Topic of the Week: Mary Peltola’s Campaign Accused of Recruiting Another Dan Sullivan to Run for U.S. Senate

The Alaska Senate race on Tuesday included two people on the ballot named Dan Sullivan. One was the incumbent, Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan. The other was Independent candidate Daniel J. Sullivan, a retired teacher. The New York Times published a story last week that Democrat candidate Amy Peltola’s staff recruited Daniel J. Sullivan to run in an attempt to confuse voters and help Peltola. Peltola and her campaign team denies this. Our analysts rated media coverage in our Topic of the Week. At the time of this blog’s publication, the winner of the Senate race had not been announced, as votes are still being tabulated.

CBS News explains the Alaska Senate controversy in an article on its website. The Trump administration sought to block certification of the election results if incumbent Sen. Sullivan loses the race. A federal judge ruled on Sunday that the administration did not have the legal authority to bring the suit. The CBS article includes comments from the judge, the Department of Justice, Sen. Sullivan and Amy Peltola. Analysts rated the article as a “mix of fact reporting and analysis” with a “middle” bias.

An article from Al Jazeera asks, “How common is ballot stacking, does it work?” The article explains what happened in Alaska and gives examples of other instances of “ballot stacking” in previous elections: a Senate race in Florida in 2020 and an attorney general race in Washington in 2024. It also looks at allegations during John F. Kennedy’s first congressional race in 1946, and at several similar instances during national races in India. Analysts found the reporting to be a “mix of fact reporting and analysis” with a “middle” bias.

In a video on The David Pakman YouTube channel, the host explains that even if the Peltola campaign recruited the second Dan Sullivan to run for Senate, it’s not a crime to do so, and Republicans have done the same in previous elections. “Is it a crime when Democrats do it, but it’s fine when Republicans do it?” Pakman asks. He plays a clip of President Trump saying that Peltola should be “prosecuted”: “Trump who now claims to care about law and order, he pardoned all of the January 6th rioters, but he wants Mary Peltola, who is a political adversary of his, to be prosecuted,” Pakman says. He mocks Trump when a reporter asks him which law Peltola had broken, and he couldn’t explain. “You can’t allow the president to turn a legitimate controversy into a pretext for prosecuting a political opponent or interfering with an election just because his party might lose,” Pakman says. Analysts noted that Pakman is more upset by Trump’s reaction to the controversy than by the allegations of ballot stacking. They rated the video “analysis” with a “skews left” bias.

An article by HuffPost calls the Sullivan controversy a “nonissue” because it’s obvious on the ballot which Sullivan is which, with “incumbent” listed after Sen. Sullivan’s name: “If Alaskans can’t tell Sen. Dan Sullivan from dark-horse challenger Dan Sullivan on the ballot, they are easily confused.” The article explains the Department of Justice lawsuit and quotes President Trump reacting to the controversy. “This tactic of getting candidates onto ballots as spoilers is generally considered legal and has been carried out by both parties in Alaska,” the article says without providing proof. Analysts found that the article is written as if ballot stacking is not a big deal and implies that Republicans in Alaska should be able to figure it out because it’s not confusing. They rated it as “opinion” with a “strong left” bias.

An article from National Review and a video from Fox News Live received similar scores in the categories of “opinion” with a “strong right” bias. The National Review calls the controversy a “scurrilous dirty trick to confuse Alaska voters.” The article, written by “The Editors,” says that Sen. Sullivan deserves re-election and repeatedly calls his opponent “False Dan Sullivan.” It says this “scam” has limits because of Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system, which it explains. “Still, this is dirty pool, obviously meant only in bad faith and with the potential that a very close election could turn on voters not knowing for whom they are voting,” the article says. It calls the Department of Justice lawsuit “meritless” and explains why. It criticizes Democrats for historically urging “lawsuits, legislation, and regulations” on the premise that voters are “easily confused, easily discouraged simpletons who must be protected and coddled” and “that voters will fall over in a stiff breeze if asked to produce identification and wait on lines without activists bringing them pizza and water. This is all nonsense, and Republicans should not indulge it.”

The video from the Fox News show “Fox News Live” features host Aishah Hasnie interviewing two Alaskan journalists: Alaska Beacon reporter James Brooks and Anchorage Daily News reporter Alex DeMarban. Brooks describes his email communications with the challenger, Daniel J. Sullivan, whom Hasnie calls “Decoy Dan.” Brooks says Sullivan told him he was “dissatisfied with incumbent Senator Dan S. Sullivan and was running because of that dissatisfaction” and said that no one had asked him to run. It wasn’t until the New York Times story was published that Brooks learned otherwise: “If that wasn’t a lie outright, it was certainly misleading.” Hasnie questions why Alaskan journalists didn’t attempt to meet the challenger Sullivan in person, since he wasn’t doing campaign events (“I don’t know what he was taking donations for exactly,” she says). DeMarban says he was in the process of arranging an in-person interview, but Sullivan “cut me off” after DeMarban told him he wanted to know how he ended up on the ballot and said, “people might wonder if you’re secretly smiling about all of this.” All three applaud the New York Times for reporting on the connection between Sullivan and the Peltola campaign. Analysts noted that Hasnie and both journalists express doubt whether Daniel J. Sullivan is a serious candidate, and the reporting omits Peltola’s side of the issue completely.

Want to see if you agree with our ratings? Follow along with our weekly Topic of the Week exercise by visiting our website. New Topics of the Week are posted each Monday. Read the articles and watch the videos yourself, then come back on Wednesday to compare your scores with our analysts. Learn more here.

Beth Heldebrandt is Director of Communications at Ad Fontes Media. She has more than 35 years of experience in the fields of journalism and public relations, and was an adjunct instructor of journalism for 17 years at Eastern Illinois University. Beth has a B.A. in journalism from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale and an M.A. in English from Eastern Illinois University. She’s a mom and grandma, and enjoys traveling, puzzles and reading.