Mary Peltola’s campaign swore for months it never touched the stranger sharing her opponent’s name.
Democrats and their friends in the press called the whole thing a Republican fever dream.
And Mike Dunleavy just handed the case to people who carry badges.
The Governor Sent the Case to the Department of Public Safety
Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy has ordered the state’s Department of Public Safety to investigate whether the campaign of former Congresswoman Mary Peltola (D-AK) broke the law by helping recruit a second Dan Sullivan into her race against US Senator Dan Sullivan (R-AK).
The Republican governor made the announcement on X within hours of a New York Times report tying Peltola’s campaign to the recruitment of Dan J Sullivan, a retired schoolteacher from Petersburg. Dunleavy wrote that the Times story revealed “disturbing new evidence of an organized effort to manipulate Alaska’s elections by recruiting candidates.”
He didn’t leave much to the imagination about what’s on the table.
“I am therefore directing the Department of Public Safety to investigate whether this scheme violated Alaska’s laws and whether criminal charges or civil action are warranted,” Dunleavy wrote.
“Deliberately tricking voters into casting their ballots for someone else strikes at the integrity of our elections,” he added. “Anyone or any organization found to have broken the law must be held accountable.”
Donald Trump got there first on Truth Social. “This is Voter Fraud at the Highest Level, and the Dumocrat Candidate, who was involved in the scheme, Mary Peltola, should be removed from the Ballot and prosecuted,” Trump wrote.
Peltola’s campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee deny any role in Dan J Sullivan’s candidacy. Nobody has been charged with a crime.
But the most telling line in Dunleavy’s post looked backward, to June.
The Elections Chief Who Got Overruled in June
“The Alaska Division of Elections investigated these very concerns in June of this year,” Dunleavy wrote. “The new reporting substantially supports the Division’s findings.”
Here’s the backstory most national outlets skipped. Dan J Sullivan filed shortly before the June 1 deadline. Lieutenant Governor Nancy Dahlstrom asked for a review of his eligibility. On June 15, Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher removed him from the ballot, concluding that his run under the name Dan Sullivan was meant to confuse voters.
Then the courts stepped in. Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews put him back on, writing that “Alaska Supreme Court precedent favors resolving any question about eligibility in Dan J Sullivan’s favor.” The Alaska Supreme Court agreed on June 29, one day before the ballot printing deadline, and tossed out the “good faith” test the state had used.
Fourteen Republican-led states filed briefs backing Alaska. It didn’t matter.
The court’s logic came down to this. The state can check a candidate’s age and residency. It can’t ask why he’s running.
Fine as a legal principle. But look at what happened to the official who raised the alarm.
Beecher spent the summer as a punching bag. State troopers escorted her to her car after she testified before the Alaska House Judiciary Committee in July. Local outlets kept reminding readers that Trump and the senator had no evidence. One Juneau paper flatly called the Sullivan campaign’s “sham candidate” charge false.
And through it all, the Peltola camp held its line. In June, the campaign told the Daily Caller News Foundation it had “no involvement with either Sullivan campaign.”
That denial has aged about as well as milk left on the dashboard. Campaign metadata showed Democrat strategist Amber Lee wrote Dan J Sullivan’s June 11 campaign announcement, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation. And the Times now reports, citing interviews and documents, that Peltola aides were combing voter records for Alaskans named Dan Sullivan as far back as the summer of 2025.
Dan J Sullivan says he’s the real deal. “My intention is not to trick people,” he told the Times. “I would hope people are informed enough to know the difference between an incumbent senator and a teacher.”
Maybe so. But if voters could tell the two apart so easily, it’s a little hard to see why anybody went digging through the rolls for a retired teacher with that exact name.
Why the Law Professors Are Already Nervous
The election law crowd started pushing back before the governor’s post was a day old.
Rick Hasen, who runs the Election Law Blog, wrote that he doesn’t see how the government could punish a man for “running for office for having impure motives.” He added that parties prop up spoiler candidates constantly. “This stuff happens all the time,” Hasen wrote.
He’s not entirely wrong. Both parties have played games with fringe candidates for decades, and plenty of it is perfectly legal.
But Dunleavy didn’t point his investigators at a schoolteacher’s private thoughts. He pointed them at an “organized effort.” Who organized it, who paid for it, and who told election officials, courts, and reporters something different from what was actually going on are questions about conduct, not motives.
A Green Party spoiler at least runs under his own banner. A same-name candidate only works if somebody in the booth gets fooled.
The governor was careful on this point too. “The evidence will determine what happens next,” Dunleavy wrote.
And there’s a wrinkle Dunleavy’s critics will have trouble explaining away. His own Department of Law is fighting Trump’s federal lawsuit, which asks a judge to block certification if Senator Sullivan loses by fewer votes than Dan J Sullivan receives. The state argues Washington has no business stepping in.
So the governor isn’t simply taking marching orders from the White House. He wants Alaska to police Alaska’s election.
There may be a second track running anyway. NBC News reported on the day of the August primary, citing a law enforcement official, that a federal grand jury had issued subpoenas to witnesses tied to Dan J Sullivan’s campaign. Dan J Sullivan said he hadn’t received one.
A Race Where a Sliver of Votes Could Decide the Senate
The math explains why everybody is fighting so hard.
In the August primary, Peltola took 49.54%, Senator Sullivan took 41.40%, and Dan J Sullivan pulled 2.47%. An Alaska Survey Research poll released that same week showed Peltola and the senator tied at 44% apiece, with Dan J Sullivan at about 5%.
In a race that close, a couple percent of confused voters isn’t a rounding error. It’s the ballgame, and possibly the Senate majority with it.
Democrats will call the probe a political stunt by a Trump-friendly governor days before an election. It’s a convenient story. Trouble is, Beecher’s finding came in June, months before the Times got anywhere near this, and back then the people now crying foul were busy calling her a partisan hack.
Maybe the investigators find nothing a prosecutor can use. Election law is a strange animal, and the Alaska Supreme Court already made clear how little room the state has to question a candidate’s purpose.
But a decoy candidate doesn’t have to be illegal to be a con. And voters can’t pull their ballots back out of the box once they figure out which Dan Sullivan they actually picked.
Carol Beecher pulled Dan J Sullivan off the ballot on June 15. Four months later, the governor who appointed her sent the same question to the Department of Public Safety.
Sources: Just the News, “Alaska governor orders probe of Democrat nominee over alleged Senate race trickery”; Juneau Independent, “Dunleavy orders state criminal investigation into Peltola campaign ballot-stacking allegations,” “Judge rules state illegally removed Dan J. Sullivan from US Senate race,” and “DOJ issues grand jury subpoenas in probe of Dan J. Sullivan’s US Senate candidacy”; CNN live coverage of the midterm elections; CBS News, “Trump says Peltola ‘shouldn’t be allowed to run’ for Alaska Senate seat”; Alaska’s News Source (KTUU), coverage of the Alaska Supreme Court ruling and Division of Elections testimony; Alaska Beacon, “Is a U.S. Department of Justice investigation about to disrupt Alaska’s U.S. Senate race?” and “Trump indicates Department of Justice may bring case against Petersburg’s Dan Sullivan”; Daily Caller News Foundation via BizPac Review, “Dan Sullivan endorses Dan Sullivan against Dan Sullivan”; Newsweek, coverage of the Alaska Supreme Court ruling; Election Law Blog; Alaska Watchman