Alaska US Sen. Sullivan, in fight to keep his seat, makes new accusations against Peltola

U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, in a tough fight to keep his seat, took time after casting his vote at the Alaska Zoo in Anchorage on Tuesday to blast his Democratic opponent.

“We are witnessing the biggest election cheating scandal in the history of the state of Alaska, one of the, maybe one of the biggest in the US Senate’s history,” the two-term Republican told a large crowd of reporters assembled at the zoo, a designated polling site for two South Anchorage precincts.

The scandal, Sullivan said, is the campaign to put a different candidate who shares his name onto the ballot.

Dan J. Sullivan of Petersburg, a retired teacher and longtime resident of that Southeast Alaska island community, is one of the candidates in a high-stakes race that could determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.

“Unfortunately, the scheme is working,” the senator told reporters gathered at a far end of the zoo parking lot, away from the polling site. “The decoy is on the ballot. Thousands, likely, of Alaskans are going to mistakenly throw away their vote. There’s no one voting for this guy on purpose.”

Sullivan used the impromptu news conference to make more accusations against his main opponent, Democratic candidate Mary Peltola and her campaign.

“I think we’re just touching the tip of the iceberg here,” he told reporters. “There’s now circulating, certainly in Alaska, this idea that there’s hush money paid to make the campaign manager drop her lawsuit and (recant) her story. Who knows who paid that hush money, if it’s true. But the truth is that they undertook the most outrageous election cheating scandal in Alaska history, and I think Alaskans are very upset about that.”

The Alaska Supreme Court already ruled that Dan Sullivan of Petersburg has the legal right to be on the ballot, and there is no law against convincing anyone to run for office for any reason unless bribery is involved.

Republican Gerald Heikes is the fourth candidate in the race. 

Still, the idea of two Dan Sullivans on the Alaska ballot has drawn national attention – and much more so since the New York Times published a story describing efforts by Democratic operatives connected to Peltola’s former staffers to convince the Petersburg Sullivan to run.

The tactic, called “ballot stacking,” is generally legal, and both parties have used it in Alaska elections.

President Donald Trump, who already spent considerable time criticizing the Petersburg Sullivan as a “fake,” ratcheted up his rhetoric after the New York Times story ran and called for Peltola to be stripped from the ballot and the Alaska election to be overturned if she won.

The U.S. Justice Department, at Trump’s direction, is now involved. U.S. Attorney Michael Heyman, in an Anchorage news conference on Friday, said federal and state law enforcement officials are investigating the election for potential civil and criminal violations.

Heyman said the Justice Department is aware of allegations that the Peltola campaign and national Democrats “orchestrated a sprawling conspiracy to recruit, prop up Dan. J Sullivan as a sham candidate, and we are taking that extremely seriously.”

A federal judge on Sunday dismissed the Justice Department’s lawsuit seeking to block the state from declaring a winner in the U.S. Senate race if Peltola winds up on top. The Trump administration plans to appeal that decision.

On Tuesday, after casting his ballot, Sen. Sullivan referred to that national attention that the race has attracted.

“The whole country’s watching this,” he said.

The large crowd of reporters at the zoo supported that claim.

Before listening to his comments in the parking lot, the national reporters and photographers trailed Sullivan as he entered the zoo building, picked up his ballot, marked it, turned it in and picked up his “I Voted” sticker. He opted for the moose design.

Despite the senator’s claims that thousands of Alaskans could be deceived, several Alaska voters that spoke with the Alaska Beacon on Tuesday dismissed the controversy and the idea that there would be any confusion.

They noted that the ballot clearly identifies the senator as the incumbent, and they also pointed to the state’s ranked-choice voting system, which allows for both Sullivans to be chosen.

Ella Wheeles, 18, born and raised in Anchorage and now a freshman at the University of Alaska Anchorage, said Tuesday was her first time voting in a General Election. On the state’s high-profile U.S. Senate race, Wheeles said she doesn’t see any issue or confusion with two candidates on the ballot named Dan Sullivan.

“If you know what the word incumbent means, it should not be a problem,” she said. “I think it’s pretty self-explanatory. And if you are an informed voter — which you always should be — it’s not hard to understand who’s who. And looking into their platforms isn’t hard, they’re everywhere. So, I think it’s unnecessarily being posed as confusing.”

TJ Smith, a resident of Anchorage for more than 30 years, cast his vote at the Loussac Library in Anchorage on Tuesday morning and said Alaskans have been hearing about the two Dan Sullivans on the ballot for months, and likely know who they want to vote for. “The judge did a really good job making it very clear who the incumbent is, who the incumbent isn’t, so it made it really simple,” he said.

Another Anchorage voter, Brandon Harker, said Tuesday after voting accompanied by his young daughter, that he thought the issue was “blown out of proportion.”

“So I think that’s kind of a non-issue, and I think yeah, with the ranked choice voting system, it kind of eliminates some of that as well,” he said. “You know, even if there is some confusion there, still, I think that kind of negates any potential for that to really affect the outcome.”

Also taking issue with the idea of voter confusion was Petersburg resident Barry Bracken, a longtime friend of fellow Petersburg resident Dan J. Sullivan, whom he described as “a very, very, very nice man.”

Bracken, speaking Monday at a news conference held by the left-leaning 907 Initiative and the Alaska AFL-CIO, the state’s largest union, said he got a visit by two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents on Friday who quizzed him about the donation he made to the Petersburg Sullivan.

The FBI agents asked if he contributed to the correct Sullivan, Bracken said at the news conference, held outside the FBI’s Anchorage office.

“And I said, ‘Well, as far as I’m concerned, I contributed to the right Dan Sullivan, because I wouldn’t give a nickel to the other guy.’ Which is maybe a little bit snarky, but that’s exactly the way I felt about it,” Bracken said at the news conference.

The idea that voters would confuse the two Dan Sullivans got ridiculed last week by the proprietor of Sew Yup’ik, a Native artist who occasionally posts spoof videos acting as the character “Uncle Nick.”

Nikki Corbett, in an “Uncle Nick” persona she has used for Facebook videos, says voters have been inundated with more than enough campaign information to distinguish the two Dan Sullivans.

“We already know. We get ‘m every day: phone call, text message, email, Facebook post, ad, door-knockers, door-kickers, door-skippers. All of them. We already know. So what?” she said in her “Uncle Nick” persona. “You don’t think we know how to read? It already says it: ‘Incumbent.’”