President Donald Trump on Wednesday called for Alaska Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mary Peltola to be criminally charged and drop out or be removed from the ballot.
His comments followed the publication of a New York Times article revealing that her campaign worked with the national Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to recruit spoiler candidates that could dilute votes for her principal opponent, incumbent Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan.
The U.S. Department of Justice has already filed a Trump-directed but legally dubious lawsuit seeking to prevent the state from declaring anyone but Sen. Dan S. Sullivan the winner of the election.
Trump administration sues to block Alaska’s US Senate election result if Peltola wins
Alaska’s U.S. Senate race is one of a handful of “toss-up” races nationally that could be won by either a Democrat or Republican and thus decide which party controls the U.S. Senate.
Peltola has consistently been polling ahead of Sullivan, and the Times article was published less than a week before Election Day, in the middle of early voting, with more than 58,000 Alaskans already having cast ballots.
Third-party Republican and Democratic groups have already spent millions of dollars in all three of Alaska’s statewide races in attempts to boost spoiler candidates. In the U.S. House race, Democratic candidate Eric Hafner — a felon who has never lived in Alaska — is being boosted by Republican groups.
The Times article alleges that early on in the Senate race, Democrats sought to recruit people with the same name as the incumbent — including Petersburg’s Dan J. Sullivan, who is on the general election ballot alongside Peltola, Sen. Sullivan and Palmer Republican Gerald Heikes. The article is based in large part on internal text messages provided by a former Peltola aide.
Dan J. Sullivan did not return emails and phone calls seeking comment on Wednesday.
The Alaska Beacon has not independently confirmed the Times reporting.
Legal experts, including some in Alaska, said the actions described in the article are not illegal but do amount to a dirty trick.
Fairbanks political writer Dermot Cole, a Peltola supporter, wrote online, “What Peltola and her backers did was juvenile and stupid. The Peltola campaign lied to Alaskans about this and should come clean. There’s no excuse for how Peltola has handled this.”
Republican U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski supported Peltola in her 2022 and 2024 campaigns for U.S. House but endorsed Sullivan this year. After the publication of the Times article, she issued a statement criticizing what she called “a pattern of lies and coverups.”
“While some may try to write this off as just how politics works now, ballot-stacking should have no place in our electoral process. Run and win on your merits: your views, your policy ideas, and your accomplishments. By contrast, recruiting candidates to manipulate the field and influence voting outcomes is simply wrong. Alaskans deserve the honest truth from Mary and her campaign,” Murkowski said in a statement.
Peltola and her campaign had denied any relationship with Dan J. Sullivan.
The Peltola campaign issued a statement implying that she will stay in the race, and she has not canceled any scheduled appearances before Election Day.
“Mary got in this race because Alaskans deserve a champion who is fighting to lower their costs and put Alaska first, and no tweet or threat from any DC politician will keep her away from that fight. The Alaskans for Mary campaign has no involvement with either Sullivan campaign,” wrote a campaign spokesperson.
Alaskans for Mary is a political group formed earlier this year; most of the allegations in the article appear to predate its creation.
At a campaign event Wednesday on the Kenai Peninsula, Peltola did not answer questions from reporters asking about the Times article but alluded to it in public remarks.
“Nobody’s waking up worried about ballot composition,” she said, according to local public radio station KDLL-FM. “Not even me. I’m worried about my bills. I’m worried about affordability in health care.”
Alaska Division of Elections says Petersburg Sullivan is likely ineligible to run for U.S. Senate
Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice, following instructions from Trump, filed a lawsuit against the Alaska Division of Elections, asking a judge to prevent the state from certifying a victory by anyone other than Dan S. Sullivan from being declared the winner of the ongoing Senate election.
Peltola’s campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee have asked to intervene in the lawsuit, and the federal government opposed that intervention until the Times article published.
Now, the DOJ is urging Judge Sharon Gleason to allow Peltola to be part of the lawsuit so it can “seek expedited discovery from the campaign regarding the reported conspiracy.”
The DOJ lawsuit is legally tenuous — under the U.S. Constitution, states and not the federal government have principal jurisdiction over elections — but the Times reporting nevertheless supportsRepublicans who have repeatedly referred to Dan J. Sullivan as “Decoy Dan”, suggesting he was recruited and supported by Democrats.
“Alaskans deserve to know the truth. Mary Peltola, her campaign, and her senior advisors colluded with the DSCC, national Democrat lawyers, and Alaska Democrat operatives to recruit a candidate to deliberately deceive and confuse voters, and then repeatedly lied about it,” said Nate Adams, spokesperson for Sullivan’s campaign. “Not one player in this operation has acted in good faith with Alaska voters. Mary Peltola and her campaign have spent months gaslighting Alaskans, denying a scheme they were running all along. We always knew this was a concerted effort to deceive voters, and Mary Peltola was hoping it would stay hidden until after the election.”
