Trump Demands Alaska Ballot Removal, Prosecutions

President Donald Trump called for Mary Peltola and Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. to be removed from Alaska’s Senate ballot and prosecuted, turning a dispute over campaign tactics into a demand for state punishment. Peltola’s campaign said threats from Washington wouldn’t stop her candidacy. The ballot fight now runs through the presidency, the Justice Department, the governor’s office and the courts, while voters face the consequences of decisions made in those rooms.

Who Gets to Decide

Trump’s demand followed a New York Times investigation reporting that people linked to Peltola’s campaign helped recruit candidates intended to draw votes from Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan. One recruit was a retired teacher from a small Alaskan fishing village who shared the senator’s first and last names. The namesake said he entered independently.

Trump wrote on Truth Social that the alleged operation was “Voter Fraud at the Highest Level.” Speaking to reporters, he said, “They said they didn’t do it, and they did do it, and they got caught.” The New York Times live report said senior advisers to Peltola’s campaign and the top campaign committee supporting Senate Democrats were involved in discussions about the plan.

Al Jazeera reported that the effort began in 2025, when a Peltola aide was asked to identify Alaskans named Dan Sullivan. It identified Democratic operative Jerid Kurtz as a recruiter who approached potential candidates, sometimes under an assumed name. Another Democrat withdrew after Kurtz approached them, opening a place for Republican Gerald Heikes, who said he too had been encouraged to run.

Peltola’s former campaign manager, Elisa Rios, told The Times that Peltola knew about the operation but didn’t participate directly. Rios later sought to withdraw her statements, and the newspaper said other evidence supported its reporting. Peltola’s campaign and the Democratic campaign committee denied recruiting candidates.

Courts, Ballots and Legal Limits

The Times said ballot stacking—recruiting candidates to split an opponent’s vote—is generally legal and has been used by both parties in Alaska. The Alaska Supreme Court upheld the retired teacher’s right to stand in June. State leaders had earlier tried to remove Daniel J. Sullivan from the ballot, but the court ruled that neither state law nor the U.S. Constitution authorized it to rule on a candidate’s motives.

The Justice Department sued Alaska the previous week, seeking to prevent certification of the Senate race if Dan Sullivan lost and votes for the namesake could have affected the result. The lawsuit didn’t initially allege specific illegal activity and sought an investigation only if the incumbent lost. It accused Daniel J. Sullivan of trying to “dupe Alaska’s voters into believing that he is Senator Sullivan.” The administration later called the reported effort a “sprawling conspiracy to recruit and prop up a sham candidate for the purpose of deceiving Alaskan voters.”

Chief Judge Sharon Gleason of the U.S. District Court in Alaska gave the Justice Department until Thursday afternoon to answer a motion to dismiss. She noted that the administration sued after Alaskans had begun voting in the November 2026 election and about four months after the state Supreme Court directed election officials to put Daniel J. Sullivan on the ballot.

Power Plays on Both Sides

Alaska’s Republican governor, Mike Dunleavy, said Wednesday night he was ordering an investigation into whether Peltola’s campaign should face criminal charges or civil penalties. “Deliberately tricking voters into casting their ballots for someone else strikes at the integrity of our elections,” he wrote on X. “Anyone or any organization found to have broken the law must be held accountable.”

Peltola’s campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee sought to join the federal case, saying the state election office had tried to block the namesake before state courts overruled it. The administration first opposed their request, then withdrew its objection Wednesday, citing “a change in circumstances.”

Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who endorsed Peltola in previous campaigns but supported Dan Sullivan in this election, said ballot stacking “should have no place in our electoral process.” Some Democrats defended the tactic as common political practice and noted Republicans had used similar tactics. Lauren French, a spokeswoman for the Senate Majority PAC, posted examples of Republican activity on X, including a Republican-linked super PAC spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in Alaska to support Democratic and Green Party candidates in this year’s Senate primary.

In 2024, the Alaska Republican Party joined a lawsuit seeking to keep on the ballot a Democratic U.S. House candidate who was a federal inmate campaigning from a New York prison. Attorney General Todd Blanche, asked on Fox News whether the Democratic plot was illegal, answered, “It should be!” Meanwhile, voters rank candidates under a system whose rules have become another arena for party strategists, state officials and federal authorities to contest control of the ballot.