Dan A. Sullivan Endorses Dan S. Sullivan in Race Against Dan J. Sullivan

Yes, that actually happened. And the election could help decide control of the U.S. Senate.

I’m delighted to inform my readers that yesterday’s mail-in ballot saga was only the appetizer course in this week’s Buffet of Absolutely Insane Election Soundbites.

I hope you’re hungry.

Feast your eyes on Alaska, friends, where one of the most consequential Senate races in the country has turned into a political live-action remake of Who’s On First.

The man currently holding Alaska’s Senate seat is Dan S. Sullivan, a Republican who’s represented the “land of the noonday moon” since 2015. He’s running for a third term against Democrat Mary Peltola, the former congresswoman who famously beat Sarah “Drill, Baby, Drill” Palin in 2022 and is now coming hard for his job.

How hard? In last week’s open primary, Peltola finished on top with roughly 48 percent of the vote. Sullivan came in second with about 43 percent. Democrats are now salivating over Alaska as a possible Senate pickup.

Anyway, this is her.

This is where the story starts to require a whiteboard and maybe some hard liquor. Because clearly one Dan Sullivan wasn’t enough, enter “Republican” Dan J. Sullivan, a 70-year-old retired teacher and former Forest Service employee from Petersburg, Alaska, home to approximately twelve people and a moose. This Dan Sullivan has never held elected office. In fact, until let’s call it extremely recently, Dan J. was politically homeless. But then out of the blue, I guess he just got a random urge to change his party affiliation from undeclared to GOP. Two days later, he threw his hat in the U.S. Senate ring.

Alaska election officials—in a rare show of bureaucratic sanity—found his declared candidacy sufficiently sketchy to actually throw him off the ballot, concluding that his run appeared designed “to confuse or mislead voters.” You know things have gone sideways when the government agency responsible for election integrity issues a formal ruling of OH, COME ON.

Dan Sullivan 2.0 insisted that he was absolutely serious and had every right to run for office. Inconveniently for election officials, the Alaska Supreme Court agreed—and ordered his suspiciously familiar name be put back on the ballot, arguing that the state couldn’t invoke a “good-faith candidacy” requirement that didn’t exist just to remove an unwanted but otherwise eligible contender.

The federal government, however, apparently still had questions. The DOJ opened its own investigation into whether there was more to the second Sullivan’s candidacy than mere coincidence, with possible wire fraud and conspiracy in the mix. Grand jury subpoenas have been issued. No charges have been filed.

Decoy Dan on the left; the incumbent on the right.

Despite the clown show, this week the man now dubbed “Decoy Dan” advanced past the open primary for a spot on the ticket, “worsening a muddled GOP situation that could boost Dems,” as the New York Post put it. Which means Alaskans would be wise not to sleepwalk through their ballots if they care which Dan Sullivan they’re actually voting for.

The issue isn’t just that Decoy Dan is a newly minted conservative. If you squint just a microscopic bit, DD could also stand for disguised Democrat. According to the New York Times—who sent a reporter and a photographer into the frozen wilds to interview the guy—Decoy Dan pulled the lever for the donkey party candidate in the last three presidential elections and voted for Peltola in her two bids for the House. He has never supported the Republican who shares his name. He is, however, politically active—having attended both Trump protests and No Kings rallies.

I am not even making that up.

Oh, and a Fox News Digital review of the campaign earlier this year revealed that Amber Lee, a Democrat consultant, had helped author some of Decoy Dan’s campaign materials.

But he’s not a progressive plant sent in to flip a Senate seat by sowing mass confusion, don’t be ridiculous. In fact, the Times dutifully devoted a paragraph to Dan J.’s claims that “he was running in good faith as a moderate Republican and not a secret Democrat.” So you can put your tinfoil hat back on the shelf.

As if the slapstick weren’t Golden Globe-worthy enough already, Anchorage’s former mayor—a man literally, legitimately, legally named Dan A. Sullivan—stepped forward to endorse the incumbent Senator who shares his name.

So yes, Dan A. Sullivan is backing Dan S. Sullivan in his race against Dan J. Sullivan. At this point, Alaska should issue a complimentary middle-initial decoder ring with every ballot.

The Republican Party does not find any of this remotely amusing.

One furious X user called it “the oldest ballot scam in the book—the classic name-confusion trick!” (Apparently I’ve been reading the wrong ballot-scam literature.) “The left will stop at nothing to cheat!” raged another. (Okay, she’s not wrong.) “The Senate race in Alaska is what a rigged election looks like,” The Federalist declared.

“Decoy Dan is a fraudster propped up by Democrat Party operatives and support,” insisted The Federalist. “Make no mistake, the entire purpose of this man’s candidacy is to siphon votes away from Sen. Sullivan by confusing voters. He even initially tried to register with the Alaska Division of Elections as “Dan S. Sullivan,” adopting the incumbent’s middle initial so that the two names would appear identical on the ballot. He then created a website that was markedly similar (in format, color scheme, etc.) to Sen. Sullivan’s reelection site.”

Coincidences happen! People are human! I mean, I could accidentally misspell my own name and put a photo of Jenny McCarthy on the cover of my next book! Everyone makes mistakes!

We’re basically the same person.

Trump is warning Alaskans to vote for the “real” Dan Sullivan. Incumbent Sullivan has called his name doppelgänger a “sham candidate.” Rival Peltola insists she was never even in aisle seven. Also she has no idea how that Senate seat got in her purse.

And before anyone says Come on, Jenna, nobody is going to accidentally vote for the wrong guy, I’d like to introduce you to the American electorate. We put warning labels on hair dryers reminding consumers not to use them while sleeping. We tell toilet brush-buyers that these tools really shouldn’t be used for personal hygiene. We print “warning: may contain nuts” on nuts. I’m not betting democracy on the same general public that necessitates caution labels like those in the first place.

And the thing is, Decoy Dan doesn’t have to win. He doesn’t even need to come close. In a genuinely competitive race, the concern is simply whether enough voters intending to support the incumbent will accidentally bubble in the wrong Dan. Dumber things have certainly happened. America once spent weeks examining tiny bits of ballot confetti to determine who would be president.

Godspeed, Alaska. And for the love of literacy, don’t phone this one in.