BMichaelDunn

In her recent federal filing, Mary Peltola's counsel insisted, "DOJ's complaint is wholly baseless." Now the NY Times is reporting that her campaign was actively involved in seeking to confuse Alaskan voters by running decoy "Dan Sullivans." A staffer now says that Peltola knew about the effort to force voter confusion.

In other races, Republicans have never recruited candidates to get Green Partys on the ballot, right? Or, how about in Florida a few years back? npr.org/2021/03/19/979340075… Unless Peltola's campaign paid the other Sullivan, there's nothing illegal.

Credit where credit is due - @CNN took the denial and did zero further work and declared the case closed. @nytimes actually investigated the denial and did the work.

DSCC, Alaska Dem Party and Peltola camp all denied any involvement in recruiting Dan J Sullivan when we asked about this back in June cnn.com/2026/06/07/politics/… cnn.com/2026/06/07/politics/…

WATCH: CNN's Dana Bash, Mark Preston, and Alayna Trenne DEFEND Alaska Democrats and Mary Peltola's campaign after The New York Times bombshell confirms they worked with national Democrats to find another "Dan Sullivan" to run in #AKSen to confuse voters “So, this is not illegal. It is not new” “Listen, two things you said very important. It’s not illegal and it’s not new.” “I use the term dirty tricks intentionally because it’s — it’s not illegal. This is something that — is untoward. It is something that Democrats have tried to do in races where they think it could be to their advantage to run candidates that could siphon votes away from Republicans and Republicans do the same. I mean, just in Alaska alone, Mary Peltola, who’s now on the ballot for the senate, she lost her House race two years ago. On that ballot, there was a candidate who was literally in prison who was reportedly recruited and — and kept on the ballot at the behest of Republicans. There’s a socialist running in Ohio with the hopes of taking votes away from the Democrat, Sherrod Brown. These are dirty tricks. They are legal, dirty tricks. But again, at a time when you have a President and his — supporters, particularly those with very big platforms, trying to undermine the election, and Alaska is a potentially key and even pivotal, pivotal Senate seat that could determine the outcome of the control of the Senate, it’s a big deal.” “It’s absolutely a big deal, and I think there’s no question, despite as you all have pointed out, and I think it’s worth saying, again, this was not illegal, something that [Republicans] are going to blow up.”

Fantastic reporting by @nytimes @Kellen_Browning on Alaska Senate race. Extraordinarily great writing too. Will impact the race, I believe. A lot of people seem to have reacted to being exposed by lying. The reckoning will be ugly for @MaryPeltola nytimes.com/2026/10/28/us/po…

This was a plausible theory among McConnell allies at the time; he still had a lot of juice then. Could his conviction vote win 10 Republicans? It’s at least plausible. If so the Senate could have barred Trump from running again. McConnell voted to acquit and the rest is history.

Mary Peltola, call your office nytimes.com/2026/10/28/us/po…

“Peltola advisers seemed to make fun of voters while watching a focus group, surmising participants would be susceptible to being tricked… “Do we have a scheme for you,” wrote a Peltola consultant One voter seemed like the perfect audience “for our ballot strategy plan :)”