Alaska Man Challenging U.S. Senator With the Same Name Booted From Ballot for Not Running ‘Good-Faith’ Campaign

A schoolteacher from Alaska, Dan Sullivan, is no longer on the ballot in this year’s U.S. Senate race after being disqualified from challenging the incumbent who bears his name, Senator Dan Sullivan, after accusations he was a Democratic plant trying to confuse voters in the Land of the Midnight Sun.Mr. Sullivan, who has represented the state in the Senate since 2015, keeps a generally low profile, making Alaska a surprisingly strong pick-up opportunity for Democrats this year. A popular former lawmaker, Congresswoman Mary Peltola, is challenging Mr. Sullivan with an “Alaska First” message. After the challenger Mr. Sullivan entered the race last month, Republicans began threatening legal action to keep the former U.S. Forest Service employee off the ballot. On Monday, the director of the Alaska Division of Elections, Carol Beecher, ruled that the non-senator Mr. Sullivan could not appear on the ballot this year. “[Alaska law] forbids me from placing a name on the primary election ballot ‘in a manner that is confusing or misleading to voters or compromises the fairness or neutrality of the ballot,’” Ms. Beecher wrote in her letter to Mr. Sullivan. “I conclude that your declaration of candidacy was not properly filed with the Division because it was not filed in order to declare an actual good-faith candidacy for the office of United States Senator.”Ms. Beecher added that Mr. Sullivan’s candidacy was intended “to confuse or mislead and to thereby compromise the ballot’s fairness or neutrality.” She accused him of “seeking to confuse yourself with another candidate in the race, the incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan, rather than distinguish yourself from him.”In her letter, Ms. Beecher pointed to several issues that she says led her to conclude that Mr. Sullivan was not running a genuine campaign. She wrote that at one point, Mr. Sullivan wrote to the state’s elections board asking that he be listed on the ballot as “Dan S. Sullivan.” She noted that the senator’s middle name is Scott, while the schoolteacher Mr. Sullivan’s middle name begins with a “J.” Ms. Beecher also wrote that Mr. Sullivan registered as a Republican just two days before declaring his candidacy even though he had never before been registered with the GOP, according to state elections records. The senator has claimed that the non-senator has gone so far as to steal his campaign logo design and layout. Mr. Sullivan the schoolteacher launched his campaign with materials designed eerily similar to the senator’s including the color scheme of his website and campaign materials. “Your public campaign website … uses a format, color scheme and overall theme similar to the public website for Senator Sullivan’s campaign,” Ms. Beecher wrote in her letter. “While the Division takes no position on whether you have appropriated the intellectual property of Senator Sullivan’s campaign, the similarity — particularly in light of the other facts I outline in this letter — appears to be deliberate.”According to Ms. Beecher, Mr. Sullivan the schoolteacher has worked with a Democratic consultant for the campaign, a fact that she notes would be “innocuous” in another context.“Alongside the other facts I have catalogued in this letter, however, it suggests a determined effort and a deliberate attempt to use the similarity of your name to confuse Alaska voters in the upcoming primary election,” Ms. Beecher wrote. Responding to an investigation launched last week by the lieutenant governor, Nancy Dahlstrom, on the validity of his candidacy, Mr. Sullivan wrote that he was “disappointed” by the message it sends to voters. “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. Alaskans have every reason to ask whether this process is being driven by politics rather than by a fair application of the law,” he said in a statement.Mr. Sullivan has been given the opportunity to appeal the decision, though he will likely have to do so on an expedited basis if he wants to appear on the ballot this year. Alaska will begin printing its ballots in less than two weeks on June 28.

Alaska Man Challenging U.S. Senator With the Same Name Booted From Ballot for Not Running ‘Good-Faith’ Campaign

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