Will the Real Dan Sullivan Please Stand Up?

Two Dan Sullivans made Alaska's ballot. Now Trump's DOJ is suing over who voters might choose.

If Alaskan voters can’t tell which Dan Sullivan is the Republican incumbent U.S. senator and which Dan Sullivan is the independent, they’re not paying attention to the ballot.

President Donald Trump jumped into the fray by not paying attention to who runs elections (the states) and who chooses their senators (the voters).

Instead, he ordered the Department of Justice to file a lawsuit on Oct. 22, seeking to block certification of the election if Trump’s favored candidate – incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan – loses to Democrat Mary Peltola and votes cast for the other Sullivan could have changed the outcome. She resoundingly topped the field after Alaska’s top-four primary and is showing slight advantages in some polls.

The lawsuit draws criticism

Reactions to the lawsuit came immediately from multiple directions. Derek Muller, an election law professor from Notre Dame Law School, fired back that “the legal argument is one of the worst ones I’ve ever seen.”

Libby Bakalar, a former Alaska elections attorney who typically criticizes Trump, posted on social media that the argument “is laughably bad, almost to the point of sanctionably frivolous. Watching MAGA on the ropes like this in court up here is a sad and scary sight.”

Even Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the other Republican in Alaska’s delegation, countered the Trump DOJ’s challenge to the results ahead of Election Day.

“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,”

Murkowski said in a social media post.

The reaction comes as the winner of Alaska’s tight Senate race could tilt the scales toward a Republican or Democrat majority in the Senate. Throughout October, Cook Political Report and Inside Elections rated the race a toss-up; Sabato’s Crystal Ball and Decision Desk see the race as leaning Democratic.

How two Dan Sullivans made the ballot

Panicking Republicans are treating the Other Dan Sullivan as the potential difference maker.

It began when the Board of Elections had removed challenger Daniel Sullivan from the primary ballot. He won his challenge in both Superior Court and Alaska Supreme Court and appeared on the ballot with 15 other candidates.

The state Board of Elections differentiated between the two men with the same name by allowing the senator to run as he’s known – Sullivan, Dan S. – followed by the descriptors Registered Republican and Incumbent.

His challenger’s listing – Sullivan, Daniel J. Jr. – has no political party or incumbent designation. He initially registered as a Republican when filing his candidacy but subsequently changed his registration to undeclared.

Alaska’s primary results

Both Sullivans came out of Alaska’s primary among the top 4 who advanced to the general election.

Placing first, with 49.5% of the vote, was Democrat Peltola; second was incumbent Republican Dan S. Sullivan with 41.4%. The candidate referred to as Daniel Sullivan of Petersburg got 2.5% of the vote and is third. Democrat David Leslie placed fourth with 1.11%, but dropped out – a common strategy to buoy another candidate, in this case Peltola. This allowed Republican Gerald Heikes, with approximately 1.05%, to move into fourth.

How ranked-choice voting works

In the general election, voters will again rank the candidates, with the bottom vote-getter being dropped off if no candidate receives a majority of first-choice votes. Those voters’ preferences are then transferred to their next-ranked candidate still in the race, repeating until one candidate receives a majority of continuing votes.

Alaska’s ballot makes the distinction clear

Primary voters didn’t struggle over which Dan Sullivan they wanted. As Walter Olsen, a senior fellow at Cato Institute, observed, the ballot made it clear. 

“It invites suspicions of bad faith by omitting any acknowledgment that Alaska’s printed ballot labels one of the two Sullivans distinctly as ‘incumbent,’ thus helping dispel confusion for a reasonable voter. In so doing, Alaska has addressed the hazard without walking into a different hazard (curbing voter choice by striking an otherwise qualified candidate) in a way that is within the balanced discretion of a state administering its own election law. Remarkably, the DOJ filing itself reproduces the relevant section of the ballot that includes the label ‘incumbent’ without mentioning this telling fact.”  

Olsen further described the lawsuit as “abusive in its intentions and borders on frivolous in its arguments,” arguing that the lawsuit would upend the Constitution’s careful design that places the states in charge of running elections.