Trump administration sues over Alaska Senate race candidate named Daniel Sullivan

The Trump administration filed a federal lawsuit last week to pause the certification of Alaska’s U.S. Senate election results. The legal action seeks to determine if voters were confused by a Democrat-backed candidate who shares his name with the incumbent Republican senator.

Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan faces three opponents in the final ballot. The field includes former Representative Mary Peltola and two candidates with limited campaign histories. One of these challengers is Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired schoolteacher who appears on the ballot with the same surname as the incumbent.

Alaska Republicans have long suspected the second Sullivan was a strategic insertion by Democratic opponents. The White House intervened in this local contest by seeking to block a potential Peltola victory until the confusion could be resolved. A report by The New York Times indicated that internal texts and campaign communications showed Peltola’s team recruited the second Sullivan. This evidence led the president to request a criminal prosecution of the Democrat. The Department of Justice subsequently issued multiple subpoenas as part of an ongoing criminal investigation.

Peltola has denied involvement in the plan, as has the Senatorial Democratic Campaign Committee. Critics of the current administration argue that the Justice Department is acting as a personal political tool against the president's rivals. They note a recent surge in politically sensitive investigations, including a search of the home of Representative Ilhan Omar, despite a historical practice of avoiding major investigative actions within 60 days of an election.

The Trump Justice Department defended its timing in a Wednesday statement. The agency said it is following the facts and the law rather than a political calendar. Justin Levitt, a Justice Department official during the Biden administration and a law professor at Loyola Marymount University, disputed this view. He noted that recruiting so-called spoiler candidates is a common tactic in U.S. politics. Levitt stated that the practice can be unpleasant but happens frequently, adding that no conduct violating federal law has been made public.

The current administration has used similar tactics in other races. In Ohio, a group linked to the president's political operation is urging voters to support a socialist candidate to split the Democratic vote. In Nevada, a Republican-aligned operation is promoting an independent gubernatorial candidate named Danielle Ford, who shares a surname with the Democratic challenger. Trump allies also attempted to recruit Kanye West as a third-party presidential candidate in 2020.

The New York Times detailed efforts dating back to 2025 to place another Dan Sullivan on the Alaska ballot. The report described the use of an out-of-state Democratic strategist hired by a political organization supporting Peltola, who announced her Senate run in January 2026. In the 2024 House race, Peltola lost after Republicans supported keeping a New York prisoner registered as a Democrat on the Alaska ballot.

Jason Torchinsky, a veteran Republican campaign finance lawyer and former Justice Department official, said the reporting points to potential crimes related to funding the second Sullivan’s candidacy. He argued that Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system is particularly vulnerable to manipulation. Any person who pays a $100 filing fee can appear on a long primary ballot, with the top four advancing to November where voters rank three candidates. Torchinsky described the current situation as proof of how ranked-choice systems can be manipulated by various actors.

Defenders of Alaska’s voting system argue it is harder to manipulate because voters can simply rank both Sullisans. This is a strategy the incumbent Sullivan’s campaign is urging residents to use. Republicans in the state are currently attempting to revoke the ranked-choice system through a ballot initiative in these same elections.

In 2020 in Florida, a Democratic state senator named Jose Javier Rodriguez lost his seat by 32 votes to a Republican. A second candidate named Alex Rodriguez received 6,382 votes as an independent. Republican former state Senator Frank Artiles was later convicted for helping the second Rodriguez file, citing illegal campaign contributions and a falsified form. Artiles received a 60-day prison sentence. The winning Republican, Ileana Garcia, has denied knowing of the plan and continues to hold the seat.

David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research in Washington, expects a judge to quickly reject the Justice Department’s suit. He called the filing frivolous. Becker suggested that if both parties wanted to regulate such tactics in Congress, that would not be a bad outcome. The next step in the legal process is the federal court’s review of the administration's request to hold the certification of the Alaska Senate race.