Mary Peltola's campaign orchestrated a secret plot to plant a second Dan Sullivan on Alaska's ballot to sabotage the Republican senator's reelection, then spent months denying it—exposing the lengths the establishment will go to eliminate a populist voice once it threatens their grip on power.
The New York Times reviewed dozens of text messages and interviewed 12 people who participated in or were briefed on the scheme. What they found is a coordinated effort between Peltola's team, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and veteran party operatives to deliberately deceive Alaska voters.
Here are the names. The DSCC introduced operative Jerid Kurtz to Peltola campaign manager Elisa Rios and chief of staff Anton McParland. Kurtz traveled to Alaskan communities under a fake name, pitching the ballot-confusion plan over beers at brew pubs. He reported back on a video call that he had made contact with another Dan Sullivan—a Petersburg resident who hated President Trump and was willing to play along.
Peltola's campaign lawyers and senior DSCC aides held regular conversations about the effort. They even considered forming a new political party to draw conservatives onto the ballot and further splinter the vote.
The NRSC uncovered in June that Democratic strategist Amber Lee wrote the other Sullivan's campaign announcement—direct evidence that this wasn't some organic candidacy.
And the denials? Peltola's campaign told the Daily Caller they had "no involvement with either Sullivan campaign." They told the Times they "did not recruit any candidates into the race." The DSCC claimed it had "no involvement" in recruiting Republican candidates.
Then there's Rios. She was fired in August during a staff shakeup. Before the Times published, she told the paper: "Alaskan voters need to know. There was a lot of speculation, and voters should get the full picture when making their decisions." She retracted those statements shortly before publication.
A Sullivan campaign spokesperson didn't mince words: "Mary Peltola, her campaign, and her senior advisors colluded with the DSCC, national Democrat lawyers, and Alaska Democrat operatives to recruit candidates to deliberately deceive and confuse voters, and then repeatedly lied about it."
The Daily Caller framed the story around the coordinated deception and the paper trail proving it. HotAir ran a piece on Democratic economic rhetoric tied to the French riots—tangential at best, burying the ballot-scheme news entirely.
The uniparty playbook is straightforward: deploy operatives through back channels, exploit ballot mechanics to confuse voters, deny everything, and count on the press to move on. When the fired campaign manager speaks up then suddenly retracts, the question isn't whether the scheme happened—the texts and interviews confirm it. The question is who pressured her to walk it back, and whether any of these operatives will face consequences.
