Spoiler allegations roil Alaska's tight Senate race

Justice Department expands Alaska probe with new grand jury subpoenas

The Alaska Senate race between Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan and Democrat Mary Peltola has become one of the most competitive in the country, driven in its final days by voter anger over high fuel prices and jolted by allegations that Peltola’s campaign secretly worked to recruit a spoiler candidate to help her party win the pivotal seat.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that staffers with Peltola’s campaign had worked with people to recruit the other Sullivan as a spoiler in the race — a strategy that her campaign had long denied. The namesake is a retired teacher named Dan J. Sullivan Jr., one of four finalists for the seat. Republicans had objected for months to the retired teacher’s presence on the ballot, calling it a potential source of voter confusion. At a campaign event Wednesday, Peltola called the story “nonsense” and said the race is about big issues like affordability in Alaska. “This is just another distraction,” she said.

The Justice Department on Thursday expanded its criminal investigation, sending dozens of new grand jury subpoenas, people familiar with the matter said. Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Republican, ordered a state investigation, and Trump called for Peltola and the other Sullivan to be criminally prosecuted and tossed off the ballot. Trump last week directed the Justice Department to sue Alaska, seeking to delay the results if the incumbent narrowly loses.

Sen. Sullivan said Thursday he expected the episode to win him votes. “Never a dull moment in the great state of Alaska,” he said in an interview. “I think Alaskans, the more they understand this, the more they’re going to be repelled,” he said, predicting he would get Democratic votes out of it. Dan J. Sullivan Jr. couldn’t be reached for comment.

Alaska is seen by both Republicans and Democrats as one of a handful of states needed to win control of the Senate — a chamber in which two independents caucus with the Democrats, as of Oct. 27. Candidates and outside groups have poured more than $130 million into the race, shattering records, in a state with about 740,000 residents. Polls show a tight contest in a state Trump has won three times by double digits.

Alaska’s Supreme Court has ruled that both Sullivans can appear on the ballot, and the incumbent’s party affiliation and incumbent status are listed next to his name. Recruiting long-shot candidates to siphon votes away from contenders — sometimes called ballot stacking — isn’t usually illegal, unless the tactics are combined with some other violation, like lying to a court.

The state’s ranked-choice system adds another layer of uncertainty. Voters rank the four finalists in order of preference, and if no one gets more than 50% of the vote, the weakest candidate is eliminated and second-choice votes are redistributed until someone holds a majority. The tally won’t happen before Nov. 18, the deadline for absentee ballots, so the winner — and which party controls the Senate — might not be known for weeks.

The contest is unfolding against a punishing economic backdrop. The pain is particularly acute in rural areas, where residents rely on diesel for electricity generation and heating oil to warm their homes. Diesel is 60% more expensive than a year ago in Alaska. For rural Alaskans, many of them Alaska Natives, a hard winter is ahead; data is hard to quantify at this point, but rural household utility costs could be $1,000 to $2,000 higher this winter because of the war, according to Brett Watson, associate professor of applied and natural resource economics at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. In White Mountain, a village near the Arctic Circle, temperatures dipped into the 30s earlier this month as Rita Buck, 74, watched home heating oil climb to close to $9 a gallon, up from about $5 in May.

Buck said people in her area blame the Iran war and Trump — and by extension Sullivan. “Sullivan is a yes man for Trump,” she said. The Times report did not change her vote, and she said she was voting for Peltola; the recruiting scheme, if true, was “kind of a lame thing to do,” she said. “It does not change my vote.” The same day the story broke, she said, she paid $520.80 for 60 gallons of heating oil and couldn’t afford to fill her tank all the way up.

Peltola, 53, who previously served in the U.S. House, would become the first Alaska Native in the Senate if she wins. She has spent her closing days focused on affordability, drawing applause from Alaska Native leaders gathered for an annual convention in downtown Anchorage when she said Alaskans should not have to choose between heating their homes and feeding their families. Her closing message links surging fuel prices to Sullivan’s votes in the Senate against ending the Iran war. “We’re just getting crushed,” she said in an interview last week. “It does feel existential.”

Sullivan, 61, a retired Marine and former state attorney general, was first elected to the Senate in 2014, unseating Democratic Sen. Mark Begich, a member of a famous Alaska political family. Back then, he was the one known as the “other Dan Sullivan,” to distinguish him from the former mayor of Anchorage, who also happened to be named Dan Sullivan. He has built a reputation among supporters and colleagues as a workhorse for his state, pushing relentlessly for oil and gas development and for federal resources ranging from a fleet of new Coast Guard icebreakers to funding for high-speed internet in rural Alaska.

In a speech at the Native convention, Sullivan expressed concern about high fuel costs and said the Trump administration had created an energy task force focused on bringing down prices in rural Alaska, including by doubling heating assistance for low-income families and investing to upgrade the grid. But he didn’t mention the war. Sullivan voted 14 times against Democratic-led resolutions that would have forced Trump to withdraw troops from hostilities against Iran — a number that features prominently in Democratic ads.

Sullivan has run as a close Trump ally rather than distancing himself from the president on tariffs or the Iran war, making the case that he can do more for Alaska by nurturing goodwill and relationships inside the administration. He rallied with Trump in the Republican stronghold of Wasilla earlier this month, hoping to boost GOP turnout. Sullivan said he is no rubber stamp, citing behind-the-scenes efforts to help persuade the administration not to livestream an execution of convicted shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. “To me, the north star is how do you effectively get what you want for your constituents? And I think I’ve been enormously effective on things that matter to our state,” he said.

Kati Capozzi, 44, president and CEO of the Alaska Chamber of Commerce, voted early for the GOP senator — one of about 41,000 Alaskans who have already cast their ballots. She said Alaskans have been educated about the two Sullivans for months, so voter confusion isn’t a huge problem. “We kinda got over it.” The bigger point, she said, is that Democrats tried to fool voters, and that could affect how some Alaskans think about Peltola. She pointed to a statement from Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski — a Republican who endorsed Peltola in her 2022 and 2024 House races but has backed Sullivan for Senate — who said the Democratic candidate owed Alaskans answers. “I think people are starting to realize that Mary is maybe not the person that they thought she was,” Capozzi said. Sullivan will need some Murkowski voters to win, she said, “and there’s a lot of people who look to Lisa for guidance.”

Melissa Chaney, 62, a retired high-school counselor in Anchorage who is unaffiliated with any party, has voted for Murkowski in the past and now supports Peltola. She said she doesn’t think the Times reporting will have any impact. “I can’t say there weren’t any shenanigans, but what I can tell you is that we are used to people pulling shenanigans,” Chaney said. “If the Republicans could have found another Mary Peltola to put on the ballot, they would have done that.”

Mark Hayward, 58, an independent voter in Nome, said he ranked Peltola first for Senate and, for his fourth and last choice, wrote in “a Dead Moose” rather than rank the incumbent, whom he said “has become an important enabler of this president.” “What matters in Alaska is gas prices. Fish is a close second,” he said, adding that most voters are more concerned about fuel costs and fish conservation than ballot-stacking efforts by either party.

Other voters see the price surge as beyond the senator’s control. “I’m sure it’s just until the war is over and then it will drop back,” said Innokenty Lestenkoff, a 55-year-old Republican maintenance worker who voted early for Sullivan. Bill Armstrong, owner of Armstrong Oil & Gas and a friend of the senator for about 25 years, said he has a hard time believing some recent polls, which show Peltola with a slight edge. “I think Trump has been a really good president for the state of Alaska,” Armstrong said, “but when you just listen to the constant drumbeat of negativity towards Trump, I think a lot of that rubs off on Dan.”

Whether voters agree could determine whether Alaska stays in the Republican column or flips blue.