Justice Department sues Alaska over Senate race featuring two candidates named Dan Sullivan

The Trump administration has asked a federal judge to let Alaska withhold certification of next week's U.S. Senate election if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses to Democrat Mary Peltola, an extraordinary intervention built around the fact that a second, unrelated candidate who also happens to be named Dan Sullivan will appear on the same ballot.

The Justice Department filed suit on Oct. 22 against the State of Alaska and the director of its Division of Elections, Carol Beecher, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska. According to the court's own account of the complaint, the government is not trying to stop the election from happening. It is asking the court to block certification of the result only if Sullivan does not win outright, and only on the theory that had every vote cast for the second candidate, Daniel J. Sullivan, instead been cast for the senator, Alaska's ranked-choice process would have produced a Sullivan victory.

President Trump told reporters he ordered the filing himself. "I'm the one that said, 'do it,'" he said, according to multiple outlets covering the case, including an Associated Press explainer on the litigation.

Two men, one name, one ballot

The dispute traces back to May 2026, when Sen. Dan S. Sullivan filed for reelection, followed two weeks later by Daniel J. Sullivan, a retired Petersburg schoolteacher with no relation to the senator and no history in Republican politics. Beecher, the state elections director, moved to decertify the newcomer's candidacy that June, writing that his filing was not "an actual good-faith candidacy" but was instead made "to confuse or mislead and to thereby compromise the ballot's fairness or neutrality."

Daniel J. Sullivan challenged that decision in court and won. An Alaska Superior Court judge found the state's reasoning unsupported by evidence, and the Alaska Supreme Court summarily affirmed that ruling on June 29, ordering only that the Division of Elections determine how his name should appear on the ballot. The division ultimately listed the incumbent as "Sullivan, Dan S. (Registered Republican) Incumbent" and the challenger as "Sullivan, Daniel J. Jr.," with no party label.

Both men advanced from the Aug. 18 top-four primary alongside Peltola and a fourth candidate, Gerald Heikes. Peltola led with 49.5% of the vote, Sullivan followed with 41.4%, and Daniel J. Sullivan drew 2.5%, according to figures cited in court filings and reported by the Anchorage Daily News. Under the ranked-choice system Alaska voters adopted in 2020, if no candidate wins a majority of first-choice votes, the last-place finisher is eliminated and those ballots are reallocated to voters' next choices until someone crosses 50%.

Public polling in the race's final weeks has shown Peltola narrowly ahead, including an NYT/Siena survey putting her up 50% to 43% and more recent polls showing a tighter single-digit margin, a striking position for a Democrat in a state Trump carried by 13 points in 2024. Candidate fundraising and committee details for the race are tracked in Federal Election Commission filings.

A lawsuit with few defenders

U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason granted an emergency motion to expedite the case on Oct. 26, ordering the government to respond within days to bids by Peltola's campaign, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the League of Women Voters of Alaska and Common Cause to intervene in defense of the state. The judge said she intended to rule quickly, and Alaska's own Department of Law separately urged her to dismiss the suit outright, with Beecher asking for a decision before Nov. 2.

Few legal observers outside the administration have defended the government's theory. Anchorage attorney Scott Kendall, who helped design Alaska's ranked-choice system, was blunt about the quality of the filing.

"If a first-year law student had turned in this complaint, I would have given it a D-minus."

Jonathan Diaz of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center called it one of the most frivolous lawsuits he has reviewed, arguing that a ballot itself expresses a voter's intent and that officials cannot retroactively decide what a voter "meant" to do. Notre Dame law professor Derek Muller said he does not expect the case to advance before Election Day, if at all. Even Alaska's senior Republican senator broke with the administration over the move, saying flatly, according to local reporting on her remarks, that "the Department of Justice should have never filed this lawsuit."

Allegations of a recruitment effort

The legal fight intensified this week after a New York Times investigation published Wednesday, citing roughly a dozen sources and internal documents, reported that aides and lawyers connected to Peltola's campaign, along with DSCC staff, had been involved in identifying and recruiting men named Dan Sullivan in Alaska as part of an effort that reportedly began in 2025. The Times reported that Peltola's former campaign manager, Elisa Rios, was a central source for the account and later sought to walk back some of what she had told reporters.

Peltola's campaign has repeatedly denied any role. Asked directly whether the campaign was "involved in asking, encouraging or soliciting" Daniel J. Sullivan to run, spokesperson Harry Child said simply, "No," and the DSCC said it is "not involved with Dan J. Sullivan." Daniel J. Sullivan himself has said he had no contact with Peltola's camp. Peltola, asked about the Justice Department's suit directly, told Alaska's News Source she believes in the rule of law and expects the courts to reject it.

Trump has seized on the Times report, calling on social media for Peltola to face consequences and telling a rally crowd that she "should be removed from the ballot and prosecuted, and so should the fake Dan Sullivan," according to coverage reviewed by Newsweek. Multiple outlets reported Friday that federal prosecutors in Alaska are conducting a criminal inquiry into how Daniel J. Sullivan's candidacy came together, though the U.S. Attorney's office has continued to say, consistent with longstanding Justice Department policy, that it can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any investigation.

Sullivan's own campaign, through spokesperson Nate Adams, said it had no advance knowledge of the Justice Department's lawsuit and no role in it, while separately disputing Peltola's characterization of events as "categorically false." State Rep. Andrew Gray, an Anchorage Democrat who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, said he believes the federal suit falls outside Washington's authority over what is fundamentally a state-run election, and that Daniel J. Sullivan has a legal right to be on the ballot regardless of who encouraged him to run.

• May 16, 2026 — Sen. Dan S. Sullivan files for reelection
• May 29, 2026 — Daniel J. Sullivan files as a candidate for the same seat
• June 15, 2026 — State election officials move to decertify his candidacy
• June 29, 2026 — Alaska Supreme Court affirms he stays on the ballot
• Aug. 18, 2026 — Both Sullivans and Peltola advance from the primary
• Oct. 22, 2026 — Justice Department sues to condition certification
• Nov. 3, 2026 — General election day
• Nov. 18, 2026 — Alaska's target date for initial tabulated results

What happens next

Judge Gleason is weighing motions to intervene and to dismiss, with both sides pushing for a ruling before Alaskans finish voting. The state has asked for a decision by Nov. 2, the day before polls close; Alaska's Division of Elections has said it still intends to release initial tabulated, ranked-choice results around Nov. 18, the normal post-election timeline the state follows to allow mailed ballots to arrive.

The outcome matters well beyond Alaska. The seat is rated a toss-up in a Senate map where control of the chamber could hinge on a handful of races, and legal strategists in both parties are watching to see whether a same-name "spoiler" tactic — and a federal lawsuit built around it — becomes a template elsewhere; Republicans have separately been linked to an effort promoting a minor-party candidate in Ohio's Senate race widely seen as designed to pull votes from the Democratic nominee there. For now, Alaska's courts, its elections office and its voters are left to sort out, in the span of a few days, a controversy that has turned a routine ballot-naming dispute into a test of how far a sitting administration can go to contest the result of a federal election before a single vote is even certified.