The New York Times has performed a public service by detailing the quiet, methodical effort by Democrats and their allies to place a second Dan Sullivan on Alaska’s Senate ballot. What the paper describes is not ordinary campaign rough-and-tumble. It is a calculated attempt to manufacture confusion in a system already designed to favor the unpredictable, all in service of flipping a seat that could decide control of the Senate.
According to the New York Times’s reporting, a staffer for former Rep. Mary Peltola was instructed in the summer of 2025 to comb voter records for every Dan Sullivan in the state. The goal was straightforward: find someone who could be persuaded to file as a Republican against Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK), thereby siphoning votes from the incumbent on Alaska’s top-four primary ballot.
