Peltola Campaign Reportedly Helped Find Alaska An Extra Sullivan

Alaska’s two-Sullivan Senate race has acquired a new complication: reporting that Democrats helped produce the second Sullivan. Apparently a campaign about fixing a rigged system may have included a name-matching exercise.

The Guardian reports on a New York Times investigation alleging that Mary Peltola’s campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee worked to recruit a challenger with a name similar to Republican Senator Dan Sullivan’s. The new reporting cites interviews, documents and text messages. That is a substantive development beyond the already-public dispute over whether two similarly named candidates belong on the ballot.

Peltola’s campaign denies involvement with either Sullivan campaign. The DSCC also denies involvement with Dan J. Sullivan. One of the Times’s sources, former campaign manager Elisa Rios, was fired in August and later tried to retract her interview. Those qualifications matter. This is contested reporting, not a verdict that an allegation becomes true because it makes a satisfying headline.

It nevertheless deserves an answer more substantial than pointing out that Republicans have used spoiler candidates too. That is context supplied by the DSCC, not a character reference for the practice. A second restaurant serving bad food does not improve your dinner.

The report describes an operative introduced to Peltola’s campaign by the DSCC, unsuccessful efforts involving another prospective candidate, and the eventual recruitment of the other Sullivan. It also describes discussions of a rightwing party that did not come to fruition. These details should be investigated on their own evidence rather than compressed into a general suspicion about everyone who shares a surname.

The ballot itself distinguishes the incumbent as Dan S. Sullivan, registered Republican and incumbent, and the challenger as Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. Alaska’s supreme court allowed the challenger onto the ballot after election officials tried to disqualify him before the primary. He then finished among the top four candidates.

None of that makes any alleged recruitment scheme admirable. It does mean there are separate questions: what campaign officials did, what the law permits, and whether voters’ valid choices can be counted. Political sleaze and a legal basis for throwing out an election are not interchangeable documents.

Trump shared the Times article and called it proof of election fraud. He also said Peltola should not be allowed to run. The Guardian reports that he had already acknowledged ordering the Justice Department’s effort to block certification if the incumbent Sullivan loses.

That leap is doing considerably more work than the evidence described. The reporting notes that spoiler-recruitment activities are typically legal. It does not establish a criminal finding in this case, and it does not award the president authority to choose which opposing candidate Alaska may elect.

Democrats should not need a presidential overreach to make them take an allegation about their own campaign seriously. Republicans should not get to convert that allegation into an advance veto over the result. Both standards can fit in the same article without the page catching fire.

Alaska voters deserve a clear ballot and honest answers about how its candidates got there. The country already has enough people trying to win elections by making the instructions worse.