WASHINGTON — Incumbent Alaska Sen. Dan S. Sullivan on Sunday warned that the alleged scheme by allies of Dem rival Mary Peltola to recruit another Dan Sullivan onto the ballot “is working” and confusing voters.
“Their first order of business, like I said, is, ‘How can we trick people in Alaska so they can throw the vote in a way that’s certainly deceitful, if not illegal, towards Peltola?’” the Republican senator vented to CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“By the way, their scheme is working,” he said. “They got the decoy guy on the ballot. I’m sure I’m going to lose a lot of votes to that trickery.”
Peltola, a former congresswoman, has been slammed by bombshell revelations from the New York Times that her allies worked to recruit retired public-school teacher Dan J. Sullivan, now known as “Decoy Dan,” to run for the Senate seat, too.
Although she has denied involvement, the outlet quoted her former campaign manager, Elisa Rios, who claimed Peltola was “definitely aware.”
Rios had been pushed out of the campaign during an August reshuffling, along with other top staff.
“Decoy Dan” is registered as a Republican, despite voting Democrat in recent presidential election cycles and reportedly having a magnet of far-left revolutionary Che Guevara on his refrigerator.
For months, both “Decoy Dan” and Peltola’s camp had denied a connection between her team and his decision to run, but the outlet also found other staffers on her old campaign operation and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and text messages to identify a connection.
A Dem operative named Jerid Kurtz had reportedly searched for another Dan Sullivan to recruit for the election.
“This is treating the people of my state with utter disrespect and disdain,” Sen. Sullivan told CNN. “And I don’t think it’s worthy of a US senator or a US Senate candidate.”
The Justice Department has been ramping up its probe into whether any laws were broken with the presence of “Decoy Dan” on the Alaska ballot. The DOJ also sued to stop certification of the election if Sen. Sullivan loses.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said Sunday that it’s possible Peltola won’t be seated if she wins the Senate race because of the controversy.
But despite that and other GOP honchos equivocating on whether they will accept the results on Tuesday, Sen. Sullivan made it clear that he will not fight the outcome, however unfair it might be.
“I’m going to accept the election results,” he replied.
“Don’t let this election be stolen,” he later added, addressing Alaskan voters before Tuesday’s vote.
Peltola currently has a 2 percentage-point edge over Sen. Sullivan in the latest RealClearPolitics aggregate of polls.
Alaska has a unique election system where the top four candidates appear on the general election ballot and are decided through ranked-choice voting.
Peltola’s campaign did not respond to a Post request for comment.
