District Club: Will the Fake Dan Sullivan Help Democrats Steal Alaska’s Senate Seat?

It's time for the midterms. The forecasters are moving races left by the dozen. The polls have Democrats ahead in Michigan, in Texas, and on the generic ballot. But after a fake polling scandal and very real polling misses in the 2024 cycle, where new analysis shows nearly every Senate poll overstated Democrats should anyone believe the numbers. In Alaska, a New York Times bombshell. Top aides to Democrat Mary Peltola allegedly combed the voter rolls to find anyone named Dan Sullivan to put a lookalike on the ballot against the real one. Peltola and the DSCC deny it, but the Justice Department is already in court. Is this a dirty trick or a federal conspiracy? Three days out, and a lot can still change. This is the district club. Welcome to another episode of the district club. I am Tim Rice, DailyWire's DC Bureau Chief, joined as always by my colleague, Ben Dominic, DailyWire, opinion editor. Mary Margaret Olehan is out this week, but we are happy to be joined by Korean Hajar, Washington Post, opinion columnist, and Ian Russell, a Democratic media consultant, strategist, both. Guys, thank you so much for being here. We obviously have one big thing to talk about, and it's the midterms. They're finally here. It feels like we've been on this midterm journey for, I don't know, somewhere from between five and 15 years, but finally, in just a couple of days, Americans will go to the polls and throw things out of whack for the next few years. So I kind of want to start, usually we start by leaning into one of the big stories of the past week or the week ahead, and we'll get there in a second. But I kind of want to start zooming out, and just generally you both have been working on or covering these campaigns from the beginning, from earlier than most people, even in Washington, actually started paying attention to midterm races. And you've seen it all the way through, so I'm super interested in both of your thoughts. What's the story of this midterm cycle going to be after the last vote is counted on Tuesday night or in California's case Thursday morning? Yeah, right? Oh, man, I mean, I think when people ask for my general predictions, I always give them the unsatisfying answer that I refuse to give them predictions, but broad strokes, I think the Senate is going to be much closer than people think. I think Republicans will perform stronger than people are expecting. The House, I've spent less time on, but it is looking like that's trending blue. Look, I think like broad trends to keep an eye on, incumbency. Which incumbency are able? There's a huge frustration with incumbency, with establishments. It's all sort of part of the same voter frustration that I've been hearing across the country when I'm going out to talk to people. And I'm really curious who can buck that. I think Susan Collins will be a test case for a lot of these trends, specifically because she is a very effective incumbent. It's not like she's just sitting around in office, amassing power. She's actually bringing money back to the state of Maine. That's one example. And then can you, can effective Republicans escape national frustrations with the economy, with foreign entanglements? And I think Maine is another test case of that where Collins has tried to establish her independence. So that's the race that I'll be watching for these broader trends, but I mean, it's going to be a crazy night. So as a Democrat, the thing I'll be looking very closely at, I think, which has a lot of relevance for the future of the party, is what types of states and districts can Democrats win in. And that will determine the size of whatever wave environment we're in. In 2018, Democratic gains were mostly, not exclusively, but mostly restricted to suburbs where Trump's numbers tanked. In fact, as you all would know, Republicans picked up seats in the Senate while Democrats did a great job at the House level. We had a couple of aberrations to that, one in Maine with Jared Golden against Bruce Pollockwin, but generally it was a suburban anti-Trump revolt. Twenty years ago, Democrats were winning Senate seats in the Midwest and the Great Plains. People were willing to vote for Democrats because we weren't as ideologically Balkanized as we are as a country right now. So one of the very key things I'll be looking for on Tuesday night, and then as we analyze the results afterwards, is that Balkanization still containing Democratic gains to a number of the toss-ups, mostly in suburban higher educated, higher income districts, or has the wall burst and the flood kind of gone everywhere more similar to-- Well, can I ask you, but isn't it a problem for Democrats? Let's map this out as a scenario, because I think it's a realistic scenario. Let's end up in a situation here where you've got a 50/50 Senate, and part of that includes Trojax and winning in Maine. It includes-- And John Federman doing whatever. Well, it includes-- well, that's what I'm getting to. Includes L. Syed winning in Michigan, which is very reasonable. It includes Mary Peltola pulling off her ridiculous scheme to win in Alaska. And you end up in a situation where you've got a 50/50 Senate with a map that I don't think DC Democrats would actually like. I think that they would actually like to see some of these other candidates from states that you're talking about performing much better than ones who are going to be a problem, either a problem because they have the priorities of L. Syed. They are a problem because they're literally a symbol of a purposeful election fraud precipitated by the DSCC, according to The New York Times, according to some radical right-wing journal. And a cousin lover in Maine who is replacing someone who is actually quite useful to Democrats over the years in Susan Collins. Yeah. How does that make you feel? Because it's a realistic outcome. It is. I mean, we could probably spend the rest of the program talking about what the purpose of the United States Senate is and what you define success at. I mean, the days of six-- The purpose of the United States Senate is to do nothing. No. The scenery you said is perfect. Everybody can give their speeches and go home and it's a problem, maybe, for Trump appointees that require Senate confirmation. But I don't think this is a good thing for the country, but the days that I referenced from 2006, 2008, we had 60 votes in the Senate, we did Obamacare, passing large legislation is not going to happen for the next two years. Yeah. But my point is simply this. I think that the problem that you face with this Democratic map is that there has been all this optimism about Democrats winning in places that they long to win in these red leaning or even deep red states. I mean, South Carolina is a perfect example. I do not think that Darling Graham is going to lose in South Carolina because I've seen this happen time and again, where-- I mean, Lindsey was, I think, a coin flip, you know, the last time that he was running, you know, the way that this has always played out is that a lot of these red states, they attract the hopes of Democrats and then you end up with a makeup of a Senate that is fundamentally different than perhaps the one that DC Democrats want. How are you going to handle the fact that someone like L. Syed is going to come in here and he's going to want to direct the course of the party. He's not just going to want to be a back bencher. He's going to be-- I mean, you could end up being the closest thing that you have had since the Tea Party movement put Ted Cruz in the Senate and screwed with pretty much everything that Mitch McConnell wanted to do. Do you have concerns about that from the Chuck Schumer perspective? Well, and I think on top of that, to make life even more complicated for Senate Democratic leadership is the fact that half the Senate Democratic caucus is probably running for president. Yes. So, more so than one freshman. I think John Assoff, who they're not even running ads against now on the road. Right. What's that great hair, man? It's the only deal. But I do think, you know, if you look at 2019, what did AOC say, woke one was pretty crazy. I mean, I remember watching, I remember that. I remember. I remember how crazy we got. Wow. The presidential debate with Castro suggested decriminalizing border crossings on stage. Because Castro was trying to get an advantage in the primary in a way that he didn't have the luxury in order to probably care about the Democratic Party's brand writ large. So what happens when half the Senate Democratic conference is running for president? I was trying to edge themselves out around the left flank, trying to figure out their path to victory. That's a challenge. Yeah. But I think after 16, how 20 ended and then certainly the debacle of 2024, I've become a political Darwinian, let everybody jump in and go when you take boisterous primary on our side because we've tried the alternative with rather middling results. Let me, let me ask you this question just to pin this down. Who will be more happy about the outcome on election night, Rahman Manual or AOC? I'm enough of a team player to believe that both of them will be happy for different reasons. I actually think that's a good answer. Rahman's classic. Rahman will have his scorecard out and Rahman will be happier, a congressman who came in on a 2006 wave once told me, "Rahman never forgave him for winning." Rahman was happy that he won but he never forgave him for winning because Rahman had his district by district scorecard and he had this guy losing. This was a wave suit. He had this guy losing and Rahman would prefer a majority but his picks to win and the congressman told me this ingest and obviously how it was forgiven but Rahman is a very keen strategist and I can tell you real quick on Rahman, Rahman is engaged in these house races still. He's like a de-triple c-chair emeritus and he's like on the phone with candidates in reach districts coaching them directing donors there. The guy just can't quit. It's remarkable. How does that work on a presidential debate stage? That's what I thought you were going to say. I think they'll both be happy because if the freshman Democrat class, if all the Democrats win essentially, right, the class that Ben just outlined gets inaugurated, then Rahm is going to look at this and say, all right, great, the crazies are going to make their speeches and go home. That's my pitch to the Americans. Hey, remember me? I was the normal guy that got stuffed out of the Obama administration. And AOC is going to say, oh, great, I'm going to be able to go campaign in Michigan with L.S.I.D. and Texas with James Talloriko and with Projects in Maine. So she's seeing surrogates. He's seeing a contrast play. Yeah. And to your point, as not a good Democratic team player, I'd rather have the same conclusion. And I will say, like, she is a team, she's become a real team player. I mean, sending a million bucks to Michigan for a L.S.I.D. is not a normal thing for a house member to do. Like, that is a very, very solid thing that AOC has done. I think she's really evolved in how she's approaching dealing with the party. So, Karin, when you look at this setup, you know, that again, kind of, I think that the assumptions built in the DC swamp perspective are, you know, you mentioned Talloriko. I don't put Talloriko kind of in the same camp, because I think that he's at least a fake centrist. He sees a slot type, you know. And he has to be. And he has to be the hamburger. Yeah. And he will go out and vomit. And he will eat the burger. So the point that I'm talking about is I think that we could end up with a. Everyone's kind of baked in this idea of a more radical house. And there've been multiple articles that have been written about how Hakeem Jeffries is going to manage, you know, this incoming, you know, onslaught of, you know, Mamdani sort of imitators or people who have, you know, used the same type of approach to try to influence conversations. I would point to the Mamdani experience as something that's going to be a problem on that front for democratic leadership. The Mamdani experience is interesting because the amount of money that was spent on ads versus influencers. Influencers were overwhelmingly the point of investment. And that influencer campaign, as the Columbia Journalism Review detailed and others have since, continued after he was elected, including, by the way, from my perspective, misuse of taxpayer money in some of these cases. Some of them have now posted things on Instagram saying, "I will publicly declare, if I'm being, you know, paid for this thing that I'm posting." I think all these people are going to come in with influencers backing them up and they're going to have an army behind them on whatever issue they want to prioritize. Something that we haven't really seen since, again, the days of the Tea Party when, you know, Republicans saw a bunch of people come in who had a separate contingency that could make something a priority that they didn't want to deal with. Or it could run with an idea like we could actually stop Obamacare with a filibuster that could take over the Senate for weeks at end. Is this a situation where Democrats are going to come in and basically the leadership that is going to get keyed up is going to completely lose control of what's going on? I mean, it certainly looks that way and it's not helpful when you have leaders in the Democratic Party basically saying when they're asked about radicals running in these elections and winning primaries, they're basically saying, "Well, we're a big tent party. The tent can only be so big to keep control of the caucus, right?" And in some cases, I mean, when the DSA platform came out and basically cheered on abolishing the Senate and various different institutions in America, are you going to have a party where people are running to abolish the bodies that they're actually running to be in? So I think that this whole idea of a big tent, it was sort of a survival strategy, but it's going to be a problem. And to your point about influencers, it reminded me of, I went to a Graham Platner town hall back when he was still running. And people asked him, you know, like, "How can we know that you're going to be an effective senator basically getting at the tension of being a freshman senator running against somebody who's the chair of appropriations?" And he said something along the lines of, "Well, you know, you're going to see me everywhere. I'm going to be out there, fighting, fighting, fighting." The idea that he was going to be out and talking and probably using sort of this, you know, online network and he had built a pretty effective one to get his radical messages out there. And so I think you're going to see a lot of that from the activist stems if they do win in these elections. And this leads to the other thing that I think is going to be a problem for Democrats. Look, they're running on affordability. They're saying Republicans didn't, weren't able to fix this problem. We're going to fix it. Well, Democrats weren't able to fix it going into 2024. So if you have people out there influencing investigations are going to be a big thing to how targeted our DEMs investigation is going to be. These are the biggest applause lines I hear at rallies across the country when Democrats are like, "We're going to investigate Republicans. Crowd goes wild." But what are you doing to get at the issues that people elected you into office for inflation, cost of living, foreign entanglements, all of these things? So I think going into 28, if they get bogged down in the influencer culture in sort of the activism and the investigations, they're not going to have a platform to run on. It's funny. I feel like what's happening is Democrats are teeing themselves up to have the next four, like the next four years through 28 and maybe beyond. Democrats are teeing themselves up to have the four years that Republicans have just had. Right? Like sort of radicals, mavericks, outsiders getting elected in the Senate as well as the House. Yes. The party being driven a lot by influencers and by the cause celebs that are endorsed by influencers. And I started thinking this, you said, are we going to get to a point where we have Democrats voting to abolish the body that they're in? We have Republicans in the Department of Education trying to shut down the Department of Education, which I'm not saying I'm not in favor of, but you can say we had this moment and this is, we've sort of been left in a kind of political wilderness. I wonder if, in a lot, and I've been thinking this a lot, I'm thinking a lot about Mary Peltola specifically, and we should talk about her in a second, but are, will, if Dem, will the Democratic victory, the likely Democratic victories on Tuesday, sow the seeds for their destruction in 2020? Well, the question, let's, let's put it this way to you Ian. What happens when six months from now, Cara Swisher goes on and says, I can't stand so and so Democrat, they still have an arrest at Elon. Well, I mean, as I said, clients, I'm not going to answer hypotheticals, but, no, no, no, no, no, no, but that's going to be something that happens. They are going to become frustrated with the fact that the influencer culture around these Democrats wants something different than raising promise to the, the voters who are actually going to be the deciding factor here. And what they are actually capable of doing. But you know where those two things meet, is that Pete Hegseth's office door. It's going to be a very bumpy ride ahead for the Secretary of Defense. You know, that's interesting that you think he's still going to have that. Well, there it is. Ben is predicting, I have been predicting for the past month that he was the fall guy. Donald Trump's going to come out on Wednesday morning and say, boy, who's Republicans had a bad night? Somebody's head is going to roll proverbially, metaphorically. No, but I am here. Can you answer? I mean, they want heads on pikes. I mean, they do. They want Stephen Miller investigated. They want Elon investigated. Not just investigated. I mean, you know, I'm using Swisher as an example because she's an extreme case, but she's a prominent one. You know, she's talked about, you know, they need to put his kids in jail. Well, I assume for consistency that anybody who's got a problem with Ilhan Omar is also wanting to look into Elon Musk's citizenship status and whether he lied on his forms, whether he stayed in the country illegally. Let's open the door. Let's have that conversation. But I do think the Democratic Party is actually evolved in a very pragmatic way on the issue of impeachment. You're not hearing leadership and you're not hearing rank and file candidates talking about impeaching Trump. The focus is going to be on cabinet secretaries and the corruption of the Senate. Okay, so every single senator on the Democratic side, okay, was arguing that you could not impeach Alejandro Mayorkas, but you could not that it was in fact a constitutional violation. Why would they change their minds? Well, you know, circumstances change. It gets to your question though. I mean, the rank and file might have learned their lesson. And you sort of hear this from some dens where they're like, you know, it might have gone too far. We need to stay focused. But to your original question to me, I mean, a lot of people who are not rank and file might win these races and are looking at Mamdani and are seeing how, you know, the influencer culture around him and the activist, activist culture around him is really paid off. Are you, is the tent too big? Can Jeffries keep everyone in line? Can Schumer keep everyone in line? That's going to be the question. Yeah. And I do think and I thought that was a Pelosi guy. And she had, regardless of partisanship or ideology, I think everybody will admit she is one of the talents of 21st century, 20th and 20th century American politics. She had a control of her confidence. But she also had the control of the money. And she had, and those things are probably related, but she was a keen legislative strategy. But you don't have that anymore. You have a new generational leadership. I'm a big fan of leader Jeffries. I think he'll make a great speaker. There will be, this is not Pelosi after 2006. This is a very different set of circumstances. The Democratic conference is in a different place. The center of gravity and the party is in a different place. But Pelosi became speaker in 2007 with a Democratic presidential primary revving up. It was thought to be Hillary Clinton's to lose. Some guy named Barack Hussein Obama was probably not Democratic ticket. The Democrats ticket out of the wilderness. And here we are. You know, Tim just made a point about the experience that Republicans have had over the last couple of years. One of those experiences included seeing a speaker of the house actually go down because of a very small group of people who were able to get him out. If the house's maturity is as slim as it may end up being, just given the map, you know, you could still have a phenomenal night in terms of, you know, in terms of vote totals. At what point do you think that there is a concern? Is there a concern that Jeffries would get challenged in a similar way? No, because there isn't. I'm obviously not an expert. You all would know, and your listeners would know probably far more than I ever will about the internal dynamics of the house Republican conference. But it seems like a pretty, like Republican house speakers, much like Roman emperors tend to not die in their sleep at an old age. There tends to be some element in the party that just thrives on taking them out. Whereas, you know, we're having a conversation for the first time, I'm going to save my comment about how he has to it for, well, fair enough, but like, don't point at me. I'm just saying, yeah, I'm sorry, something you want to add about that. But there's a different, there isn't a, there will be, I think, focus around Pentagon funding because of the war in Iran. There'll be some other issue by issue things. You've identified a few of these. But there isn't an anti Jeffries. Yeah. Just for Jeffries element. Well, yeah, there's like a, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think, you know, in the, well, the McCarthy situation was obviously a unique case because of the feud that he had with Matt Gates. But I think with the problem for Jeffries is going to be, if he tries to prioritize the things that DC Democrats want him to prioritize, it will inevitably clash with the kind of influencer culture that I'm talking about that want him. I mean, the most criticism that Mamdani has gotten, by the way, and if you've paid attention to his influencers, the most criticism that he's gotten is not arresting BB. Yeah. Okay. That's like been the thing that he's not done that they are most mad about. To me, that tracks as kind of a similar thing that can happen to Jeffries, you know, potentially to Schumer in terms of, you know, we thought you were going to do X thing and you haven't, John Jr. is still wandering the Earth, free to do whatever he wants, talent around with Russian oligarchs. To give Mamdani a little credit, I mean, in some cases, you are forced to moderate. He did not arrest BB. How, whatever his excuse was. He also did not fire Jessica Tish, which was the other thing that these activists were calling on him to do. And I think he just realized that that is something that you simply cannot do. And he went against his own comment. But I think to Ben's point that he has, he can do that because there's no real way for him to be rude. Exactly. A team Jeffries is going to have to come to that same crossroads, but if he starts leading, yeah, they're going to try to throw him out and they can not very easily, but considerably more easily than you can toss out a sitting mayor. But no. Yeah. Well, what do I was just to say? You brought a Pelosi. The thing that Pelosi was so great at is she did two things. She had total control over the money side of things, which made these people beholden to her on a certain level. And then the other thing is she always gave them a shiny object. Run with your green new deal. Go run. Work yourself into a paper over it. Do whatever you want with it. It will not pass, but we know we will go, you know, work out your energy. There's a lesson in leadership there. I'm following you. What is the shiny object that you are going to give these new crazy? There are a lot of titles floating around on the House Democratic Conference that were created by Pelosi, partly as a giving people a seat at the table. I mean, and the best way to modify potential rivals is to give them a seat at the table. It was not a dictatorial style of leadership. It was incredibly effective because it was very effective, but it didn't feel like a dictator. London is shiny object. It's obviously the grocery store. I would say we could do a lot worse as Democrats than to have people with the skill and pragmatism and communications ability of the mayor of New York. He's not turned out to be the boogeyman that a lot of Republicans swore that he would be up and down. Well, how can he be the boogeyman with Donald Trump's whom? He also, but also, you know, sometimes like I made all these promises when I didn't think I was going to get this job. Right. So, you know, in a lot of ways, Mimdani, I think, is every other, he's very caught. There's not that much daylight between him and past mayors of New York, which is to say, it's the ultimate, uh, to quote a former governor of New York. It's the ultimate campaign and poetry governing pros. Like, it's just like, just like the Blasio ran as like, basically Friedrich angles and then was kind of indistinguishable from build of Blasio, or from, uh, from Mike Bloomberg, except in his mistakes. But before we get too far into gaming out this, this grand democratic future, let's consider the possibility. Uh, that maybe Democrats won't win that big. There are a lot of races that are still we were just talking about the show that just the other day, the Cook political report, uh, I would say suspiciously timed with its very glossy Washington Post profile, no offense to your colleagues. I was like, look at these guys. They, uh, declared every single race to toss up, basically. So the polling authorities say that everything is a toss up. And there's probably like five really big ones that we can try to hit on. But oh, Creen, I really want to get your take on the Dan Sullivan's debacle because you of the four of us have spent the most time traversing the country this past year, talking to voters. I don't know if you've actually been to Alaska, but no, I tried. Yeah, you've been, you've talked, you've talked to voters, met them where they were. Do you think that the rev the Dan, the New York Times report, the revelations of this scheme is going to affect that race at all? You know, I haven't tracked Alaska's closely as I've tracked other races. So, but something that I learned, I took like this polling class in college, it was sort of a data analytics class. And we read literature about, um, you know, when voters tune into races, how closely, this is when voters are tuning in. So they're not, I mean, I think generally voters understand that there is a really hot race in Alaska right now. What they're now finding out from the New York Times, no less, is that the Democrat running has, you know, there has been some scheming in the background. And one of the top voter concerns right now, per Fox News is corruption. This is above inflation. This is above gas prices. This was a poll that came out a couple weeks ago. And so I think that anything that falls into the ballpark of just, you know, it just looks shady. Voters are really on guard about that right now. And I'm hearing that across the country, people are just tired of dirty politics, no matter its manifestation. So I think that like as voters are tuning in right now and starting to clock into the races, this could be a factor that hurts Democrats. The year Democrats, how are Democrats feeling about the, about the Dan Sullivan's, uh, and the revelation? Well, there's a lot of confidence in Mary Piltola as a battle tested candidate. You know, she, she won some really difficult House races against Sarah Palin, no less. Um, Alaska, every, every state and every member of Congress would tell you that their district or state is unique. And Alaskans are right. Um, that the political dynamics are right, are unique. The, the top four system that they do, which is how this thing. Uh, and, and, you know, I, obviously I read the New York Times story and it is unclear to me that there's anything in there that actually broke the law. A guy called Dan Sullivan has a right to run for office, whether or not his name is Dan Sullivan or not. Um, I disagree with you, but I'll let you know. But in the lawyers will have plenty to say about that. I don't think that the Trump administration did any favors for their Dan Sullivan by preemptively announcing that they would contest the election because to voters who are concerned about corruption, having the federal government fire the first shot on that. Yeah, that's true. From a political, as a political scientist, I would say, that's not helpful probably to, to do. Um, but Alaska, you got to remember, huge state geographically, but small state population-wise, much like Maine, which you've done a lot of reporting on, everybody kind of knows everybody. And so the, the paid communication, and I say this as an admaker, the paid communication plays less of a role than what everybody's been talking about for months. And this is going to be a very, very close. When the Alaska Supreme Court ruled on the question of whether, yes, the second Dan Sullivan, Dan Sullivan, Dan Sullivan, I think he's older, maybe he might be the first Dan Sullivan. Was able to stay on the ballot because it was challenged by the Alaska Republicans. They ruled that he could stay on the ballot in part because there was no existing evidence that he was not a good faith candidate for office. The New York Times has since reported that not only did Mary Peltola's campaign seek out people with the same name as the existing income in Canada, that they hired people, that they paid them in order to try to recruit those people, that they had conversations about it on the phone regularly with members of the DSCC, that they did so in a way that was intentionally framed to try to get someone into the top four in order to confuse voters. And they even joked about it within text chains that have since been released by a former campaign worker that was, that were published in the New York Times about how easy it would be to fool Alaska voters. How is that not evidence that goes exactly against the point of the Alaska Supreme Court? I don't think that, I mean, I don't even think this has to be whether it's legal or not. It's more just the impression that it gives voters. Voters are, there is so much fatigue about shady business around government, whether it is, you know, illegal corruption or whether it is just scheming in the background. And I think, I think that this will probably hurt Mary Peltola for that reason because voters are tired of this. Well, but I do want to answer this question. How is that not? That, to me, that completely explodes the argument. Well, I mean, I don't have any first hand, I'm not doing anything in Alaska, I don't mean first the analogy of this. I don't know what Nate Peltola knew and when she knew it. I can say it's a political This is not which to your purport. You don't want me talking about any adviser. Her former campaign adviser insists she was fully aware. That's a disgruntled former. I also want to add one more thing. I want to add one to Ben's list. Which is that I think that you guys might have been right about the DOJ firing the first shot being a bad move. But it's not actually the first shot. Is it because they're responding to the Alaska Supreme Court's ruling in light of the evidence that Ben just laid out? So it's actually not. This is actually what the Department of Justice is supposed to do. But it's the first. Well, but the president came out and said that they did it because he told them to. Well, of course, the general reports the president, but this is a story. That's not supposed to work. That's actually not one of the more divisive things I think the Trump DOJ has done. Look, we can have the conversation going back and forth of where this started. But ultimately, like, if we're going to zoom out and think about voters, they are not tracking the tit for tat. And there is a certain, you know, the Trump DOJ has perceived a certain way. And if the, if in this, if you're going to argue the first shot was fired from the Trump DOJ, I think a lot of voters would sympathize with that. One other point, though, that I want to bring up about this. And this is something that stuck out to me about that New York Times article. By the way, New York Times is cycle around. I mean, they took out Platner. They took out, you know, the generation they run. This like talent. It's Halloween. I'm a proud subscriber. That's right. That's right. That can't be very wise. So anyway, there was a line that was in there that bothered me. The person who they hired, who has since deleted his LinkedIn. He's deleted all his, they can't find, you know, they can't find him to talk just as the same way. They can't find the other Dan Sullivan to talk because he doesn't. It's a very remote. He lives in a remote area. Yeah, you know, it's hard to find a guy who was by the way, emailing people as recently as like a month ago, you know, all, you know, including reporters, in fact, they described him as a specialist in this type of activity. They hired him from Ohio to come to Alaska to do this because he was a specialist. Does that give you any qualms? Well, I don't know how it is on your side of the aisle, folks, but the number of political consultants, the number of political consultants to do this kind of thing, who inflate their resumes to become specialists in something. Maybe the LinkedIn versus real life, I can, I can, I can. Are you at all concerned that there's other races that he's worked on in the past? Or are you concerned that the, whether or not his resume was inflated, there's a guy out there saying, I specialize in skullduggery. The D.S.C.C said, that's our guy. Right on my LinkedIn profile, skullduggery. But look at it. It's silly season. This always happens to some degree when it went across as the line into, into illegal behavior as a conversation appropriately for the DOJ. But look at Nebraska right now. So you've got incumbent Republican Senator P. Ricketts running for re-election. He's always had, I worked for Senator Ben Nelson when we beat him in 2006. Ricketts has always had some, he's not been the most popular Senator even in a red state. He's running in Stan Osborne, who's an independent back by, I'm not breaking any news here, backed by national Democratic organizations, he's endorsed by the State Party Chair. It's not a secret kind of what's going on here. There were some disgruntled, backed by Republicans, some disgruntled folks started the working people's party to try to get another person on the ballot. So then some other folks started the America first party to, to, I mean, it's silly season. And all the time that was spent on starting parties is different. Starting parties is different. Yeah, it just happens. Well, no, no, but starting parties is different than something that actually can violate the law, which is an attempt to purposefully obscure the actual ballot in a way that is designed to. Right. How law can be mad at Ralph Nader all he wants, but he didn't know anything wrong. Yes. There is a degree. You can change his name to Al Gore. I think partly because of our candidate finance system, which no matter how you feel, you know, we're excited all year on. I think we have some problems that need to be fixed in our campaign finance system. This dark money sloshing around has created an entrepreneurial space for people who want to see themselves as major actors and campaigns to play around in. It wasn't dark money that did this. Yeah. I think part of this is. Well, I can't play this on dark money. No, no, no, no. It's unclear as far as I can recall. The New York Times didn't say who was paying for what. And so some of the. Well, I don't think his campaign has a single dollar. He hasn't had a single event. He hasn't done anything. He doesn't have signs. Yeah. They literally just paid this consultant guy $87,000 to convince someone as he crisscrossed the straight, the state, docking it every day in Sullivan. Also, yeah. I just want to reiterate one more time that even if the money could be as dark as humanly possible, but it was getting routed through the DSCC. So it's not like this was. There was never an allegation of the story that the DSCC was involved financially at any of it. No, I know. I'm saying the scheme was routed or the DSCC. I'm saying you can say the money came from the guy. I'm saying they were involved. No, no, no, no. The money only explains so far when the party is involved. No, I think the guy did not work for the DSCC. He was not contracted with the DSCC. He's not showing up on any of the DSCC FEC reports. Look, this is an awareness of what's going on or having some sense of something happening is a lot of different than paying for that. I think the real problem that you've got with this is the way that this story seems to be headed. And I think it would be a perfect conclusion to this ridiculous midterm election. Is that we end up determining the control of the Senate based on the outcome in the last year. Oh, God. It was started. I know. You will over. Am I finally going to a last year? No, it's a beautiful place to knock yours out. It's December, by the way. Hey guys, it's Tim Rice. Here again to talk to you about FreeSpoke. FreeSpoke is an incredible new app. A search engine, a political research tool, all in one. It is rapidly becoming my favorite app, my favorite way to stay on top of politics and the news. And look, we are just days away from the midterms. We've been working for this for a whole year, maybe more in some cases. There's been a lot of news in the past couple of weeks and there's going to be so much more between now and election day. And one way to keep up with all of the late breaking stories, polls, valid issues, everything that you could possibly need is to check out FreeSpoke. So on the show today, we got into the situation with Mary Peltola and the Dan Sullivan's in Alaska. We obviously only just scratched the surface of that issue because it's such a long and crazy story. If you're interested in learning more though, you can pop over to FreeSpoke, type in Mary Peltola and all automatically you are getting search results so much better than any of the other search engines that you're used to. You get a detailed overview, a consensus summary, what all the pundits agree on. Then it gets into the actual news stories. Now, each news story, it'll tell you what the outlets leaning is, whether it's right, left, or center. You can explore perspectives, you can change your blend of perspectives if you want more from the right, more from the left. Then these are my favorite sorts of features. A little breakout box for Mary Peltola with just different buttons to press to go to all these different sites. 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So once again, go to the app store right now and download FreeSpoke for free or head over to GetFreeSpoke.com/DailyWire and use that code DistrictClub30 for 30% off a premium subscription. I promise you won't regret it. I do want to include, we've had these conversations throughout this process that we've looked back at the situation regarding polls. And I do think that we need to have one last conversation about polls before everyone pretends that we forget what happened this cycle. There was a great tweet that Jake over at Punchfold was laughing about this morning that was a CNN headline, "Poll voters very distrustful of polls." And I think-- Not the onion. Yes, and I think that we really have-- I think we actually passed a point in this cycle. My thesis is this, the threat from Brendan Carr, I think, is real. And by the way, he's not somebody who I think is going to fade away in the next two years regardless of these outcomes. He has said that major networks have a responsibility when it comes to vetting polls that falls under their licensure things. You know, all the different, you know, rigor moral that is right. related to those regulations, that includes not trying to deceive the people who are watching your network, and that that includes running with fake polls or running with, you know, these shoddy polls, etc. I don't know how you would adjudicate that practically, but I do think that we kind of reach peak poll this midterm in a way that we haven't before. I've had, you know, we had an interview this past week with a pollster who's a partner of daily wire signal who's who made the point that it's easier and cheaper to do a shoddy poll now than ever before, that responsible media organizations have pulled back their budgets, and, you know, they, you know, he pointed to there's five examples now of different completely fraudulent polls, etc. But that they're going to be more. He implied they're going to be more that we learn of after the election. Yeah. This is a problem. How do we solve this problem? Well, on Brendan Carr, I think this brings up another conversation about abolishing the FCC, you know, the government. Oh, my gosh. It's your libertarian flag there. Okay. I mean, the government getting to say what is a fake poll and not a fake poll should chill every, should send a chill down every American spine. But, no, I mean, there is, there is a problem here. And for what it's worth, the idea that, you know, Americans don't really trust polls. I've never met a voter who is like really gung-ho about a poll, nor a voter. And I've been talking to like voters across the country all year, nor a voter who has been pulled. So it's going to be really, I've been told. I've never met a voter who's been pulled or at least who has told me that they've been pulled when we're talking about polls. Talk to more Mainers right now because I don't know how anything. In Main hasn't been pulled. Man is a really interesting example because Main is another, I mean, like I think in some of these states where you have large rural populations, we should really the next day be looking how the polls stacked up to the count. Oh, yeah. And we make sure to poll Jeff so we have the black, you know, percentage. Yeah, because even Collins has talked about the fact that like a lot of her voters are not on a lot of these polls are conducted online and a lot of her voters are not even on the internet. Like Main is more rural than people realize. I think it's also going to be interesting to see how Texas turnout looks like outside of the cities. So there's a lot. I mean, this is not a new story though. People don't trust the polls. They don't like the polls. I'm saying it's not a new story. I am contending that I think this cycle was particularly bad for a non, you normally see people complaining and talking about polls and presidential because they're arguing about the presidential because that's what they're actually arguing about. I have never seen the level of like the polls are BS kind of discourse. With real world impact. Yes, with real world, especially within primaries. Yeah, within primaries. And so it's going to be exacerbated by in 24 stories that the polls were wrong in 26th the story is that they're fake. You don't really get a third cycle. And you've got evidence to make that case. But this is part of the thing that keeps me up at night about the polls is because we're as you know, and practitioners on the Republican side too, or we're just trying to get an accurate look at what's going on. Parties have to make resource allocation decisions and individual campaigns have to determine which way to go. One of the stories of this cycle on the house level right now is that everybody's got a tied internal in deep red districts. You got a Republican Republican incumbents at 45% and their democratic challengers at 46% or something like that. Is this indicative like I started with in 2006 where that meant that you know, you were going to have all the undecided probably swing to the challenger or is it like 2020? In 2020, a lot of democratic congressional incumbents coming in off the 2018 wave. They placed where they're polling had them in their polling. They might have been at 51. 52%. They were up 10 points over their Republican challenger in 2020. And then when the numbers came in, when the results came in, they didn't move. All the undecideds went to the Republican because Republicans getting, Republican voters getting the calls or getting the text just didn't want to deal with polls. So what's hiding in those undecideds? It would be inconceivable 10 or 15 years ago for a bunch of incumbents of either party to be sitting in the low to mid 40s. And now all these polls show it. So what does it actually mean just from a purely like trying to learn from what happened standpoint? That's something to watch after the election. What you mentioned the rural districts in Texas. I think you're particularly right. The valley in Texas, I think polling there is very, very difficult to do anyway in a normal cycle. What are some of the races on the, you know, you focus more on the Senate on the house level? What are the things that you're going to be paying attention to? On election night, understanding that they're likely to be called earlier, you know, in a lot of situations than some of these Senate races, especially the ones that are in the Midwest, that indicate what kind of night it's going to be. Yeah. On the house side, you know, obviously the Eastern Seaboard, but look at Kentucky 6, which is a district that has some Democratic DNA, but Republicans have held it's open because the incumbent was running for the Senate. They closed their polls relatively early. So keep an eye on that, open seat, pretty good indicator, I think of the direction of travel for the night. Main two Jared Goldens open seat where Paul LePage is running against a further left Democrat than is probably good for that district. They usually count votes pretty fast there. If it's a close race, we won't know for a long time, but it'll at least give you a sense of the direction of travel. And then honestly, Florida, since 2000, has been great about counting votes quickly. So you'll be able to at least, I think, see how far the Democratic wave might go from looking at a few of those with the major health warning that I think a lot of Democrats, you know, down half a bottle of whiskey after seeing Miami-Dade results in 2020 because of the collapse there that turned out to be-- You're presumed to the Democrats to drink whiskey. I know I just turned out to not be indicative of how the night was going. And then as we were joking about California, we'll know some time around Thanksgiving. Tim, do you have anything in particular that you're going to be looking at that might be called early, just, you know, for listeners or viewers who might be wanting to pay attention? It's funny. I'm actually not looking at the ones that are going to get called early. I'm thinking more about the ones that are going to get called late, or that really drag out. And it's honestly for me, it's Kansas, Alaska, on the Senate side. We should also take this brief moment to encourage everybody to join Ben and Mary Margaret and I and the rest of the daily wire team for our midterm coverage on Tuesday. I will actually be watching all of these races because I'm going to be our man in front of the electoral map. So, pray for your boy. But yeah, no, those are my two. I don't know if it's a big deal. Yes, of course. Do you have anything? I'm going to be in Maine. So Maine has been what I've been calling my baby race. I've been covering it the longest this cycle. And from the beginning, I mean, like Susan Collins has run the same race. It's going to be a test of our politics local, because if they are, she is without a doubt, the stronger candidate. Troy Jackson's been in Maine government for about two decades. People know his record. He came in third in the gubernatorial primary. So Democrats have already had their say on Troy Jackson. If he wins, it will purely be for national frustrations. So I think that that would actually be a pretty good bellweather to watch too, because Susan Collins is a particularly strong Senate candidate. She happens to have an R and extra her name. That's her biggest weakness. And that's what Troy Jackson's running on. I think for, you know, for me, the Texas race has given the fact that there was so much redistricting done. That to me is going to be the judge, because Republicans were so confident, you know, months ago that they had won this redistricting fight. That they had, you know, created these districts that were going to be, you know, get a bull for them based on this assumption that they had these Hispanic voters who were now part of the Trump coalition. Does that come through? If that comes through, then tax and wins and Abbott wins, and they don't have anything to worry about in terms of the dream of turning Texas blue. If you look at the new districts that are across Texas, and you can and you can see the map, and those start coming in undecided blue or just, you know, too close to call, that's a warning sign that Texas is, you know, is up for grabs effectively. The amount of money that has flowed into there has maybe, you know, been, been a real changemaker in terms of a state that Democrats have been trying to win forever. Texas 35, open seat created and redistricting, Johnny Garcia, the Democrat as a blue dog, sheriff's deputy, good candidate, Texas 15 bugged, Polito's a music star well-known in the valley. That's a fascinating. These are, these are I think going to be, I think you're exactly right. There's a good, important racist to watch. Well, this has been another edition of the district club. We thank you for tuning in. We encourage you to watch all of our election night coverage at the Daily Wire for Tim for Korean Fort Ian. Thanks so much for tuning in.