candidate Mary Peltola recruited a candidate for Senate with the same name as her opponent, incumbent Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, R-Alaska.
The announcement from Dunleavy came after the New York Times published a report alleging that Peltola’s campaign recruited retiree Dan J. Sullivan to run against Dan S. Sullivan to confuse Republican voters.
“Alaskans have a fundamental right to vote for the candidate they actually intend to support. Deliberately tricking voters into casting their ballots for someone else strikes at the integrity of our elections,” Dunleavy posted on X Wednesday night. “Anyone or any organization found to have broken the law must be held accountable.”
President Donald Trump told reporters earlier Wednesday that Peltola should be removed from the ballot, although it’s too late to do so as early voting in Alaska started on Oct. 19.
“They said they didn’t do it, and they did do it, and they got caught,” Trump said. It’s “voter fraud at the highest level.”
Alaska’s Republican primary was in August. Sen. Dan S. Sullivan received 68,726 votes while Daniel J. Sullivan got 4,107.
On Oct. 23, the Department of Justice filed a preemptive lawsuit to block the certification of Peltola if she wins.
Dan S. Sullivan’s spokesperson said that Peltola and her campaign “have spent months gaslighting Alaskans, denying a scheme they were running all along.”
“While some may try to write this off as just how politics works now, ballot-stacking should have no place in our electoral process,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski said in a statement on X. “Alaskans deserve the honest truth from Mary and her campaign — what has been revealed is a pattern of lies and coverups and a culture of deception.”
But on Oct. 23, she posted that she disagreed with the Justice Department lawsuit.
“Alaskans don’t need any help voting for their preferred candidates, and the State of Alaska has already handled this by clearly distinguishing the candidates on this year’s ballot,” she posted. “The Department of Justice should never have filed this lawsuit.”
Peltola at a rally called the news “just another distraction”
An analysis of recent polls published in The Washington Post showed Peltola leading in the polls by an average of five points.
Elisa Rios, who was Peltola’s campaign manager and aide until she was fired in August, did several interviews with The Times. She said, “Alaskan voters need to know. There was a lot of speculation, and voters should get the full picture when making their decisions.”
She added Peltola was “definitely aware,” but was not involved in the project.
If Peltola or her campaign orchestrated the plan, it’s unclear if any laws were broken.
State leaders tried to have Daniel J. Sullivan removed from the ballot earlier this year but the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that there’s no state law or any U.S. Constitutional law that allowed it to rule on the candidate’s motives.
Lauren French, spokesperson for Senate Majority PAC, which is aligned with Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., posted several examples on X of similar tactics by Republicans. She mentioned a case in which a super PAC spent about $800,000 boosting an out-of-state Democrat and “the main pro-Dan Sullivan super PAC chipped in $100K. And their transfers stayed hidden until after primary votes were cast,” she said.
French also said that in 2024 the Alaska Republican Party joined a lawsuit to keep on the ballot a Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives who was a federal inmate campaigning from a New York prison.
Chris Meagher, a Democratic strategist, said on X, “The reality is that while it’s maybe an interesting story, this sort of thing is not really new.”