Trump urges removal of Alaska’s Mary Peltola from ballot
President Trump asked that Mary Peltola and Dan J. Sullivan be removed from Alaska’s Senate ballot after a report on how a second Dan Sullivan reached the race.
Bias breakdown and outlet coverageon the RUSH story page →What Trump said
President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that the recruitment of Dan J. Sullivan amounted to "election fraud" and asked that both Dan J. Sullivan and Democratic nominee Mary Peltola be removed from Alaska's Senate ballot, Breitbart and HuffPost reported. Trump's post framed the second Sullivan as a deliberate effort to confuse voters in a race that could affect control of the Senate.
How the second Sullivan got there
The New York Times reported that members of Peltola's campaign, her lawyers and senior aides at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee took part in a "ballot composition project" to recruit the challenger. The Epoch Times reported that Peltola's campaign has denied recruiting spoiler candidates. A pro-Peltola super PAC paid about $87,000 to Wingspan Strategies, a firm linked to Democratic operative Jerid Kurtz, according to reporting carried by the Associated Press, ABC News and the New York Post.
Dan J. Sullivan received 2.47% in the August primary and remains on the Nov. 3 general-election ballot after Alaska courts reinstated him. Alaska Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews overturned an earlier eligibility ruling in June, and the Alaska Supreme Court reinstated Sullivan before the printing deadline. That court path is central to why both names can appear before voters next week.
The Justice Department case
The Justice Department filed a federal lawsuit on Oct. 22 seeking to block certification of the Senate race if votes for Dan J. Sullivan could be miscast for the incumbent. Democrats argue the suit threatens voter choice and note that state courts already allowed the challenger onto the ballot. Republicans describe the recruitment as a scheme that risks flipping a Senate seat through name confusion and point to the PAC payment as evidence of coordination.
Newsweek and The Guardian have tracked how confusing the two Sullivans could be on a printed ballot, which is the factual core both the DOJ complaint and Trump's post rely on even as they disagree on remedies.
Why it matters
Alaska's Senate race sits inside a national fight over how ballots are built and how federal courts police state elections. The outcome of the DOJ case, and how clearly voters can tell the two Sullivans apart, could affect certification and the Senate balance. With the midterms days away, both parties are treating the dispute as more than a local curiosity.
Ballot design fights are not new in ranked-choice and multi-name races, but Alaska's combination of a shared surname, a late court reinstatement and a federal certification lawsuit makes this one unusually compressed before Election Day. Election administrators say clear name lines and party labels are the practical tools voters have; campaigns say those tools still leave room for confusion when two candidates share a common name.