Republicans spent the summer warning that two Dan Sullivans on one Alaska Senate ballot would confuse voters. On the eve of Election Day, a voter in the state offered an example.
The man appeared in an interview that Not the Bee posted Nov. 2. Asked about the race, he said he may have marked the wrong Sullivan.
“I don’t remember seeing the second Dan Sullivan, I totally forgot to look for two Dan Sullivans,” he said.
The interviewer corrected the record. “The two Dan Sullivans were together on the ballot,” the interviewer said. “Yeah,” the voter answered.
He ended on a note of intent. “I definitely intended to vote for the real Dan Sullivan,” he said. The posted excerpt does not reveal whom he picked.
The doubled name began with a late-May announcement.
Dan J. Sullivan, a retired teacher from Petersburg in Southeast Alaska, declared his candidacy as a registered Republican, the same party as the sitting senator.
Within days, the National Republican Senatorial Committee wrote to Alaska election officials and urged them to remove him. The letter called him “Sham Candidate Sullivan.”
State officials moved first. Alaska Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher concluded Dan J. Sullivan did not qualify.
He fought that finding all the way to the Alaska Supreme Court, which ordered officials to put him on the primary ballot.
Sen. Sullivan, who has held the seat since 2015, used the words “cheating” and “corruption” as the dispute unfolded, according to Alaska Public Media.
The fight turned a first-time candidate with no political experience into a fixture of the race.
Republicans laid out their case against the challenger in two parts.
Federal Election Commission filings show either a Daniel or Dan Sullivan in Petersburg gave $650 to ActBlue, the Democratic Party’s main fundraising platform.
The metadata of his campaign announcement, they said, ties the document to Amber Lee, a consultant who has publicly backed Mary Peltola.
Dan J. Sullivan rejects the accusation, and Democrats do too. The Alaska Democratic Party and Peltola’s campaign say they had no part in his run.
Alaska Public Media reports that his donors come mostly from Petersburg.
He told the Petersburg Pilot in June that he supports candidates from both parties.
“I have every right to stand up and do this,” he said. He added: “It’s my name, my grandfather’s name: Dan Sullivan. My dad’s name: Dan Sullivan.”
Voters narrowed the field Aug. 18. Alaska’s open primary puts every candidate on a single ballot and advances the four top finishers, whatever their party.
Sixteen candidates entered. Peltola, Sen. Sullivan, Dan J. Sullivan and Republican Gerald Heikes moved on.
The general-election ballot separates the two Sullivans with notations.
Roll Call reports that officials list the senator as Dan S. Sullivan, marking him the Republican incumbent, and list his challenger as Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. with no party affiliation noted.
State law orders same-surname candidates by first name and, when needed, middle initial. The two men have no known relation.
Alaska has handled this before. When Sullivan first won his seat in 2014, then-Anchorage Mayor Dan A. Sullivan sat on that year’s primary ballot as a candidate for lieutenant governor.
Peltola brings her own history to the contest.
She held Alaska’s lone U.S. House seat from September 2022 to January 2025, became the first Alaska Native in Congress, and lost her 2024 re-election bid.
She had raised more than $18 million by the end of July. Sen. Sullivan had raised nearly $12 million.
Alaska sits among four Senate races rated as tossups nationwide, and the seat could help determine which party controls the chamber.
An AARP poll in September found Sullivan trailing Peltola by 5 percentage points.
The Washington Post reported that Republicans fear some voters will mark the wrong candidate. CNN’s Decision Desk projected in August that the arrangement could benefit Peltola.
Alaskans decide the four-way race by ranked voting, with results due after the polls close.
