Kevin Abourezk
ICT
U.S. Senate candidate Mary Peltola’s campaign responded Friday to a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice that seeks to block certification of Alaska Senate race if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses.
In a statement to ICT, Peltola spokesperson Harry Child described the lawsuit as a “despicable political threat to overturn an election, designed by Sen. Dan Sullivan’s allies to suppress the voices of Alaskans because Sullivan is terrified he’ll lose the seat that has allowed him to enrich himself at Alaskans’ expense for over a decade.”
“We will fight to ensure every single eligible voter in Alaska can make their voice heard and that no bureaucrat or politician from the Lower 48 can interfere with our lawful, secure elections,” Child said.
President Donald Trump said he ordered the Justice Department lawsuit to block certification of Sen. Sullivan does not prevail.
Another candidate with the same name is on the ballot.
The lawsuit, filed late Thursday, has sparked concerns about a lengthy battle between the U.S. government and states over election certification. The Department of Justice’s suit demands Alaska be blocked from certifying a win for Democrat Peltola if Dan J. Sullivan remains on the ballot. The Alaska Supreme Court previously rejected efforts to remove the other Sullivan.
“The United States accordingly brings this lawsuit to protect the integrity of the 2026 Senate election in Alaska,” the lawsuit says, contending that federal law requires states to protect the integrity of federal elections.
“I’m the one that said do it,” Trump told reporters as he landed for a campaign rally in Florida.
The lawsuit centers on one of the president’s longstanding complaints in the Senate race — the presence of a second candidate named Dan J. Sullivan, who Republicans fear could siphon away votes from the incumbent in what’s likely to be a photo-finish contest with Peltola, the state’s former congresswoman.
Daniel J. Sullivan from the tiny fishing community of Petersburg, has said he decided to run on his own, but Republicans have contended he is a Democratic plant to siphon votes away from their candidate.
The legal challenge came 11 days before the Nov. 3 election and months after the final ballot was set.
Kalyn Free, a Cherokee Nation citizen and Democratic National Committee member who worked for 10 years as a Department of Justice attorney, told ICT that it is wrong for federal officials to try to intervene in a state election in which the Alaska Supreme Court has already ruled that it was legal to have two Dan Sullivans on the general election ballot.
“For this president to use the Department of Justice as a preemptive measure to try to determine the outcome of the election in Alaska is more than deeply troubling,” she said. “Clearly what they are saying here is that if his candidate, the incumbent, wins, ‘hey, no big deal.’ But if his candidate doesn’t win then something’s gone awry.”
“The Department of Justice should belong to the American people and is not – and should not – be Donald Trump’s political operation,” Free added.
Free declined to say whether she believes the Justice Department’s lawsuit could potentially be affirmed by a federal court but also lamented the lack of any effective check on the Trump administration’s power with Republicans currently in control of Congress and with a conservative majority in the U.S. Supreme Court.
“We are living in treacherous times and very dangerous times where the rule of law does not mean what it should and what it has in the past,” she said. “It’s absolutely terrifying to see how far he’s willing to take it.”
Mike Stopp, chief executive officer and principal of SevenStar Holdings, a company created to assist in economic development in Indian Country, told ICT that he agrees with the Justice Department’s decision to challenge the Alaska Senate race results should Sen. Sullivan lose his race.
“I don’t believe that the Peltola campaign engaged in this act, but regardless of who convinced the second Dan Sullivan to run, it is no doubt an act of deception that is only intended to influence how the Alaskan people vote,” said Stopp, Cherokee and Muscogee.
He said it will be a challenge for the Justice Department to prove that the inclusion of another candidate named Dan Sullivan led to the incumbent senator’s loss.
“What that investigation looks like and how it ultimately applies to the certification process is a challenge in itself,” he said. “I believe the Alaskan Supreme Court was wrong in allowing this other Dan Sullivan to continue. However, the law does not really address this situation as far as I have read.”
“It is a very dangerous place to allow the government to determine who can and cannot run for office, but the courts should look at these types of one-off cases,” Stopp said.
The Alaska Supreme Court rejected a previous Republican effort to remove Daniel J. Sullivan from the ballot, and the state’s Republican officials made the decisions about how to list him on the ballot. He will appear without a party designation next to his name, while the senator will be listed as the Republican incumbent. Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system also will allow voters to select both of the men if confused.
Peltola and Sen. Sullivan were top vote-getters in the nonpartisan primary.
The senator received more than 68,000 votes in the August primary, while the challenging Sullivan got 4,107, about 2 percent of the total vote. Peltola, who had previously served one term in the House, was the top vote-getter in the nonpartisan primary. Both parties expect that whoever wins in November will do so by a tight margin in a state of 738,000 people.
The campaign for Sen. Dan Sullivan did not address whether the senator supports the Department of Justice’s intervention.
“We’ll let the DOJ complaint run its course,” campaign spokesman Nate Adams said in a text message. “Alaskans can tell the difference between a Democrat sideshow and Senator Sullivan’s strong record of delivering for Alaska.”
Daniel J. Sullivan, whose presence on the ballot is at issue in the lawsuit, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Donald Trump knows that Dan Sullivan is going to lose the election, so now his Department of Justice is filing a sham lawsuit to overturn the will of Alaska voters and steal an election when he loses,” said Devan Barber, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
In a statement on Friday, the Department of Justice noted that Alaska’s election officials, who are Republicans, determined the other Sullivan’s campaign was an attempt to “mislead” voters and wanted him removed from the ballot. Both a state court and Alaska’s Supreme Court disagreed and kept the second Sullivan on the ballot.
“The Justice Department, consistent with the National Voter Registration Act enacted by Congress, is taking the necessary steps to ensure that this frivolous candidacy does not undermine the integrity of Alaska’s election or the will of its voters,” the department’s statement said.
The Department of Justice has increasingly been used to bolster the Republican president’s political operation, targeting his enemies and suing Democratic-controlled states before the election. Democrats and many voting rights advocates have long feared that the administration will try to block certification of elections that Trump’s party loses, much as he unsuccessfully tried to do when he lost the 2020 White House race to Democrat Joe Biden.
U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said that was unlikely outside of extreme circumstances. “It is not DOJ’s intention to, and it’s never our intention to, improperly interfere with elections or the state certification process,” he told reporters Thursday in Virginia before the lawsuit was filed.
The lawsuit was signed by Associate U.S. Attorney General Stanley Woodward, who represented Trump allies and Jan. 6 defendants before becoming one of the top appointees at the department.
Derek Muller, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, said the lawsuit would likely only kick in if Republicans narrowly lose the Alaska Senate race and that it probably would not survive long. “The statute simply doesn’t let the Department of Justice enjoin certification,” Muller said. “The lawsuit could well be mooted by a wide Democratic victory or a narrow Republican one, and if not, the court will likely dismiss it next month.”
The U.S. Constitution grants states the power to run their own elections. Elections for federal office like the Senate must comply with standards set by Congress. That division of power has frustrated Trump, who repeatedly has tried to seize control of election procedures through executive orders that courts have blocked.
The final step for a state election is formally certifying the winner, the act that the administration’s lawsuit seeks to prevent, it requests, “pending an investigation to determine whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan were meant to be cast for Senator Sullivan.”
The process in Alaska is complicated by the state’s ranked choice voting system, which Trump opposes, and many expect it to take weeks before a winner is known. Also on the state’s ballot is an initiative to repeal that system.
Trump has stepped up complaints about a ballot with dueling Sullivans
Trump has complained about Daniel J. Sullivan’s presence on the ballot, making reference to it during a rally in Alaska this month and in repeated social media posts, including one this week where he called it “CHEATING.”
“We are looking at powerful legal options to remove the fraudulent Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. from the Ballot, and holding the Democrats accountable for their Election Interference, in the pursuit of Justice and Fairness,” the president wrote on Wednesday.
Clogging a ballot with third party candidates to siphon off votes from the other major party is a long-standing tactic in the country’s two-party system. Republicans have been linked to an effort to persuade Ohio voters to support a socialist in that state’s Senate race, which could help Republican Sen. Jon Husted fend off a challenge from former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown.
Political consultant Gwen Leaffe Carr, Cayuga Nation, said the Trump administration’s moves shouldn’t surprise anyone as he’s already said he plans to challenge any election results that he doesn’t like. She said the Republican Party knows it’s about to lose most major races in the midterm elections and is preparing to avail itself of its only remaining recourse – legal challenges.
“When you don’t have issues to run on or your candidates are unpopular or corrupt … what is your remedy?” she told ICT. “You either concede or you challenge.”
“So what does that tell you? If somebody’s doing a preemptive lawsuit, it means that they’re worried about the outcome of whatever’s going to happen there,” she said.
She implored Native voters to get out and support Native candidates, including Peltola and Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, White Earth Nation, who is seeking to become a U.S. senator in Minnesota.
“If you have a Native candidate running in your state like Alaska, Alaska Natives in Alaska, this is your moment, “ she said. “This is your moment to elect a Native woman as a senator … in Minnesota.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
