President Trump says his administration is investigating allegations that Democrats planted a fake "Dan Sullivan" on Alaska's Senate ballot to sabotage the incumbent Republican senator — exactly the kind of ballot trick the establishment press buries when it cuts against their party.
GOP Sen. Dan S. Sullivan is fighting for a third term against Democrat Mary Peltola in a race where the RealClearPolitics polling average shows Peltola leading by just 1.4 points. Enter Dan J. Sullivan, a retired teacher and former U.S. Forest Service employee who shares the incumbent's name and made the ballot after finishing in the top four of the August non-partisan primary. Republicans call him "Decoy Dan" — a plant designed to confuse voters and bleed support from the real Sullivan.
Trump isn't letting it slide. "We are looking — I can't say federal, but we are looking into it," the president told Fox News' Matt Finn after a rally for GOP candidates in Wasilla. "It's a disgrace. We have — I call him the real Dan Sullivan, a great senator from Alaska. And in the race, they put somebody named Dan Sullivan, who knows nothing about politics. His name happens to be Dan Sullivan. It's a terrible thing. It's another hoax by the Democrats."
The watchdog group Americans for Public Trust filed a complaint alleging that "Decoy Dan" illegally coordinated with the left-leaning 907 Initiative — a dark money outfit named after Alaska's area code. According to the complaint, Democratic strategist Amber Lee worked with Dan J. Sullivan's campaign while simultaneously serving on the board of the 907 Initiative, which poured roughly $1.5 million into ads attacking the incumbent Sullivan. About $575,000 of that hit during the final 90 days of the primary campaign. The watchdog argues Lee's overlapping roles amount to illegal coordination between the campaign and the outside group.
The 907 Initiative denies any wrongdoing and disputes allegations of financial ties to Lee. Dan J. Sullivan also denies running a sham campaign.
Alaska's top election official actually removed "Decoy Dan" from the ballot in June, concluding that a "preponderance of the evidence" showed his name and party affiliation were chosen to potentially confuse voters. But days later, the Alaska Supreme Court ordered him back on the ballot, ruling the Division of Elections had opted for "the most extreme remedy possible" instead of taking less drastic steps to differentiate between the two Sullivans.
So a state official found evidence of voter confusion by design — and the courts overruled it. Now Alaska's ranked-choice voting system will determine the outcome, meaning all four candidates stay in until one clears 50 percent through elimination rounds. A decoy candidate siphoning even a few points in the early rounds could tip the entire election.
Meanwhile, Breitbart News is tracking a parallel story of Democratic campaign deception in Kansas, where Senate nominee Adam Hamilton — a pastor who calls himself a "different kind of Democrat" — voted for Kamala Harris, donated $500 to her campaign, and called January 6 a "disqualifier" for Trump. The pattern is clear: Democrats are running candidates who mask their true allegiances, whether it's a Harris donor pretending to be moderate or a same-name straw man designed to steal votes.
The open question is whether federal authorities will treat the Alaska scheme as the election interference it plainly looks like — or look the other way because the target is a Republican.
