Democrat campaign operatives spent months searching all of Alaska for someone named Dan Sullivan.
They found one, convinced him to run, and watched him confuse voters on Election Day.
A Senate seat Republicans were never supposed to lose is now riding on ballots that never should have existed.
How the Peltola Campaign Recruited Decoy Dan to Steal the Alaska Senate Race
In the summer of 2025, a staffer on Democrat Mary Peltola's Senate campaign received explicit instructions from top aides: track down anyone in Alaska who shared the senator's name.
Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan was the incumbent in a state Trump won by double digits, and Democrats had no business winning it on the merits, so they decided to win it on confusion instead.
If another Dan Sullivan appeared on the ballot – someone voters might mistake for the real one – they could siphon enough first-round votes to flip the seat blue because of the state’s convoluted ranked choice voting system that puts four candidates on the general election ballot.
The New York Times exposed the scheme through campaign text messages, firsthand interviews, and internal documents assembled for a potential lawsuit against the campaign.
They found their man in Petersburg – a remote Alaska Panhandle fishing village with no road connection to the outside world.
Dan J. Sullivan – who had voted Democrat in three straight presidential elections and previously backed Peltola herself – agreed to run.
"Zero, none, zilch," Decoy Dan told reporters in June when asked if he had any contact with Peltola's campaign.
The Times called that a lie.
Peltola campaign operatives were texting with Decoy Dan's handlers, DSCC staffers were on the same thread, and veteran Democratic strategist Amber Lee was running his campaign.
The Alaska Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher tried to remove Decoy Dan from the ballot, concluding his candidacy had one purpose: drain votes from Sen. Sullivan.
Courts intervened and put him back.
Trump ordered the Justice Department to sue – "I'm the one that said do it," he told reporters.
The DOJ's complaint said the "sole purpose" of Decoy Dan's candidacy was to "benefit the Peltola campaign by reducing the number of votes for Senator Sullivan."
A federal judge dismissed the case on procedural grounds – not on the merits – and the DOJ filed its appeal within hours.
Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy ordered a criminal investigation before a single general election vote was counted.
Ranked Choice Voting Math Could Still Hand Dan Sullivan the Win
As of Friday, at least 90 ballots have been thrown out – votes from Alaskans who marked both Dan Sullivans as their first choice, an overvote that voids the entire ballot under ranked-choice rules.
A Republican operative close to Sen. Sullivan's campaign told the Daily Signal the number will keep climbing as more vote counts come in.
Peltola leads by fewer than 700 votes with more than 20% of ballots still uncounted, and Decoy Dan pulled 3,600 of them – every most of those votes meant for the actual Republican Dan Sullivan.
Sullivan's campaign released a memo Friday laying out how ranked-choice math favors the senator.
Gerald Heikes voters – the third-place Republican with more than 4,800 votes – break for Sullivan 71% to 29%.
Decoy Dan's second-choice ballots net Peltola only 453 votes, while 657 of his ballots transfer first to Heikes and then mostly back to Sullivan.
The campaign calculates the ranked-choice transfers alone shift the race about 950 votes toward Sullivan on ballots already counted.
That is more than the entire current margin – and Democrats manufactured the confusion that created it.
Peltola's team insists Sullivan's path to victory is "fictitious."
"Decoy Dan is 100% a product of ranked-choice voting and a jungle primary," Phil Izon of Alaskans for Honest Elections told the Daily Signal. "That combination turns Alaska elections into an insane clown show."
Democrats sold Alaskans on ranked-choice voting as a fairer system, then spent a year hunting across Alaska for the right name to weaponize it against a sitting United States senator.
Alaska's criminal probe is open, the DOJ appeal is working through the courts, and mail ballots keep arriving through November 13 – Democrats tried to steal a Senate seat with a name from a Petersburg village, and that race is still undecided.
Sources:
- Fred Lucas, "Spoiled Ballots Over 'Decoy Dan' Add New Twist to Alaska's Senate Nail-Biter," The Daily Signal, November 6, 2026.
- Catherine Salgado, "Democrat Campaign Recruited 'Decoy Dan' Sullivan to Run in Alaska," PJ Media, October 28, 2026.
- Jeff Charles, "Judge Throws Out Lawsuit Challenging Democrats' 'Decoy Dan' Fraud," Townhall, November 2, 2026.
- "Democrats, Peltola Campaign Recruited Dan Sullivan to Spoil Senate Race for GOP: Report," Fox 11, November 2026.
- "Alaska Launches Criminal Probe Into Peltola's Senate Campaign," Blaze News, October 29, 2026.