An Alaskan whose name is the same as that of incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) is ineligible to appear on the state’s primary ballot, a state official has determined.
The “other” Dan Sullivan is a 69-year-old retired teacher hailing from Petersburg, Alaska, a small fishing village in the southeast of the state. His candidacy—given his shared name with the incumbent senator and the state’s nonpartisan primary system—drew alarm from Republicans. The challenger was accused of having links to the Senate campaign of former Rep. Mary Peltola (D-Alaska) in an effort to reduce Sullivan’s vote share due to voter confusion.
Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher shared the assessment, stating that the challenger did not file his candidacy for the office in good faith and was ineligible to appear on the ballot.
In a letter sent to Sullivan, Beecher said that his declaration of candidacy “was not filed in order to declare an actual good-faith candidacy for the office of United States Senator, but was instead filed with a purpose to confuse or mislead and to thereby compromise the ballot’s fairness or neutrality.”
Sullivan has denied having any malintent, saying that his shared name with the incumbent senator was “a matter of fate.”
In a recent interview, the challenger said that he had been considering such a run for years.
In a post to social media on Sunday, Sullivan said he “met the qualification and I entered this race because I am unhappy with the 12 year record of the current Senator and I feel we need a change. It’s that simple.”
While the ruling can be appealed, Beecher said, she noted that Sullivan’s deadline for making such an appeal is tight, with ballots due to be printed in less than two weeks on June 28.
The decision to remove Sullivan from the ballot comes after the state’s lieutenant governor last week announced that the state’s election officials would open an investigation into the candidate.
Republican Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom said that the state had received “credible allegations” that he declared his candidacy “in coordination with another candidate and campaign” with an intent to confuse and “manipulate” voters.
In a statement on his campaign site, Sullivan was critical of that announcement.
“I am a qualified candidate who followed the rules and filed to run for office under my legal name. Yet, unsupported accusations have been given credibility while political operatives continue their effort to keep me off the ballot,” Sullivan said. “Alaskans have every reason to ask whether this process is being driven by politics rather than by a fair application of the law.”
Collusion claims had been outlined in a letter that had been sent to her and Beecher by an attorney with the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
However, Beecher’s letter ultimately did not accuse the candidate of collusion.
Instead, Beecher wrote that the decision had been made because he had registered under his legal name and had simultaneously changed his party affiliation to Republican, which he had not previously been.
Beecher also alleged that there were similarities between his campaign website and that of Sen. Sullivan’s, as well as his campaign’s work with a consultant whose clients have included Democrats.
Working with the consultant is “in isolation, innocuous,” Beecher said.
But she alleged that other circumstantial evidence “suggests a determined and a deliberate attempt to use the similarity of your name to confuse Alaska voters.”
Sullivan’s campaign did not immediately return a request for comment from The Epoch Times on whether he plans to appeal the ruling. In past statements, Sullivan has indicated he’s still deciding how to move forward.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
