The tale of Alaska’s two Dan Sullivans has been an uncanny subplot of the midterms, involving the incumbent Republican senator, Dan S. Sullivan, and a constituent turned long-shot challenger with an almost identical name.
That story is now a really big deal.
In a highly unusual move, President Trump directed the Justice Department to ask a federal court to block the certification of that race if Sullivan, the senator, loses narrowly. His primary rival for the seat is Mary Peltola, a Democrat and a former congresswoman who has led him in several polls.
But Alaska has a complicated ballot, and the Trump administration is arguing that the inclusion of another Republican, Daniel J. Sullivan, merits this unprecedented federal intervention.
The whole thing is confusing, but it’s important. So tonight, I’m going to walk you through what’s going on.
Who are the Senate candidates in Alaska? And why are there so many of them?
The best-known candidates in the race are Sullivan, a first-term senator seeking re-election, and Peltola. But they’re not the only candidates.
Alaska uses ranked-choice voting, which asks voters to list the candidates in order of preference. If no candidate secures a majority of the vote in one round, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their supporters’ ballots are transferred to the next-ranked choice.
This year, the Senate ballot (see it here!) includes a Republican named Gerald L. Heikes, as well as the other Dan Sullivan.
Who is the other Dan Sullivan?
Daniel J. Sullivan is a retired schoolteacher, and Republicans have accused him of entering the race at the behest of Democrats as a spoiler who could siphon votes from the incumbent.
He told my colleague Kellen Browning that he was running of his own volition, figuring his name would give him an “instant megaphone.”
Alaska is a red state. Could the incumbent really lose?
In 2024, Trump won Alaska by 13 percentage points, so the state was hardly anyone’s idea of a major battleground heading into 2026.
But the incumbent Senator Sullivan has found himself in a tough re-election fight — and it’s not because of the guy who shares his name. It’s because Peltola, the Democrat in the race, is an imposing rival.
Who is Mary Peltola?
She is a former member of Congress who won that seat twice in 2022 — first in a special election to fill the vacancy left by the death of Don Young, a Republican, and then again in a regular election that November. Alaska’s small population means it has only one U.S. representative, who has to run statewide.
Peltola lost re-election in 2024 and then jumped into the Senate race early this year. An Alaska Native, she’s a conservative Democrat who supports gun rights and drilling for oil. She’s been accused of being an unforgiving and chaotic boss.
But she has shown strength on the ballot already. In the primary this summer, in which a slew of candidates from different parties competed for the four slots on the general election ballot, she led the incumbent Sullivan by eight percentage points. (In that race, the other Dan Sullivan won 2.5 percent of the vote.)
Has anyone tried to kick the other Dan Sullivan off the ballot?
They have. As soon as Daniel J. Sullivan entered the race, Republicans swiftly filed complaints with the state’s Division of Elections, arguing that he had not filed to run in “good faith” and that he should be removed from the ballot.
Their evidence? Sullivan had only recently registered as a Republican. He seemed to have ties to a Democratic strategist. And it appeared he had donated to Democrats — including Peltola — in the past.
The election agency agreed and kicked Daniel J. Sullivan off the ballot. But a judge reversed that decision, and the state’s highest court upheld that reversal.
Trey Grayson, a Republican and former Kentucky secretary of state, said that whether the second Dan Sullivan could appear on the ballot was a question for the state of Alaska — and that it had already weighed in.
“The states run the elections,” Grayson told me today. “There are federal laws. They have to be followed. But there doesn’t seem to be anything under federal law that would allow this kind of litigation to succeed.”
How unusual is the Justice Department’s lawsuit?
Highly. The move, my colleague Devlin Barrett wrote, signals an effort to intervene in the outcome of the election.
David Becker of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonpartisan group that advises election officials, said he could not recall a similar instance in which the federal government had sought to block certification of an election, “and certainly not 11 days before an election.”
“D.O.J. making this claim this late smells of political interference and is against D.O.J. policy,” Becker said.
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