Alaska voters will face an unusual conundrum at the polls on Tuesday, where they will find two of the four candidates running for U.S. Senate have the same name. Incumbent Republican Dan S. Sullivan’s name will appear next to the name of Daniel J. Sullivan, Jr., a retiree living in Petersburg, Alaska (population 3,043), a census-designated place inaccessible by road. On Wednesday, no less than The New York Times published evidence suggesting that the campaign of Sullivan’s Democratic opponent, Mary Peltola, played a role in recruiting the eponymous fake candidate to confuse Republican voters.

“It’s clearly an attempt to defraud the voters of Alaska and to defraud the voters of the United States of America and to manipulate the American election system for the benefit of one individual. And that’s Mary Peltola,” declared Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) on “Washington Watch.” Family Research Council Senior Fellow Jody Hice agreed, observing, “It’s politics at its worst. … This absolutely underscores the need for election integrity efforts to continue.”

According to the Times, “not only did Ms. Peltola’s team work with people trying to recruit Mr. Sullivan to run for Senate, but … the group worked to coax other would-be spoilers into the race, to dilute the incumbent’s support and help catapult the Democrat to victory.” Such an exposé on a Democratic candidate is not a common sight in The Gray Lady the week before an important election.

“When you read that New York Times article, any thoughts that are in your mind that the Democrats aren’t playing dirty tricks have to be thrown out,” Griffith remarked. “There’s no question they knew they couldn’t win in a straight-out election between their ideals and Republican ideals … so they had to find some other way to try to win.”

The Peltola campaign’s stratagem to recruit other challengers to the race began in the summer of 2025 at a meeting with aides from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), the Times revealed. The DSCC introduced the campaign to veteran Democratic operative Jerid Kurtz, “a specialist in secret ballot maneuvers” based in Ohio.

The Times found FEC records showing that a pro-Peltola super PAC, 49th State PAC, paid $87,000 to a firm co-owned by Kurtz, Wingspan Strategies. The PAC claimed it had “never hired or paid Jerid Kurtz for performing any services.”

One aspect of Kurtz’s strategy was recruiting other candidates to the race, calculating that more candidates would, on average, draw votes away from incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan. The Times interviewed a Matthew Salisbury, of Anchorage, who got a cold-call from someone who identified himself as “Zane.” In a face-to-face meeting, “Zane” tried to recruit Salisbury to run, but he was unwilling to be drawn into the race because “Zane” would not reveal his affiliation. Salisbury identified a picture of Jerid Kurtz as the man who identified himself as “Zane.”

Even more sneakily, Kurtz tried to recruit candidates who shared the senator’s name. Last summer, a Peltola staffer was given the unusual assignment to find as many Alaskans named Dan Sullivan as possible, according to the Times. One of these was Daniel J. Sullivan, Jr., who lived in the tiny fishing village of Petersburg in the Alaska Panhandle. He “said he hated Trump, and if it was going to help Mary, he liked Mary,” Rios told the NYT. “He didn’t have any interest in being a politician, but if this could help” he would do it. Rios said that Kurtz informed the campaign when this other Sullivan was found.

“I do think that’s fraud, when you go out and intentionally recruit another person with the same name,” Griffith insisted. “In fact, an entire comedy movie was made by Eddie Murphy a number of years ago called ‘The Distinguished Gentleman,’ where an incumbent in Congress died, and he had a similar name, and the candidate went out and ran intentionally trying to trick people into voting for him. … They must have gotten this idea from that movie.”

“This other Dan Sullivan claims to be a Republican, but he wasn’t a Republican until he got recruited to run against the real Dan Sullivan,” Griffith added. “So it’s clearly dirty tricks.” The Alaska Division of Elections originally disqualified the second Dan Sullivan, but the state Supreme Court overturned that decision in June, allowing Sullivan back on the August jungle primary ballot. Sullivan finished in the top four positions, thereby qualifying for the November ballot.

The Times article represented a two-month-long effort that interviewed no less than “12 people who participated in or were told of the plan, or were would-be candidates that the team tried to recruit.” The article focused extensively on Elisa Rios, Peltola’s former campaign manager who was fired in August and planned to file a wrongful termination suit. “Alaskan voters need to know,” Rios urged. “There was a lot of speculation, and voters should get the full picture when making their decisions.”

After multiple interviews with the Times and agreeing to put her name on the record, Rios sought to retract her statements just as the Times was preparing to publish them. “It is rare for a source to seek to retract comments made in previous interviews, and The Times’s standards do not obligate reporters to comply with such requests,” the newspaper responded.

Rios’s sudden reversal remains unexplained; did the campaign somehow get her to change her story, or does some other unknown factor explain the decision?

The Times also obtained text messages showing DSCC officials and the Peltola campaign discussing “Jarid,” “Jared” or “our friend,” showing their awareness of his candidate recruitment efforts. When Kurtz posted an image from the Anchorage airport to Instagram, they guiltily wondered whether his presence in the state was “being noticed.” In one text exchange, Peltola advisors reacted to a focus group by guessing that some voters would be tricked into voting for the wrong Dan Sullivan, the Times added.

Both the DSCC and the Peltola campaign officially claim to have “no involvement” in recruiting Sullivan or any other candidate, according to the Times.

However, the plentiful appearance of impropriety has produced a wealth of legal challenges. Alaska Republicans tried to sue to keep the second Sullivan off the ballot. Separately, a federal lawsuit is wending through the courts, and the Department of Justice grand jury investigation is still ongoing, National Review reports. The DOJ issued subpoenas in August.

On Wednesday, Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy (R) ordered yet another criminal investigation into the campaign stratagem. “Today’s New York Times reporting reveals disturbing new evidence of an organized effort to manipulate Alaska’s elections by recruiting candidates — including one with the same name as an incumbent U.S. Senator — to deliberately confuse voters and misdirect their votes,” he wrote. “I am therefore directing the Department of Public Safety to investigate whether this scheme violated Alaska’s laws and whether criminal charges or civil action are warranted. The evidence will determine what happens next.”

“Alaskans have a fundamental right to vote for the candidate they actually intend to support. Deliberately tricking voters into casting their ballots for someone else strikes at the integrity of our elections,” Dunleavy declared. “Anyone or any organization found to have broken the law must be held accountable.”

President Donald Trump also vowed vengeance against the move that could cost him a (sometimes) supportive Senate majority. “They said they didn’t do it, and they did do it, and they got caught,” he told reporters en route to an Ohio rally. Trump went even further than others, demanding that Peltola herself be removed from the ballot.

The difficulty with any of the methods of legal recourse is that the scheme is so unusual it is difficult to find a law against it. “How do you legislate against, frankly, immoral behavior? I don’t know how you can do that in this case,” Griffith admitted. “But there ought to be some way we can distinguish the incumbent senator from this guy that doesn’t require millions and millions of dollars,” referring to the ad-buys that must be devoted simply to ensuring voters can distinguish the names — instead of more important messages. “This is clearly an underhanded trick by the campaign and the Democrats,” Griffith concluded.

At least one Republican was optimistic that the “dirty trick” would not have the intended result. “Peltola will be held accountable this election for her dishonesty and deception,” National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Tim Scott declared. “Alaskans will leave Peltola unranked on the ballot because of her dirty tricks. Voters can trust the real Dan Sullivan, and I’m confident he’ll be re-elected.”

According to RealClearPolitics, Peltola holds a slight polling lead over Sullivan (the real, incumbent candidate), with an average of 49.4% support among voters to Sullivan’s 48.2%. Peltola has also led in five out of six polls taken in October, although all of the polls exist within the margin of error. In Alaska, early voting begins 15 days before Election Day, meaning voting began last week.