A Plan for Two Dans: How Democrats Manipulated Alaska’s Ballot

From New York Times, I'm Micable Barrow. This is the Daily. "Control of the Senate may come down to Dan Sullivan, but which Dan Sullivan?" A new investigation from the Times has uncovered the real story of how two different candidates named Dan Sullivan ended up on the ballot for U.S. Senate in Alaska, and the secret role that Democrats played in making it happen. "I'm talking about the real Dan Sullivan, not the fake Dan Sullivan, not the Dan Sullivan put up by the Democrats." "This fake Dan Sullivan guy is not in it to win it, he's in it to rig it." "It's just a guy with the same name, dirty trick." Today, political reporter Kellen Browning takes us inside the political scheme and explains what it now means for a race that could determine which party controls the U.S. Senate. It's Thursday, October 29th. Kellen, welcome to the Daily. It's nice to have you here. Yeah, thanks for having me. My pleasure. You come to us with what I think may qualify as the biggest last-minute revelation of this midterm election, at least as of this moment, which is a few days left before the election. Tell us about what you found. For months in Alaska, Republicans have been crying foul about the Senate race there. They have a Republican Senator running for re-election named Dan Sullivan, but back in May, another Dan Sullivan entered the race, and they immediately said this is obviously part of a Democratic plot to confuse voters, because in Alaska, there will be four candidates on the ballot next week. Mary Peltola, a Democrat, is one of them. Senator Dan Sullivan, the Republican is another, and then there's going to be another Dan Sullivan on the ballot. Republicans said this was clearly some sort of Democratic plot to get voters to vote for the wrong Dan Sullivan. For months, this Dan Sullivan has said he entered the race on his own accord, and Democrats, being Mary Peltola's campaign, have said they have no connection to this Dan Sullivan. Right. Democrats have been really emphatic on this point. We had nothing to do with this. This is just a crazy Republican conspiracy theory. Yeah. Democrats have maintained this stance throughout legal efforts by Republicans to remove them from the ballot, which ultimately failed. That was even true as recently as last week, and President Trump's Justice Department filed a lawsuit seeking to challenge the certification of the election, if it turns out the other Dan Sullivan receives enough votes that prevent the Senator Sullivan from winning. Right. And this is where your revelations come to bear. Yeah. Instead, my reporting found that's simply not true. In fact, Democrats with a Mary Peltola campaign and with a national party engaged in an audacious, secretive plan dating back to last year, designed to help Mary Peltola win by stacking the ballot in her favor. Basically, you find that Democrats could not have been more involved in trying to get Dan Sullivan on the ballot, which is a major scoop and may frankly change the way a lot of people feel about this crucial race. And I want to understand how you came to uncover this secret scheme to get Dan Sullivan on the ballot. I know it's a pretty tangled tale, and it took a lot of work to figure out. Yeah, the story for me goes back to January when Mary Peltola, a former Congresswoman and Democrat jumped into the race to challenge Senator Dan Sullivan in Alaska. He's a Republican who has served as Alaska Senator since 2015. He's a strong Trump ally, and he's made pretty deep relationships in the state. But Mary Peltola was viewed as maybe the one person that could pose a threat to Senator Sullivan. That's because she won an upset race in 2022 to represent the state in its sole house seat. She was well liked across the aisle. She was the first Alaska native elected to Congress, and she was just sort of a political celebrity on the left in Alaska and not even just on the left. So people knew of her. She was well liked by voters, and there was a sense that this race was going to be quite competitive. And of course, as we know from polling, Trump is deeply unpopular in this moment. So if there's ever going to be a moment where perhaps a state as red as Alaska might be open to a Democratic Senator is probably going to be this election. Yeah, exactly. And Alaska in particular is suffering from a very high cost of living. In rural areas of Alaska, the price of a gallon of gas is rising to up to $8. So people are struggling. And there's a sense that the administration is to blame. So Democrats were hoping to seize on that economic anxiety and paint Senator Dan Sullivan as one of the culprits. So that's what the campaign looked like when all of a sudden in May, Dan J Sullivan jumped into the race. It immediately turned into a national story with everybody wondering what his motivation was. Was he running in good faith? He wasn't explaining himself very well. He wasn't speaking very much at all. So I decided the only way to figure it out for sure was to get on a plane and head to Alaska. And what happened when you got there? I had been expecting that I would be walking around the streets of tiny Petersburg, a fishing village where Dan J lives, searching for clues. I didn't think he would engage with me because he had not talked to reporters very much up until that point. So I thought I would knock on his door, try to see if there are any neighbors that know of him, maybe talk to businesses in the town. But to my surprise, the day before I was set to fly to Petersburg, he responded to me and said he'd be happy to talk. And he would even be happy to pick me and my photographer up from the airport. Oh, how courteous. Yes, exactly. I appreciate the ride. When he picked me up, he was dressed very casually in a great t-shirt and shorts. It was unseasonably warm for that time of year in Alaska. And while we were driving around, he told me a little bit more about himself. How long have you lived in Petersburg? For the most part of 46 years. Wow. I've been south a few times for school, but this has always been home-based for most of that kind. He said that in addition to being a retired teacher, he was also a volunteer firefighter for Petersburg and he had once served on the local arts council in the town. It's very beautiful. Sit down to beat your sun, whether that's okay. Yeah, it's good with me. Wow, this is amazing. Part of the tour has got to be here. It's high-tie. Yes. He drove us to this beautiful park, overlooking the water and the mountains of mainland Alaska. There's a wheel right there. Oh, really? Oh, wow. That's a humpback? Wow, that's amazing. We sat there and we even saw some humpback whales at one point that surfaced and interrupted our interview. So it was quite the picturesque scene. Now, you're ready to leave all this to go to Washington? The senator? Is that going to leave this paradise? Well, I'm worried about this paradise, so maybe that's a better way to put it. Okay. Then I got down to the question that everyone wanted to know, why did you get into this race? I think the reason anybody runs is to dissatisfied with what's going on. And we've had the senator for 12 years, if you're going to change, and we're going to step up and do that. He said that he was a moderate Republican who was fed up with Senator Dan Sullivan's policies and thought he might throw his hat in the ring. And he said that people in his life for years had been making jokes that he should run against Senator Sullivan because he shared the guy's name. You're the good dance all day. I wish you were our senator and to the vet. There's this visceral connection you have with someone who has your own name. Some people even called him Senator around town. I don't think the Republican Party needs to be the mega party, I think. Throughout the interview, Dan was eager to talk about his thoughts on the Republican Party and the state of politics. I take it, you're not a Trump fan. I don't think so. But he grew hesitant when I pressed him about how he actually got into the race and whether somebody helped him. Yeah, the Peltola camp, any Democratic group, anyone else play a role in putting you up to this? The coordinating with you? No, you haven't talked to them. And then I want to ask about Amber Lee, she what helped file your initial statement of interest. Our initial candidacy papers or her or her boyfriend or something. Yeah. Okay. How did you find her? We knew already from legal filings and Republican investigations that a woman named Amber Lee, a Democratic consultant in Alaska, had helped him actually file to run for office. Just to be fair to you. Yes, I'm not going to, I don't know any chat about that because of the stuff that's going on. Yeah. So, you know, fairness to her and me. He told me that he found Amber Lee, simply by doing an online search and that nobody had put him up to this, but he didn't want to talk about her further or any of his connections to her. And tell me why you are not. I know you didn't want to comment on an Amber Lee's particularly. There's a lot of this because of these D.O. James Metz, they keep surfacing there. Oh, I'm just a guy. And they're just doing it. Yeah. He said that he was afraid because there were investigations going on about his run, which was true. But he did admit to me that he had a history of voting for Democratic candidates and of donating money to them. He gave small amounts of money to Mary Peltola in a previous campaign of hers. And he said he had voted for her when she ran for the house. But he said that none of that was, in some way, proof that he was a spoiler trying to help Democrats in this race. We'll grab our suitcases. Yeah, again, appreciate you taking the time. Thank you, so-- Yes. All right, take care, Dan. Got it. So in his telling, he's just an Alaskan citizen who happens to also be named Dan Sullivan, who objects to Republican Senator Dan Sullivan's policies, to Trump's Republican party more broadly and decides. He's going to run for the United States Senate basically as an independent. Exactly. That's his story. He says it's sort of coincidence that he has the same name and he's still sticking to it. But what do you end up thinking about the story he's telling and does it feel truthful to you? I was skeptical, for sure, because he did not want to talk about the minutia of how he got into this race. Did he speak with anybody? He sort of brushed past that. At the same time, it was plausible. It's possible. I mean, I didn't know for sure. I didn't have proof. So I left this remote part of Alaska with more questions than answers. So on the spectrum of you believing Dan J Sullivan or not, you're somewhere it sounds like in the middle. Yeah, I think that's fair. But then something happened on the democratic side of this race that ultimately blew the whole thing open. Just a few days later, while I was in Anchorage, Alaska, the democratic candidate, Mary Peltola, did something pretty unusual. She fired a handful of her staffers. And these were veteran campaign aides who had been with her for many years at this point. That's a pretty dramatic thing for any candidate to do that close to the election. Yeah, it is. And it made me start asking questions about what was happening with her campaign. That led me on a whole tangent for about a month where I was reporting on what was going on with Mary Peltola, why were staff fired and how did they feel about her? And what I learned is a lot of her former staffers felt that she was an abusive boss. Their accusations ranged from relatively minor issues, such as at one point, she required her staff to feed her family's pet chameleon, which is named the meatball, which only ate live crickets. At one point, they had to feed meatball in her congressional office when she was in Congress. And these live crickets escaped and staff had to recapture them. So that was an example where they felt this was beneath their duties or somewhat demeaning of employees. But there are more serious accusations too that she verbally assaulted staff members on a regular basis, used offensive slurs to describe them and other people. And at one point, even shoved an aide in her congressional office. Wow. I should note that the Peltola campaign has denied many of these stories or said that they were exaggerated by former staff members. So, Kellyn, how does that tangent that reporting you go off to do about the Democratic candidate and her rather unusual management style? How does that bring you back to the Dan Sullivan saga? So one of the employees, Mary Peltola fired in August, was her campaign manager, a woman named Elisa Rios. I began talking to Elisa Rios and she told me a pretty incredible story about what really happened with Dan Jay Sullivan and the role Democrats played in his candidacy. And ultimately, I was able to confirm that what she told me was true. (upbeat music) We'll be right back. Kellyn, once you confirm this account, what do you end up understanding about how the other Dan Sullivan really ended up in this U.S. Senate race in Alaska? Here's what I learned. Last summer, top Peltola aides huddled up with senior Democratic operatives. They were concerned that the Republican party could play some sort of trick and get another Democrat on the ballot to take votes away from Mary Peltola. So they decided they would strike first. Fascinating. They came up with a plan to recruit other candidates on to the Senate ballot and the goal was to divide Republican voters and hope that some of them would vote for these alternative candidates on the ballot, depriving Senator Sullivan of a vote and indirectly benefiting Mary Peltola, the Democrat. As part of that effort, a Peltola staff member was instructed to create a list of the Dan Sullivan's in Alaska. All of the Dan Sullivan's in Alaska. Yeah, as many of them as they could find. And how does the Peltola campaign and these Democratic operatives ultimately persuade one of these Dan Sullivan's to actually run? So what we know is this group of top Democrats brought in an operative on the ground in Alaska. He was a veteran Democrat from Ohio named Jared Kurtz. And what I learned was that Jared Kurtz's recruitment effort was not limited to just Dan Sullivan's. Kurtz's job was to recruit people who might be interested in running for Senate and essentially pack the ballot. And we know that he spoke with at least a handful of people in Alaska, occasionally using pseudonyms to try to obfuscate who he was working for because, as you can imagine, he was trying to get Republicans on the ballot and they would probably not be very amenable to being part of a Democratic plot. He lied. Yeah, I mean, I talked to somebody who said he met a guy named Zane, this is the pseudonym that Kurtz was going by. And he said, hey, have you ever considered running for Senate? What do you think? We really think you should do it. But this guy was not telling this would be candidate who he was working for or who was behind this push. And Jared Kurtz was giving periodic updates on his progress to this group of Peltola aides and national Democrats. On one of these calls, he told them that he had made contact with a man named Dan J. Sullivan who lived in Petersburg. What he told him on this call was that this Dan Sullivan was open to the idea of running for Senate if it would help Mary Peltola because this Dan Sullivan didn't like Trump and he didn't really want to be a politician, but he would consider doing it if it would be helpful. And so what becomes clear is that Dan J. Sullivan did not wake up one morning and just decide to run for U.S. Senate. He was nudged by these Democrats who very much wanted him to enter the race as someone who would hurt Senator Sullivan and help Mary Peltola. Yeah, exactly. And of course, we can't know what was in Dan J. Sullivan's head was he already thinking about this. But he certainly was nudged into doing this by this man, Jared Kurtz. We even know that shortly before Dan J announced his run going back to late May, that Jared Kurtz was in Petersburg. He told somebody that over the phone. And we think that it's possible Jared Kurtz also recruited the fourth candidate on the ballot. His name is Gerald Hicus. He's a Republican. He was running for the House. And he told me that he was approached by somebody who urged him to run for Senate. We don't have a positive confirmation. This was Jared Kurtz in the same way we do with some of these other people. But he certainly was approached by somebody telling him he should run for Senate. Well, so it's possible that this scheme actually resulted in two candidates being on the ballot. It's possible. And I should note, the Peltola campaign and the national Democratic officials have continued to maintain that they didn't have anything to do with this. So what does your reporting ultimately mean for what you mentioned earlier, Trump's legal effort to block certification of the winner of the Alaska Senate race? It would seem like what you found in your reporting might strengthen the argument that the Trump administration is putting forward, assuming that what happened here is in any way illegal, which seems like an important question. We didn't find any evidence of something clearly illegal here. And ballot stacking has been a strategy employed by both parties in the past, including by Republicans in Alaska as recently as this year, when anti-Peltola super PACs spent money boosting democratic candidates in the primary in a very similar manner. Legal experts have said that the Justice Department lawsuit doesn't have a strong case. And it's also worth noting that the Alaska Supreme Court already ruled on the question of whether having two dance elements on the ballot could confuse voters. They said that it was OK. It was allowed to have-- both of those dams on the ballot, the elections division has differentiated them by middle initial, by shortening one of the names to Dan, the other one's Daniel, and the senator is listed on the ballot as an incumbent. So there have been steps taken to try to make clear to voters who's the senator and who's the challenger. Let me just pause on this for a minute, because having looked at a sample ballot for voters in Alaska, it does seem like this could, for some, be slightly confusing. I mean, the name Daniel J Sullivan is right on top of Dan S Sullivan, the incumbent, and the only information that tells you which is which is mostly lower-case parenthetical next to Dan S Sullivan's name that says registered Republican, and then the next word is incumbent. So yes, there's information there that differentiates the Dan Sullivan's, but it's not hugely prominent on this ballot. Yeah, that's true, and it's what Republicans are worried about. They are concerned that a Republican voter will be confused, will vote for Dan J Sullivan, and he will get the vote, and Dan S Sullivan will not benefit from that voter. I should note that Alaska has a system called Ranked Choice Voting. It allows you to rank all four candidates in the ballot in order of preference. So if you are a Republican that's fully filling out your ballot, you rank Dan J first, let's say, but you rank Dan S Sullivan, the incumbent senator's second, he will ultimately get your vote, because we anticipate Dan J Sullivan will not be in contention. He will be eliminated as they tally the votes in this Ranked Choice system. That scenario could mitigate some of this confusion. Got it. It would not seem to mitigate the fury of the Trump administration, which has absorbed your reporting and seems very, very agitated by it. And I have to believe that the president will incorporate this into his larger argument, rhetorically, that Democrats are trying in his words to steal elections, even if ultimately getting this other Dan S Sullivan on the ballot was legal. And even if this tactic is somewhat common in American politics, yeah, I can tell you that just a few minutes ago, President Trump posted on truth, social saying that it had been determined that Democrats in Alaska, he says, quote, illegally searched for and recruited a man named Dan Sullivan to run against our Distinguished Republican Senator. Now the word illegal is certainly a disputable claim, but you can see that they are already adopting this argument. In the end, it seems, Kellan, this really becomes a question of ethics, I guess, and what we expect from our elected officials, especially our senators, I mean, the Senate is arguably the most prestigious elected office in the country outside of the executive branch. And you might expect that recruiting a candidate with the same name would happen in a city council race or a, you know, burrow president race here I'm being a little prerogial about New York, but not necessarily a race for the United States Senate. So how do you think you're reporting that makes clear that the Democrats went and recruited this other Dan Sullivan and tried to confuse voters on the other side is going to land with voters in Alaska. I think there will be some Democrats who say this is the kind of all-out tactics the party needs to embrace in the Trump era when they feel that democracy is on the line. And of course, there will be many Republicans who are furious about this. I think senators Sullivan could make a field day out of it in the closing days of the race, but many voters may simply not care about how Dan J Sullivan got on the ballot. They're focused on their lives, they're focused on the economy, gas prices, all of these things that have been an issue throughout this race. This is an incredibly close competitive race and it's too early to tell exactly how this will play out, but there's one thing we know for sure. Democrats did not want this story to come out and they certainly did not want it to come out just days before the election. Well, Kellyn, thank you very much, we really appreciate it. Thank you. You can read more from Kellyn Browning and our entire political desk on the New York Times app. The Times is making all of its election coverage free inside the app for a limited time. There, you'll find in-depth analysis, poll trackers, and live updates throughout the midterms. Plus, if it's your first time downloading the NYT app, you can access all of our journalism free for 30 days. So give it a try. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Officials in Spain are blaming human error for a horrific train crash on Wednesday morning that killed at least 68 people. The accident occurred when one high-speed passenger train rear-ended another near the city of Toledo. Shortly before the collision, train traffic controllers told one train to continue on its journey, even though another train was stopped about 15 miles ahead of it on the same track. Spain's transportation minister called that decision "inexplicable." The accident comes months after another deadly collision in Spain that involved the same train carriers and the same route in that crash back in January, 46 people were killed. Today's episode was produced by Lexi D'Al, Anna Foley, and Carlos Prieto, with help from Eric Kruppki. It was edited by Maria Byrne and Paige Cowatt, contains music by Alicia Baehtube, Dan Powell, and Marion Luzano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Wonderly. That's it for the daily. I'm Michael Babbara. See you tomorrow.