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By Giulia Carbonaro
Senior Reporter
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The controversy over two Dan Sullivans appearing on the ballot in Alaska’s U.S. Senate race has echoes of a 2020 Florida state senate contest, where a former Republican state senator was accused of paying a candidate who shared the Democratic incumbent’s last name to run and siphon away votes.
Unlike the Florida case, the allegations surrounding Alaska’s race remain under investigation. But both controversies center on candidates with the same or similar names appearing on the ballot and focus on a political strategy—“ballot stacking"—which is more common in the U.S. than one might imagine and generally not illegal.
The Case of the Two Dan Sullivans in Alaska
Under Alaska’s ranked choice voting system, the top four candidates in the U.S. Senate primary earlier this year are set to appear on the ballot on November 3.
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These include Alaska native and former congresswoman Mary Peltola, running as a Democrat; Republican Senator Dan Sullivan, the incumbent; Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired teacher and fishing enthusiast with no previous experience in politics, who initially filed his candidacy as a Republican; and Gerald "Jerry" Heikes, a drywall contractor also running as a Republican.
The presence of a second Dan Sullivan on the ballot long irked President Donald Trump, who in recent months repeatedly criticized Alaska’s ranked choice voting system and accused the Democrats of "cheating" by putting a sham candidate on the ballot.
The Last Frontier’s election officials similarly thought that Sullivan Jr.’s candidacy was not genuine. Earlier this year, the Alaska election authority had concluded Sullivan Jr. was not an actual good-faith candidate, but his name was reinstated on the ballot in June after an Alaska trial court ruled against that exclusion and the Alaska Supreme Court summarily affirmed that decision.
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The debate around the other Dan Sullivan escalated when Trump ordered his administration last month to file a lawsuit seeking to block certification of the race’s result if Sullivan loses and votes cast for Sullivan Jr. would have helped him win. According to the lawsuit, "the sole purpose of [Daniel J. Sullivan’s] candidacy is to benefit the Peltola campaign by reducing the number of votes for Senator Sullivan."
Peltola’s team and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit before Election Day, accusing the Trump administration of setting the ground "to falsely suggest that there is doubt about the lawfulness of Alaska’s election results, without any legal basis, to lay the groundwork for unlawful efforts to challenge a potential Peltola victory."
A week into the legal debate, reporting by the New York Times that Democrats in Alaska had actually tried to stack the ballot with a second Dan Sullivan put another spin in the controversy. Democratic candidate Mary Peltola’s former campaign manager and longtime aide Elisa Rios told the newspaper that Democratic operatives made efforts to recruit a namesake challenger to the Republican incumbent, Senator Dan Sullivan.
They eventually found Sullivan Jr., who filed his candidacy as a Republican this spring. He has recently switched his political affiliation to "undeclared."
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According to Rios, Peltola was not involved in these efforts to recruit a candidate that could siphon votes away from Sullivan, but was "definitely aware." Peltola has denied any knowledge of efforts to recruit another Sullivan.
The Trump administration included these allegations into its lawsuit, though Peltola’s team dismissed them as "nonsense" and said they did not change the validity of the claim made by the Justice Department. On Sunday, a federal judge in Alaska ruled in Peltola’s team favor, dismissing the lawsuit on the basis that the measures it sought did not help solve the voter confusion it professed to be concerned about.
But the issue is far from resolved. While several experts told Newsweek that the Justice Department’s lawsuit was "meritless," they admitted that it was "based on very real and valid concerns about voter confusion," as Michael Morley, the Sheila M. McDevitt Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Election Law Center at the Florida State University, previously told Newsweek.
The Justice Department has confirmed that Sullivan Jr.’s candidacy is under criminal investigation, and another probe was announced by Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy last month. Both investigations are still open, though it is unclear what officials are looking for: "ballot stacking," as it is called, is a common political strategy in U.S. elections and generally considered legal.
Newsweek contacted the Justice Department, Peltola’s and Sullivan’s campaign for comment by email on Monday morning.
Florida’s 2020 State Senate Election: Two Rodriguez on the Ballot
In Florida’s 2020 state Senate race, there were two Rodriguez on the ballot for District 37: Jose Javier Rodriguez, the Democratic incumbent, and Alex Rodriguez, running as an independent candidate with no party affiliation. Also in the race was Ileana Garcia, running as a Republican.
Garcia, who founded the group Latinas for Trump and in 2016 was the Trump campaign’s communications director for Latino outreach, defeated the Democratic incumbent by 32 votes only, 104,630 to 104,598. The other Rodriguez ended the race with 6,382 votes.
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In 2021, former Florida state Republican senator Frank Artiles was arrested and charged with recruiting a sham candidate aimed at siphoning votes away from the Democratic incumbent. Artiles, a Cuban-American who served three terms in the state house and was then elected to the senate before resigning over the use of racial slurs, was accused of giving roughly $50,000 to the fake candidate with the intention of confusing voters. Rodriguez said he was given $25,000 before the election and $25,000 afterward.
In August of that same year, Alex Rodriguez—a friend of Artiles—pleaded guilty in Miami-Dade County to accepting illegal campaign donations and lying on campaign documents, agreeing to give testimony against Artiles. In November 2024, the former state senator was convicted of three charges of election conspiracy and sentenced to five years probation and 60 days in Miami-Dade County jail for the scheme.
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State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said at a news conference in 2021 that Ileana Garcia, who is running for reelection this year, was not involved in the scheme. While Democrats called on Garcia to "immediately resign" following the sentencing of Artiles, she remained in her post and was reelected in 2022. Since then, the former Trump ally has become a staunch critic of the president’s immigration policies.
Jose Javier Rodriguez is on the ballot on November 3 for Florida’s Attorney General, a position currently held by Republican James Uthmeier, who is running for reelection.
What the Florida Ballot Drama Can Tell Us About the Alaska Senate Race
When he was sentenced, Artiles was found guilty of campaign contributions in excess of $1,000, campaign contributions conspiracy and ethics code false swearing to an oath. He was found not guilty of the falsification of a voter registration form.
This was the key to his indictment: placing a sham candidate on the ballot to siphon votes away from another is normally not illegal; it is illegal, however, to pay for it.
Notably, there have been no claims made in the context of the Alaska U.S. Senate race and Sullivan Jr.’s candidacy, so far, alleging that Peltola’s team or operatives close to the Democratic candidate paid to convince the retired teacher to run. Jeff Feldman, a University of Washington law professor who has litigated extensively in Alaska, told Newsweek last Thursday that even if operatives linked to Peltola’s campaign were found to have encouraged Sullivan Jr. to run to draw votes away from the incumbent, "it’s less than clear that such conduct would violate any provision of Alaska law."
Despite this, U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News that having Sullivan Jr. on the ballot amounted to "cheating" and "fraud." Trump has similarly accused Democrats of "voter fraud at the highest level."
Alaska election officials said they have done enough to differentiate the two Dan Sullivans on the ballot. The Republican Senator is running as "Dan Sullivan," a "Republican," and he is clearly identified as the "incumbent." The other Sullivan is running as "Daniel J. Sullivan Jr." with no party affiliation.
Nonpartisan organization FairVote said that Alaska’s ranked choice voting (RCV) system, which Trump has criticized, actually makes fear of splitting the vote between two namesake contenders less likely. "With RCV, any small number of voters uncertain about the ‘Dan Sullivans’ can rank both candidates on their ballot, and their vote will count for the stronger candidate (extremely likely to be Senator Sullivan)," the organization wrote.
Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here. Contact Newsweek editors for this story: Robert Greenall and Ben Kelly
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