A political battle in Alaska is intensifying over an issue that might seem ridiculous but could be important for control of Congress: How many Dan Sullivans can appear on the state’s ballot for Senate in November.
Dan J. Sullivan, a former teacher, was fighting on Friday to preserve his spot on the ballot to challenge Senator Dan S. Sullivan of Alaska, a Republican, after an elections official moved to disqualify him.
Democrats and Republicans alike see Dan J. Sullivan’s eligibility as more than a mere campaign curiosity. Although Dan J. Sullivan, who says he recently registered as a Republican, is not expected to wage a competitive campaign, Republicans are concerned that some voters may accidentally vote for him instead of Senator Sullivan, potentially lifting a Democratic candidate, former Representative Mary Peltola, in a race that could decide control of the Senate.
On Monday, Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom of Alaska, a Republican, said her office was opening an investigation into Dan J. Sullivan’s candidacy, citing what it described as “credible allegations” that he had coordinated with Ms. Peltola and entered the race to confuse voters.
And on Wednesday, Alaska’s top elections official, Carol Beecher, a Republican, whose office is overseen by the lieutenant governor, sent Dan J. Sullivan a letter suggesting that he might be ineligible to run, according to a copy of the letter published by The Anchorage Daily News. It gave him a Thursday night deadline to submit documents that would “support” his eligibility.
Dan J. Sullivan and Ms. Peltola have both denied coordinating on his campaign.
And Mr. Sullivan said in a statement issued late Thursday that Ms. Dahlstrom’s moves had created the “impression that the state government is being used to protect an incumbent senator from facing competition at the ballot box.”
“That’s not how elections should work. I am a qualified candidate who followed the rules and filed to run for office under my legal name,” Dan J. Sullivan said in the statement. He added that “Alaskans have every reason to ask whether this process is being driven by politics rather than by a fair application of the law.”
Dan J. Sullivan entered the race in late May, shortly before a filing deadline for the state’s nonpartisan primary, which is scheduled for Aug. 18. Under Alaska’s election system, the top four candidates will advance to the general election in November.
The state uses ranked-choice voting in general elections, so if Dan J. Sullivan makes the general election, confused voters could rank both Dan Sullivans ahead of Ms. Peltola.
Still, Republicans have fretted about the potential for the senator to lose any votes to Dan J. Sullivan. Ms. Peltola, who says she is running on “fish, family and freedom,” is well-funded and considered to have strong appeal in Alaska, a Republican-leaning state with an independent streak.
Dan J. Sullivan’s entry in the race has already made a mark. On Thursday, One Nation, a nonprofit allied with the top super PAC for Senate Republicans, released a campaign advertisement for Senator Sullivan that prominently included his middle initial. If Dan J. Sullivan makes it to the ballot, both men will be expected to appear with their middle initials.
Dan J. Sullivan’s campaign website describes him as 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.
When he announced his entry into the race, Dan J. Sullivan said that 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.
“We deserve a Senator who answers the phone, listens to the people and puts Alaska first every single day,” he said in a separate statement on his website.
Federal campaign filings show that a “Dan Sullivan” from Petersburg, Alaska, donated small sums of money to several Democratic congressional candidates over the years, including $30 to Ms. Peltola’s re-election bid in 2024 and $100 to her first run for the House in 2022. The same person donated $50 last fall to the campaign of Kat Abughazaleh, a progressive Democratic influencer who in March lost her bid for a House seat in Illinois.
Dan J. Sullivan did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday about his past political donations.
Almost as soon as Dan J. Sullivan entered the race, Republicans began to argue that he had been planted in the race by Democrats to confuse voters and hurt Senator Sullivan, a second-term lawmaker, former Marine and one-time State Department official.
The campaign arm of Senate Republicans, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, pointed to a news release announcing Dan J. Sullivan’s candidacy as evidence of such coordination. The group said metadata showed that the document had originated with Amber Lee, a Democratic consultant and past supporter of Ms. Peltola. (Ms. Lee has deferred questions to the campaign.)
In opening an investigation into Dan J. Sullivan’s candidacy, Ms. Dahlstrom’s office cited a complaint filed by the N.R.S.C. She sent Dan J. Sullivan a letter asking him to explain when he joined the Republican Party (his initial campaign announcement did not describe his party affiliation); to explain similarities between his campaign website and Senator Sullivan’s (the two have similar layouts and use dark blue trim with yellow lettering); and to describe his relationship with Ms. Lee.
Dan J. Sullivan responded in writing, confirming that Ms. Lee was advising his campaign, but saying that “the fact that a political consultant has done prior political consulting is not a legitimate reason for your office to investigate me,” according to a letter published by The Anchorage Daily News. (It is not uncommon for political consultants in Alaska to work for candidates from both parties.)
He noted ways in which his website was different from the senator’s, pointing out that it prominently displayed a picture of him — “I look nothing like Senator Sullivan,” the letter said — and described his personal history. He said he had briefly been unaffiliated after his longtime party, the libertarian-leaning Alaskan Independence Party, disbanded. He registered as a Republican to run for Senate this year, he said, because he believed in “compassionate conservatism.”
“The N.R.S.C. is free to advocate against my candidacy and for the candidacy of Senator Sullivan,” Dan J. Sullivan wrote in the letter. “What it is not allowed to do is use your office as a pawn to kick me off the ballot.”
The American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska said on Friday that it was closely monitoring the situation. The organization’s executive director, Mara Kimmel, said in an email that the Alaska Division of Elections was placing the “weight of government” on Dan J. Sullivan “without citing precedent or legal authority.”
She added that disqualifying Dan J. Sullivan would undermine “fundamental democratic principles.”
The N.R.S.C. and the campaign of Senator Sullivan declined to comment Friday, and a spokesman for Ms. Peltola’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Shortly after Dan J. Sullivan entered the race, a spokesman for the committee, Nick Puglia, said in a statement that Democrats were “resorting to deceitful political maneuvers that attempt to trick Alaskans.”
With Republicans now in control of 53 seats in the Senate, Democrats would have to keep all the seats they hold and flip four to win the chamber in the midterms. Democratic leaders consider Alaska to be one of their four best targets.
Democrats in Alaska have dismissed allegations of foul play, casting Dan J. Sullivan’s candidacy as an amusing but far from unheard-of quirk of Alaska politics. Even some Republicans there have expressed a measure of doubt that Democrats were trying to pull off a ruse.
When Senator Sullivan was first elected to the Senate in 2014, another Republican named Dan Sullivan — Dan A. Sullivan, the mayor of Anchorage at the time — was also on the primary ballot as a candidate for lieutenant governor.
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