Democrats claimed for months they had nothing to do with the second Dan Sullivan on Alaska's Senate ballot.
The New York Times just published the text messages that prove they were lying.
Democrats ran a secret operation to steal Alaska's Senate seat and the paper trail goes all the way to Washington.
How Democrat Operative Jerid Kurtz Recruited a Fake Dan Sullivan to Steal the Alaska Senate Race
Sometime last winter, a man calling himself Zane started cold-calling Alaskans from a Google Voice number with an Ohio area code – no last name, no employer, no explanation of who was funding him.
Over beers at an Irish pub in Anchorage, Zane would take potential Senate candidates out for drinks and make his pitch – friendly enough, but careful never to say who he actually worked for.
He wasn't Zane.
His real name was Jerid Kurtz – a veteran Democratic operative from Ohio whose firm would later collect $87,000 from a pro-Mary Peltola super PAC – and the Times just confirmed he was the engine behind a coordinated Democrat scheme to flood Alaska's ballot with fake Republican candidates and hand Senator Dan S. Sullivan's seat to his Democrat challenger, Mary Peltola.
The scheme had an internal name: the "ballot composition project."
It started in the summer of 2025, when Peltola campaign aides gave a staffer one specific assignment – comb through Alaska voter records and produce a list of every person named Dan Sullivan in the state.
The goal was to recruit one of them to run for Senate as a Republican, creating a copycat candidate designed to bleed votes from the real Dan Sullivan.
It worked.
Kurtz made contact with a retired schoolteacher from Petersburg – a remote Alaskan fishing village with no road access – who hated Trump, liked Peltola, and had no interest in politics until Kurtz showed up.
In late May, Kurtz flew to Petersburg.
Dan J. Sullivan filed his Senate papers days later.
Alaska's ballot now lists two Dan Sullivans because the state uses an all party primary where the top four candidates regardless of party advance to the general election.
Mary Peltola and the DSCC Coordinated a Ballot Scheme That Went All the Way to Washington
Chuck Schumer's own Senate campaign arm – the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee – was coordinating the same operation Peltola's campaign was publicly denying.
When Peltola's chief of staff Anton McParland floated the idea of creating a fake MAGA state party to split the Republican vote even further, DSCC campaigns director Andrew Piatt replied: "Smart. Let's see."
Internal text messages reviewed by the Times show DSCC officials and Peltola campaign aides communicating for months about the project – scheduling regular calls with "our friend," reacting with heart emojis when both Dan Sullivans advanced through the August primary, and celebrating progress they were simultaneously denying to the press.
The operation didn't stop with the Sullivan clone – a drywall contractor named Gerald Heikes told the Times a "guy from the Midwest" met him at a deli in his hometown of Palmer, Alaska, and told him to run for Senate.
Kurtz also met with a left-wing Democrat named David Leslie – who had qualified for the general election ballot and could have siphoned votes from Peltola – and told him to get out of the race.
Leslie dropped out.
"I'm really proud of the action you took today," Kurtz texted him the same day.
Both the Peltola campaign and the DSCC deny participating in any spoiler recruitment – the same denial the text messages just shredded.
Peltola's former campaign manager Elisa Rios gave the Times detailed accounts of the operation over multiple interviews, then abruptly tried to retract everything right before publication.
The Times published anyway.
This was not a rogue staffer acting alone – it involved senior Peltola campaign aides, the DSCC's director of campaigns, lawyers from the Elias Law Group, and Jerid Kurtz flying to remote Alaskan villages under a fake name while posting airport selfies to Instagram.
Trump called it "CHEATING" on Truth Social three weeks ago and the media laughed at him.
The New York Times – the same paper that spent years dismissing election integrity concerns as right-wing fantasy – just confirmed he was right.
Democrats gave this operation a codename, paid for it through super PAC money, and ran it out of Washington.
Chuck Schumer's Senate committee called it "Smart." Alaskans go to the polls Tuesday.
Sources:
- Kellen Browning, "Inside Democrats' Secret Effort to Stack Alaska's Ballot," New York Times, October 28, 2026.
- "NRSC Refers Dan Sullivan to FEC Over Campaign 'Scheme' to Oust Senator With Same Name," Washington Examiner, June 2026.
- "Dan Sullivan Accuses Same-Name Challenger of Trying to 'Rig' Alaska Senate Race," Fox News, June 2026.
- "How Democratic Operatives Got a Copycat Candidate on the Alaska Senate Ballot to Confuse Voters," National Review, 2026.
- Donald Trump, Truth Social post, October 21, 2026.