Operatives aligned with Mary Peltola, the Democratic nominee for Senate, spent months recruiting candidates to peel votes from Senator Dan Sullivan, the Republican.
A sample ballot showing candidates for next week’s U.S. Senate race in Alaska lists two Dan Sullivans (highlight added here to both), along with Mary Peltola, the Democrat, and a fourth candidate named Gerald Heikes.
Dan Sullivan, a schoolteacher, has the same name as a Republican senator in Alaska. He said that a pre-emptive lawsuit challenging the results was “a gross misuse of the Justice Department.”
With moves in Alaska and California, the department has stepped up interventions in the midterm elections as the president’s instrument of unmediated executive power.
President Trump during a campaign rally in support of Senator Dan S. Sullivan in Wasilla, Alaska, this month. Mr. Trump urged the Justice Dept. to intervene in the Senate race.
No obvious legal authority supports a pre-emptive effort to block the certification of Alaska’s Senate election if the Republican incumbent narrowly loses.
The Republican incumbent, Dan Sullivan, and his Democratic challenger, Mary Peltola, veered from serious discussion of high prices and economic challenges to blistering personal attacks.
Senator Dan Sullivan, the Republican incumbent, right, and Mary Peltola, the Democratic challenger, during the debate in Anchorage, Alaska, on Thursday night.
Connexion
