FBI contacts donors in Alaska U.S. Senate namesake inquiry

Federal judge rejects administration bid to block Alaska certification if incumbent loses

FBI agents contacted at least three donors of Dan J. Sullivan Jr.’s Alaska U.S. Senate campaign. The local retired teacher had been spotted catching a flight out of Petersburg’s tiny airport the previous week, and FBI agents then began knocking on front doors.

The New York Times reported that Democratic Party operatives helped add Dan J. Sullivan to the ballot as a spoiler against Alaska’s incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Dan S. Sullivan. Federal and state authorities are investigating the circumstances of the ballot placement. On Sunday, a federal judge threw out a bid from the Trump administration that would have blocked state officials from certifying results if Dan S. Sullivan lost.

At a rally, President Trump said Democratic candidate Mary Peltola should be “prosecuted” and removed from the ballot. Peltola told supporters Friday night that she was “deeply offended” by allegations that she was involved in an effort to recruit a namesake candidate.

For months, Petersburg residents discussed the candidacy of Dan J. Sullivan Jr., a retired teacher running against Alaska’s incumbent Republican U.S. senator Dan S. Sullivan despite sharing his name. The remote fishing village is ringed by mountains and lies in a rainy borough reachable only by plane or boat. The ballot dispute became the main subject residents could discuss.

After FBI agents began knocking on front doors, Susan Burrell, owner of The 420, a marijuana shop on North Nordic Drive, Petersburg’s main drag, said, “Now it is serious.” Burrell added, “We don’t want to be known for the Dan Sullivan thing. We want to be known because we’re a great Norwegian fishing village.”

In town, Grant Trask, a retired fisherman in a hooded sweatshirt, scrubbed potatoes he had dug from the garden of the bed-and-breakfast he runs with his wife. “It was a less-than-well-thought-out idea for him to put his name in for U.S. Senate,” Trask said. “Now, it’s falling apart. I feel sorry for him.”

In Anchorage, Alex Ziegler, an auto mechanic and conservative who planned to volunteer as a poll watcher for Dan S. Sullivan on Nov. 3, waited in a line of more than 100 people at an early-voting location inside a mall. “It’s dirty pool,” Ziegler said. He worried the two Dans would confuse voters in a race he expected, “unfortunately,” to be close.

Kelly Whitworth, a nurse in Anchorage, rejected the argument that the candidates would confuse voters. “People are smart,” she said. “They’ll figure it out.” Whitworth said she does not always vote for Democrats but would this year. “I’m so disgusted with our current administration that I’ll do anything to get them out,” she said.

On Halloween night, Sen. Dan S. Sullivan stopped by a trunk-or-treat event outside the Lions Recreation Center in Big Lake, about an hour north of Anchorage in the more conservative Matanuska-Susitna Valley. Dressed in a ball cap, jeans and a Carhartt jacket, he quipped to one attendee that he was going as “the real Dan” for Halloween. Along with candy and tote bags, he distributed navy-blue rubber bracelets printed with his name as it appears on the ballot: “Sullivan, Dan S. (Registered Republican) Incumbent.”

Petersburg lies nearly 700 miles by plane from Anchorage and is better known for commercial fishing, where the fall moose harvest makes top news. State Sen. Bert Stedman, a Sitka resident who represents the area, said, “We’re not exactly the center of politics here in the islands.”

Attention turned to Dan J. Sullivan Jr.’s whereabouts. In September, he told The Wall Street Journal that nobody put him up to running. On Sunday, no one answered the door of his barn-shaped house outside town. Stedman also wondered where the Petersburg Sullivan had gone. “If you were a legitimate candidate, which I’ve never thought he is or has been, that’d be the last thing you would do coming up to election day is disappear.”

Charles “Rocky” Flint was among the local donors contacted by FBI agents. The retired owner of a boat dealership had known Dan J. Sullivan for years, admired him and offered $500 to his campaign after learning he was running. On Saturday, Flint spoke at his dining-room table beside a large window overlooking open water and mountains stretching to the Canadian border. “I haven’t done anything wrong,” Flint said.

Flint called the controversy mostly a late-campaign diversion tactic. “That’s what this current administration seems to be all about. Let’s create a shiny object over here, and then another one over there,” he said.