President Donald Trump says Democrat Mary Peltola's side conspired to put a name-matching candidate into Alaska's Senate race to drain votes from Republican Senator Dan Sullivan. In a Truth Social post on Saturday, Trump argued that the votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. — a retired schoolteacher whose name sits beside the senator's on the ballot — and for Gerald Heikes belong to the senator: "When you add Daniel (3,600, 1.68%) into Dan, and Gerald Heikes (4,846, 2.27%), Senator Dan Sullivan is up by thousands of Votes. Remember, Heikes was also fraudulently put into the Race." Trump declared: "The Alaska Race is OVER. Dan Sullivan WON, BY A LOT!"
The count itself has not declared anything. With about three-quarters of the ballots counted, Peltola leads Sullivan by 637 votes, 102,962 to 102,325, and the Associated Press has not called the race. Neither of them holds a majority of first choices, so Alaska's ranked-choice tabulation on November 18 is set to decide the seat. The Division of Elections updates the count on November 10 and November 13, ballots can still arrive until November 18, and certification is targeted for November 25.
Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. is a retired Petersburg schoolteacher. The Alaska Supreme Court kept him on the ballot in June, and the Justice Department sued in October asking for his ballots to be set aside. U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason dismissed that lawsuit on November 1, ruling that the government had offered no workable plan to pull the ballots, and the department has appealed to the Ninth Circuit. In its filing, the Justice Department accused Peltola's campaign organisation, Alaskans for Mary, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee of orchestrating a conspiracy to recruit and prop up a sham candidate in order to deceive Alaska voters. Heikes, a Palmer minister and drywall contractor who has run for many offices in Alaska, reached this ballot after a Democrat withdrew.
On Friday, Alaskans for Mary sued Lieutenant Governor Nancy Dahlstrom, Elections Director Carol Beecher and the Division of Elections in Anchorage Superior Court, seeking the records that identify which absentee ballots were rejected and the reason for each rejection. The campaign says it first requested the records on October 27 and again after Election Day under the Alaska Public Records Act and was denied immediate access, and it is asking the court for a temporary restraining order to force the release while the count continues. The Alaska Department of Law says the Division has long treated the preliminary information as confidential, that it is subject to change, and that the Division will ask the court to keep the records protected.
Under Alaska law, no official can hand one candidate's votes to another: when the last-place candidates are eliminated on November 18, each of their ballots moves to whatever next choice that voter marked, and to no one if the voter marked none. A New York Times analysis published on November 5 concluded that Sullivan was unlikely to gain much from that retabulation, because Peltola was the second choice of many voters who backed the namesake Sullivan.
For Alaskans, the fight is over their own ballots. A United States Senate seat is hanging on 637 votes while tens of thousands of absentee and early ballots are still being counted; a voter whose mail ballot was rejected cannot learn why — or whether it can be fixed — unless the records the Peltola campaign is suing for come out; and every voter who ranked a second choice will have that choice counted on November 18. The seat also counts toward which party controls the Senate, and with it the bills on taxes, energy and judges that reach the floor.
📰 ProfiloPolitics Member News — choose your news, share it, earn credit:
https://white-curlew-963569.hostingersite.com
Never miss a story — Join our Telegram channel
Breaking U.S. political news, live as it happens — plus the stories the big outlets sit on.
Join ProfiloPolitics on Telegram