Alaska votes today in a primary where the Republican senator Dan S. Sullivan, in office since 2015, shares the ballot with a challenger called Dan J. Sullivan, a former teacher from the fishing town of Petersburg who announced a campaign in May and registered as a Republican not long before.
The senator and other Republicans have said the challenger entered the race to confuse voters and to help the Democratic candidate, the former congresswoman Mary Peltola. The challenger denies it. He told the Associated Press that running was his own decision and that he had had no contact with Peltola's campaign — "zero, none, zilch". Peltola's campaign has also said it has no involvement with either Sullivan.
The state tried to remove him from the ballot. The director of Alaska's Division of Elections, Carol Beecher, wrote to the challenger that her office had received two complaints about his eligibility and had concluded the evidence did not support it, and that he had filed with the purpose of confusing or misleading voters. The Alaska Supreme Court then ruled that he could stay on the ballot, but left it to the elections division to decide how he would be listed. He appears on today's ballot as Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., with no party label beside his name. The senator is marked as the incumbent.
Prosecutors did not stop there. NBC News reported, citing two people with knowledge of the matter, that the FBI, the Alaska attorney general and the federal prosecutor's office in the state are all examining whether two or more people conspired to set up the challenger's campaign in order to confuse voters, damage the incumbent and add votes for Peltola.
The challenger has said the litigation is what pushed him into taking donations at all. He had not planned to, he told Alaska Public Media, and then the legal bills arrived.
Alaska's rules make the outcome harder to read than a normal primary. The top four finishers advance to November regardless of party, and the general election is settled by ranked-choice voting. Both Sullivans and Peltola can all reach the November ballot. The seat is one the Democrats need if they are to take the Senate, where they must gain four.
Why it is on the board
It was second on the New York Times most-read list when we collected, on the morning of the primary itself. That list is the only American reading list our collection can see. Our two other American lenses, YouTube and search trends, did not carry this story at all, so it is on the board on the strength of that one number.
확인: NBC News · Alaska Public Media