At Monday’s joint hearing of the House State Affairs and Judiciary committees on the Division of Elections’ decision to block a Petersburg man named Dan J. Sullivan from running against U.S. Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, it was pretty clear that many Republicans had already accepted the narrative as true and the response warranted.
“There’s evidence there that indicates that, in fact, this candidate, at least as far as the Division is concerned, was trying to mislead the voters,” said Anchorage Republican Rep. Mia Costello, rattling off the same points that Beecher has argued prove some kind of fraud — the name, the party affiliation, his personal affiliations and his campaign design. “It’s absolutely questionable why they exist that way.”
And not only was Elections Director Carol Beecher justified in her removal of the Petersburg Sullivan, but Costello also frequently mused about transferring the case to the Department of Justice or the Federal Election Commission for penalties — seemingly suggesting that criminal charges could be warranted in a case that has so far heavily relied on conditional words like “seems” and “appears.”
Her zeal for charges, however, was only shared by fellow die-hard Republicans.
As Petersburg Sullivan’s lawsuit has laid out, there are no grounds for the Division of Elections to factor a candidate’s motivations into its determination of whether they’re qualified. And as several Democrats and legal experts pointed out, the regulations Costello claims are the legal pathway to removal are more about ballot design than candidate qualifications.
“That’s direction to the Division of Elections, not to a candidate,” Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Andrew Gray said. “We’re a free country, it’s America. Run for office for your own personal reasons.”
Rep. Ted Eischeid, an Anchorage Democrat, also added that his website is blue and gold, with many of the same motifs used by the Sullivans, because, after all, that’s what’s on Alaska’s state flag.
While the Division of Elections didn’t participate in the hearing — they threatened to sue the Legislature after the Legislature tried to compel their attendance with a subpoena — several legal experts with experience in Alaska’s election laws testified, questioning the justification for the removal. They all noted that there’s no clear legal mechanism for removing someone, leaving the appearance that the Division of Elections acted unfairly.
“I don’t think you would need any special legal training to smell a rat here,” said former state senator Hollis French, an attorney. “If a prisoner with no ties to the state of Alaska in New York State can be put on the ballot for federal office in the state of Alaska, I think the division of elections is sort of foreclosed from then on, from engaging what they’ve engaged in this case.”
Not about qualifications to hold office, but to run for office
And while Republicans seem to be convinced that there’s a conspiracy afoot, their shifting legal justifications for the move seem to suggest they understand they’re not exactly on stable legal footing. Big Lake Republican Rep. Kevin McCabe suggested that the case wasn’t at all about the qualifications for holding office — which is laid out by the U.S. Constitution — but about the qualifications to run for office — which he argues can be left up to regulations.
“In this case, we aren’t trying to determine whether or not Mr. Daniel J. Sullivan is qualified to hold the office or not,” McCabe said. “What we’re trying to determine is whether or not he is qualified to run for the office, or if the mere fact that he is using pretty much everything as Senator Daniel S. Sullivan — including the same color website, virtually the same name, is what Ms. Beecher relied upon — is the fact that it wasn’t the constitutional requirements to hold the office, it was the (regulation) that parses out how he can run for the office.”
McCabe, it should be noted, often drew barely concealed contempt from the audience, with many of his questions punctuated by laughter or stage-whispered comments.
It’s also worth pointing out that McCabe suggested that a legislative legal attorney who wrote an opinion on the case — Andrew Dunmire — violated some kind of professional code by criticizing the executive branch’s work. Dunmire pointed out that there was no legal backing included in Beecher’s letters, so he technically wasn’t criticizing any lawyer’s work.
Costello also echoed McCabe’s legal reasoning, arguing that it’s not a case about Petersburg Sullivan’s qualifications to hold office but about his qualifications to run for office, which is why they can ignore the U.S. Constitution in favor of regulations.
“I think we’ve established today the issue is not whether or not this individual is qualified to be on the ballot, and also I don’t believe that motive has anything to do with it,” she said. “I think it has to do with confusion of the voters, and we have established, by virtue of the fact that we’re here, that it is confusing. … It’s not whether it’s confusing, it is confusing, it’s whether or not it was intentionally designed to be confusing.”
And while there might not be any hard evidence that was the intent, Costello said there’s enough circumstantial evidence to believe there is.
It’s a point that was sharply rebutted by Rep. Gray, who noted that he didn’t call the hearing out of any confusion about which Dan is which, but about whether the Division of Elections has the power to block someone from running.
“I do not believe we’re here because of confusion that I’m here because I believe there’s a case to be made that a qualified candidate was removed from the ballot, and that the division of elections did not have the authority to remove that person from the ballot,” he said. “My reasoning is not to figure out the confusion, it’s to ask the question: Did the Division of Elections have the authority to remove a qualified candidate from the ballot?”
Petersburg Sullivan’s case is scheduled to be heard in the Anchorage Superior Court on Thursday, with the thinking that whatever decision comes out will have time to be appealed to the Alaska Supreme Court ahead of next week’s deadline to print ballots.
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Bluesky.
