Peltola aides recruited spoiler candidate in Alaska Senate race: NYT
Top aides to Alaska Democrat Mary Peltola allegedly directed a campaign staffer in the summer of 2025 to comb through state voter rolls and track down every resident named Dan Sullivan, according to an exclusive report by The New York Times.
The effort was aimed at finding a candidate to enter the Senate race and siphon votes away from the state’s Republican incumbent, Sen. Dan Sullivan, by exploiting Alaska’s ranked-choice ballot.
In Alaska’s ranked-choice voting, you list candidates from favorite to least favorite instead of picking just one.
If someone gets more than half of the first-place votes right away, they win; if no one does, the candidate in last place is eliminated, and their votes automatically transfer to each voter’s next choice until one person earns a true majority.
And since there are now two Dan Sullivans on Alaska’s ballot for the state’s Senate race, the worry is voters could choose the wrong Sullivan.
Despite worries voiced mostly by the GOP, the state of Alaska has pushed back on this notion.
The ballot clearly marks the incumbent, Sen. Dan Sullivan, and that their ranked-choice voting rules already prevented this mistake from changing the outcome.
What’s more, the other Dan Sullivan switched his party affiliation from Republican to “undeclared” ahead of the election.
Peltola’s campaign has denied The Times’ claims, saying Republican party “has been caught multiple times propping up third party ‘spoiler’ candidates in Alaska this year and beyond.”
Kellen Browning, who reported the story for The New York Times, joins LiveNOW’s Alexandra Goldberg to discuss.
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