Report backs Trump’s Alaska recruitment claim, but lost votes remain unproven

Donald Trump accused Democrats of “trying to steal” Alaska’s Senate race in a Truth Social post on 28 October, calling Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. a “fake” candidate and predicting that many votes would be lost. He urged voters to re-elect the Republican incumbent, Senator Dan S. Sullivan, on 3 November.

The new reporting gives weight to the allegation of a recruitment effort, but it does not establish that many voters will confuse the candidates or that the election will be stolen.

According to ABC News’s account of the New York Times investigation, members of Democratic challenger Mary Peltola’s campaign, her lawyers and senior aides at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee helped encourage Daniel J. Sullivan to run. The reported aim was to draw votes away from the senator and benefit Peltola. ABC said the Times based its report on 12 sources, text messages and documents.

Peltola’s campaign said it had no involvement with either Sullivan campaign, while the Senate campaign committee denied involvement with Daniel J. Sullivan. The candidate previously said running was his own idea.

ABC also reported that former Peltola staffer Elisa Rios had told the Times that Peltola was aware of the effort but not directly involved. Rios later asked the newspaper to retract her statements. She had been fired by the campaign during the summer.

A separate complaint filed in September alleged unlawful coordination between Daniel J. Sullivan’s campaign and 907 Initiative, a group that has advertised against the senator. It cited consultant Amber Lee’s work for the candidate and her role on the group’s board. Lee and the group said they complied with the law; Lee said she was an unpaid board member and did not manage its independent spending.

Federal filings show the namesake’s campaign reported $30,555.62 in receipts through 14 October, including $10,400 lent by the candidate and no party-committee contributions. Those figures do not cover independent outside spending.

The ballot and the lawsuit

Daniel J. Sullivan is a retired teacher from Petersburg. Alaska election officials initially excluded him from the primary ballot over concerns about voter confusion. A lower court reversed that decision, and the state Supreme Court upheld his inclusion in June. The ruling addressed ballot access, not every subsequent campaign allegation.

The general-election ballot distinguishes the candidates: the senator is listed as Dan S. Sullivan, with Republican and incumbent designations; his namesake appears as Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., without a party designation. Daniel J. Sullivan had filed as a Republican.

In August’s primary, the namesake received 4,107 of 166,004 votes, or about 2.47%. Peltola led the senator by 13,518 votes. Even if all the namesake’s votes had gone to the senator, Peltola would still have led that primary by 9,411. The count does not reveal how many people, if any, voted by mistake, and it does not determine the result of November’s different contest.