The wild final days of Alaska’s much-watched US Senate race haven’t been about any big policy debates, like the very real high gas prices or puffy promises like the not-so-real plan for South Korea to serve as the angel investor in the state’s natural gas pipeline.
Instead, it has revolved around President Donald Trump’s insistence that Alaska voters—specifically those who want to keep Republican US Sen. Dan Sullivan in office—are just not that bright.
That’s the president’s core argument behind his far-fetched legal gambit to halt the certification of Alaska’s election if Sullivan loses to Democrat Mary Peltola by fewer votes than a Petersburg man listed on the ballot as “Daniel J. Sullivan, Jr.” Trump has insisted that supporters will be flummoxed by having two Sullivans on the ballot, despite the lengths the state has already taken to inform voters of the difference when they go to the polls.
“People are totally confused,” he said after the suit was filed in federal court last week. “They shouldn’t be confused when voting. At least let him use the name Senator Dan Sullivan as opposed to incumbent, because a lot of people don’t know what incumbent means.”
The president has been particularly fixated on the term “incumbent” on the state ballot, despite using it himself to advocate for Sullivan at a Wasilla rally earlier this month.
The term is there on the ballot as one of the five steps the Republican-run Alaska Division of Elections took to clarify the difference between the two Sullivans. That also included listing the Petersburg man by his full name “Daniel J. Sullivan, Jr.” and removing his party affiliation while leaving the senator with his preferred name and the incumbent label.
Additionally, the state uses ranked-choice voting, so voters who support the senator over Peltola can rank both Sullivans ahead of her, ensuring the vote goes to keeping the two-term senator in office.
While Alaskans have bristled at the accusations that they aren’t able to tell the difference between the two candidates after all the attention, Trump has escalated his insults ahead of the final weekend before election day.
“You need about 190 IQ to figure out the ballot,” Trump told Kansas City radio host Pete Mundo on Oct. 30, according to a report by The Wrap. “They put a ballot down where they’re talking about ‘incumbent’ Republican, and the other one. Most people don’t know in Alaska — and a lot of other states, too — what does incumbent mean? I don’t know what incumbent means. Incumbent!”
While the president has insisted Daniel J. Sullivan is a fraud—a claim his backers say is bolstered by New York Times reporting that Peltola staffers knew about efforts to recruit Sullivan—he has failed to point to any laws that may have been broken. Still, it hasn’t stopped Trump allies like Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy from threatening legal action and criminal charges (Dunleavy has no oversight over Alaska’s elections under state law).
At a news conference in Anchorage on Oct. 30, a Trump official with the Department of Justice similarly refused to say any law had been broken or to even entertain reporters’ questions about the general sections of law that would allow the federal government to meddle in an election for such blatantly partisan purposes.
“You assume a crime has been committed,” said Michael J. Heyman, the US Attorney for the District of Alaska. “I’m not making any assumptions on whether a crime has been committed or not. That’s why we are conducting that thorough investigation.”
For many Alaskans, the fight over the two Dan Sullivans was settled months ago when the Alaska Supreme Court ruled the Alaska Division of Elections was wrong to block the namesake challenger from the ballot. During those legal arguments, state judges also seemed to acknowledge that even if Daniel J. Sullivan was running with the intention to play spoiler or even in coordination with another campaign, there’s nothing inherently illegal about it and certainly no legal mechanism for the state to take such an extreme measure as altering the outcome of an election.
But Trump’s case might not be quite the long shot that most legal scholars see it as if there was any evidence that Alaskans are confused in any significant numbers.
In fact, evidence suggests otherwise.
Several Alaskans have said they voted for Daniel J. Sullivan in the state’s primary as a protest vote against how Republican officials treated him.
“I voted for Dan J. because powerful people tried to tell me I couldn’t,” Eagle River resident Connor Eshleman said in a letter to the editor published on Aug. 25. “Did he run as a spoiler sponsored by dark money? I don’t know. … What I know is he meets the requirements to run for Senate and declared his candidacy through proper channels. That means we should be allowed to vote for him if we so choose.”
And Trump’s latest attacks on Alaskans’ intelligence have generated a new wave of rebuttals from Alaskans, including a trio of letters to the editor published in the Anchorage Daily News with the headlines: No, DOJ, I knew exactly who I voted for, Don’t block my deliberate vote, and No one is confused.
“I voted already. I ranked Mary Peltola first and Petersburg Dan second. This was a deliberate act on my part. I do not need Trump’s corrupt Justice Department filing a lawsuit to block my vote,” wrote Wasilla resident Kay Bush.
The federal lawsuit seeking to interfere with Alaska’s election is currently ongoing, but the judge has already indicated skepticism about Trump’s case and could dismiss it as early as the evening of Oct. 30.
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 newsletter on the Alaska Legislature, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Bluesky.
