In the midterm election’s closing days, the phones of left-leaning Alaskans pinged with texts urging them to back Eric Hafner, the lone Democrat on the four-person ballot for a U.S. House seat.
But Democratic Party leaders in Alaska and Washington were actually backing an independent on the ballot, Bill Hill, and for good reason: Mr. Hafner is a felon serving a 20-year sentence in a federal prison in Otisville, N.Y., about 4,351 miles from Anchorage.
Who paid for those text messages is of particular interest in Alaska, where purportedly dirty tricks by Democratic operatives put an alternative Dan Sullivan on the Senate ballot against the incumbent Republican, Senator Dan Sullivan.
Mr. Hafner’s unknown benefactor was likely hoping to confuse voters and aid the Republican incumbent, Representative Nick Begich. Democrats point to the texts as proof that nobody’s hands are clean in Alaska.
Mr. Hafner and his chief supporter — his mother — say the motive doesn’t matter, even as the mysterious outside help has elevated his jailhouse bid into a potential spoiler.
“Why should we care where they came from?” Ms. Hafner asked.
Official results may not come for days in the races for Alaska’s Senate seat and its lone House seat. The winners will likely be determined after officials tabulate second- and third-place choices on the state’s ranked-choice ballots.
In the House contest, Mr. Begich, the scion of an Alaska political dynasty, holds 48.5 percent of counted votes, and Mr. Hill, 41.2 percent. Mr. Hafner, who has never visited Alaska, has nearly 8 percent.
“This guy may actually matter,” Eric Croft, the state Democratic Party chairman, said.
If enough supporters of Mr. Hafner and the fourth candidate, the Libertarian Jim McDermott, ranked Mr. Hill ahead of Mr. Begich, the independent could still win. But preliminary ballot data suggest that Mr. Hill faces an uphill battle. Only about 45 percent of Mr. Hafner’s votes would ultimately transfer to Mr. Hill, while nearly half would be exhausted because voters did not rank either of the two leading candidates.
Carol Gray, a University of Alaska Fairbanks political scientist, said most of Mr. Hafner’s votes — “maybe all of them” — came from Alaskans angry at Republicans and backing any Democrat on the ballot. Mr. Hill’s decision not to run as a Democrat — no decision at all for the lifelong independent, according to his team — may prove to be his campaign’s undoing.
Mr. Croft was not so sure. Eight percent for someone like Mr. Hafner? “That just feels too hard to believe,” he said. “That becomes a dirty trick that worked.”
Mr. Begich has denied any involvement by his campaign to boost Mr. Hafner. The only clear Republican fingerprints on the caper are actually on the similar electoral efforts of Mr. Hafner’s mother.
“We’re a politically engaged family,” she said.
She ran as a Democrat in Alaska’s nonpartisan U.S. Senate primary, backed by $346,000 in ads from Fair Deal Alaska, a super PAC funded almost entirely by committees tied to Senate Republicans and the incumbent, Dan S. Sullivan. Ms. Hafner won less than 1 percent of the primary vote and failed to advance.
She finished third in Alaska’s Democratic House primary in 2018 and second in Wyoming’s Democratic primary two years later.
Ms. Hafner and her son both use a South Dakota mail-forwarding service as their campaign addresses. She said Republicans did not recruit either of them, denied any connection to the Republican-bought ads and described both her and her son’s politics as “progressive through and through.”
Still, Mr. Hafner’s handwritten filing for a Florida U.S. House special election last year listed ancillary committees including “MAGA Republicans Victory Fund,” “Secure the Border Florida” and “America First Florida Always.” His entry in Alaska’s official voter guide this year called on voters to unite against short-term greed.
Ballot stacking — essentially, recruiting candidates to siphon votes and split the opposition — is a time-honored tradition in Alaska and other states with low hurdles to run for office.
In Mr. Hafner’s case, Mr. Begich’s allies appear to have capitalized on a history of quixotic campaigns dating back to 2016, when “the Rev. Dr. Eric Hafner” finished second in the Republican primary for Hawaii’s 2nd Congressional District.
Two years later, Mr. Hafner ran as a Democrat for a U.S. House seat in Oregon, another place he had never lived, telling a reporter that Portland’s live-and-let-live vibe — especially on marijuana — matched his own.
Mr. Hafner, who his mother says “runs to win,” has plenty of time for politics.
Between 2016 and 2018, according to court records, Mr. Hafner threatened to kill lawyers, police officers and judges in Monmouth County, N.J., tied to his past juvenile and family court cases. He pleaded guilty in 2022 to two counts of making interstate threats and one count of making false bomb threats and received a 20-year prison sentence.
In 2024, Mr. Hafner paid the $100 fee to run for Alaska’s U.S. House seat from prison. He won fewer than 500 primary votes, but reached the general election after several Republicans ahead of him dropped out to aid Mr. Begich.
Alaska Democrats, worried about confusing voters and hurting the Democratic incumbent, Mary Peltola, sued to block his candidacy. Republicans fought to keep him on the ballot and won. But Mr. Hafner’s 3,417 votes — one percent of the total — were not decisive in Ms. Peltola’s loss.
This year, Democrats lacked a big-name contender for the House seat after an Anchorage pastor, Matt Schultz, dropped out. So they backed Mr. Hill, a commercial fisherman and former teacher and school administrator.
Mr. Hafner filed on May 10 via another handwritten form mailed from his cell. This time, fearing voter confusion, independent groups spent nearly $500,000 urging people not to rank him. Online and radio spots said the “D” next to Mr. Hafner’s name stood for “doing time.”
At the same time, thousands of Alaskans received text messages supporting Mr. Hafner. The messages accused Mr. Hill of being a closet conservative and noting that Mr. Hafner supported “Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and will fight back against Trump and his enablers.”
The texts did not include any detail about who sent them, which may violate federal election law, depending on how many went out and how they were sent. So far, no outside group has reported spending money supporting Mr. Hafner.
Ms. Hafner doesn’t care who paid for the messages. She’s just grateful.
“If something lands in your lap, you’re not going to say ‘no thanks,’” she said.
Mr. Hafner is already barred from serving, because the Constitution requires U.S. House members to live in the state they represent when elected.
His mother sees a path around that: “Somebody needs to tell President Trump that Eric has earned a pardon,” she said.
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