Republicans call for Peltola’s disqualification and criminal prosecution
Donald Trump said on 23 October that he had ordered the Justice Department to file a lawsuit over Alaska’s U.S. Senate race. Voting-rights experts called the move an “unprecedented intervention” by the federal government while control of Congress was in the balance. A judge dismissed the Trump-backed suit on Sunday; it sought to block certification of Alaska’s U.S. Senate race only if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan lost, and the Justice Department said it planned to appeal Sunday’s ruling.
The Justice Department had argued in the lawsuit, filed less than two weeks before election day, that the presence of two candidates named Dan Sullivan on the November ballot could produce “voter confusion.” Republicans feared the second candidacy could take votes from the incumbent and influence the race’s outcome in favor of Democratic nominee Mary Peltola. A department spokesperson said in a statement: “Alaskan voters deserve a fair election, not to be misled in an attempt to rig outcomes.”
In a CNN interview on Sunday morning, Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan said he would accept the results of his upcoming election. When CNN’s Jake Tapper asked whether Sullivan would accept the results only if he won, Sullivan responded: “No, I’m going to accept the election results.” Earlier in the interview, Sullivan said he was not focused on how Peltola’s campaign might be legally challenged and was focused instead on winning the race outright. He nonetheless expressed doubt that Peltola had lacked any knowledge of the effort to put a second Dan Sullivan on the ballot. “She’s continually lying to the Alaskan people,” Sullivan said. “And I guarantee you, she’s lying right now.”
A recent New York Times investigation reported that aides from Mary Peltola’s campaign recruited another man who shared Sullivan’s name to join the race in what the report described as a ploy to peel votes from the Republican incumbent. Peltola continued to deny any knowledge of such a scheme on the part of her campaign. At a campaign event, she told a reporter she had “no idea” if any of her staff were involved. Since those revelations, Republicans, including Trump, have called for Peltola to be disqualified from the race and criminally prosecuted.
In reporting on the earlier Alaska primaries, the Washington Post said Republicans tried to boost unviable Democratic candidates. The paper reported that a Republican Super PAC boosted two candidates for Senate who did not live in Alaska and praised them as “progressives” similar to Bernie Sanders.
Photo caption: Senator Dan Sullivan makes an appearance at the Alaska Federation of Natives Convention in Anchorage, Alaska, on 22 October. Photograph: Kerry Tasker/Reuters.