In Alaska this election season, the biggest supporters of Dan Sullivan could be the biggest antagonists of Dan Sullivan.
The field of contenders challenging Senator Dan S. Sullivan, a Republican who is up for re-election, has grown in recent days with a rather befuddling addition: Dan J. Sullivan, a former educator of no known relation, has entered the race.
His arrival could cause a headache for Senator Sullivan, who is working to fend off a challenge from former Representative Mary Peltola, a well-funded and independent-minded Democrat who says she is running on “fish, family and freedom.”
Dan J. Sullivan’s campaign announcement says he is a former elementary-school teacher and bartender from Petersburg, Alaska, a small town about 120 miles southeast of Juneau known locally for its Scandinavian spring festival. The announcement lays out no policies and does not describe his party affiliation.
The campaign arm of Senate Republicans, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, suggested that Dan J. Sullivan was a plant by Democrats intended to confuse voters and siphon support from Senator Sullivan, a former Marine who worked in the State Department under President George W. Bush.
If some voters mistakenly vote for Dan J. Sullivan thinking they’re voting for Senator Sullivan, it could make the difference in a tight race, political observers said.
But Alaskans in both parties were skeptical it was a ploy. Alaska simply has a lot of Dan Sullivans, they said.
Gary Stevens, the Republican president of the Alaska Senate and a supporter of Senator Sullivan, said it was “pretty unlikely” that the new challenger was a Democratic plant. But he added that it was going to be a “campaign issue for the senator.”
“It’s going to be confusing,” Mr. Stevens said.
When Senator Sullivan was first elected to the Senate in 2014, another Dan Sullivan — Dan A. Sullivan, who was mayor of Anchorage at the time — was also on the primary ballot as a candidate for lieutenant governor.
This year, Alaska is one of a handful of states that Democrats are targeting as they try to chart a narrow path back to the Senate majority.
Under Alaska’s election system, the top four candidates in a nonpartisan primary will advance to the general election in November. This year’s primary will be held on Aug. 18.
Alaska has not elected a Democrat to the Senate in nearly two decades. But the state has gradually shifted toward the center in presidential elections over the last quarter-century. (President Trump carried it by about 14 percentage points in 2024, roughly mirroring the margins he won by in Texas, Iowa and Florida.)
Most Alaska voters are politically unaffiliated, and Senator Lisa Murkowski, a centrist Republican, won re-election in the state in 2022 by beating a Trump-backed rival.
In announcing that he was joining this year’s race, Dan J. Sullivan said he had one goal: to unseat the incumbent. “It’s time for Alaska to elect a Sullivan that’s on their side,” he said in a statement.
State Representative Rebecca Himschoot, an independent whose district includes Petersburg, said Dan J. Sullivan was a popular teacher whom she had run into socially, but that she knew little about his policy preferences.
Nick Puglia, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said in a statement that Ms. Peltola and Senate Democrats were “resorting to deceitful political maneuvers that attempt to trick Alaskans.”
The committee said metadata in the news release announcing Dan J. Sullivan’s candidacy showed that the document had originated with Amber Lee, a Democratic consultant and past supporter of Ms. Peltola.
Ms. Lee did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday, nor did Dan J. Sullivan’s campaign.
A spokesman for Ms. Peltola, Harry Child, said her campaign had not coordinated with Dan J. Sullivan’s. “It doesn’t matter who else is on the ballot,” the campaign said in a statement. “Mary is going to win by building a broad coalition of Alaskans ready to take on the rigged system and put Alaska first.”
State Representative Sara Hannan, Democrat of Juneau, said she did not think that Dan J. Sullivan was a plant. He is viewed in the region as a traditional Republican who is unhappy with Senator Sullivan’s support for Mr. Trump, she said.
Another Democratic state representative, Genevieve Mina of Anchorage, also dismissed the notion that Democrats were trying to trick voters.
“Alaska politics is known for being a little zany,” Ms. Mina said. “It doesn’t surprise me that of course there’d be another candidate named Dan Sullivan who would run against Dan Sullivan.”
The two candidates’ names are expected to appear on the ballot with their middle initials. Alaska Division of Elections records show both men have filed to run ahead of a Monday filing deadline.
The ballot in Alaska was already expected to include some name confusion: Representative Nick Begich III, a Republican who defeated Ms. Peltola in 2024, is running for re-election, while his uncle Tom Begich, a Democrat and former state senator, is running for governor.
Cliff Groh, a Democratic former state lawmaker who is running for State Legislature again this year, said the insular world of Alaska politics was filled with oddities. He noted that Ms. Murkowski had been appointed in 2002 by her father, Frank Murkowski, a former Alaska senator who left his seat to become the governor.
“We’ve got Sullivans, Murkowskis, Begichs,” said Mr. Groh, whose son is a campaign manager for an independent candidate for Congress. “I’ve seen a lot of weird and strange things in Alaskan politics.”
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