A candidate who wanted to run for U.S. Senate in Alaska under the same first and last name as the senator he wanted to unseat has been barred from the ballot, after state election officials called it a deliberate attempt to “confuse or mislead” voters.
The move by the Alaska Division of Elections to decertify the candidacy of Dan Sullivan removes from the ballot one of more than a dozen candidates challenging the incumbent Republican senator in the state, Dan Sullivan. The race is considered among the most competitive in the nation and may determine which party controls Congress.
Sullivan’s best-known challenger is Democrat Mary Peltola, who held the at-large House seat for one term.
Alaska primaries feature all candidates, regardless of party, advancing the top four vote-getters to the general election. Sullivan and the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee objected to the Republican challenger who sought to run under the name Dan Sullivan, accusing Democrats of planting him to siphon votes from the incumbent.
Peltola’s campaign spokesman previously did not respond to an earlier message from Straight Arrow but told The New York Times they had no connection to the challenger.
Sullivan’s campaign did not immediately respond to an email from Straight Arrow seeking comment. The agency said Sullivan has 30 days to appeal its decision, which would be about a week after the state prints its ballots on June 28. The primary is on Aug. 18.
The paperwork challenger Sullivan filed to declare his candidacy was “not filed in order to declare an actual good-faith candidacy for the office of United States Senator, but was instead filed with a purpose to confuse or mislead and to thereby compromise the ballot’s fairness or neutrality,” Director Carol Beecher of Alaska’s Division of Elections wrote in a June 15 letter posted online.
Beecher went on to tell Sullivan, “You chose this new nickname and party affiliation because that name and party affiliation happen to be the name and party affiliation of another candidate in the race.”
Before Monday’s decision challenger Sullivan released a statement criticizing the effort to remove him from the ballot. He said “state government is being used to protect an incumbent senator from facing competition at the ballot box,” and claimed he was simply running “under my legal name.”
As Straight Arrow reported earlier, the challenger declined to use his middle initial, or the suffix Jr., which would have distinguished his name from the senator. The Alaska Division of Elections noted in its June 15 letter that the challenger had “never registered to vote or sought ballot access under this name,” but instead had registered to vote under the name “Daniel J. Sullivan, Jr.” The agency also noted the challenger’s campaign logo looked similar in color and design to the one used by the senator, who entered the Senate in 2015.
Straight Arrow also reported that the challenger announced his candidacy on May 29, one day before creating his campaign website and Facebook account.
Round out your reading
- Could a common dietary supplement accelerate Alzheimer’s?
- NY AG Letitia James gets hundreds of taunts, racial slurs in ICE public reporting portal.
- As Musk becomes the first trillionaire, historian sees warning signs.
- An experimental weight loss drug is so effective, many Americans don’t care it’s not FDA approved.
- How search engine optimization reduced Simone Biles to an ‘NFL wife’.