Trump Says He Directed DOJ to Sue Alaska Over Senate Race
The Justice Department asked a federal judge to block certification of the Nov. 3 contest if Sen. Dan Sullivan loses, citing voter confusion from a namesake candidate on the ballot.
President Donald Trump said Friday that he personally directed the Justice Department to sue to block Alaska from certifying its Senate race if the Republican incumbent loses.
“I’m the one that said do it,” Trump told reporters Friday in Fort Myers, Florida.
The department filed the lawsuit in federal court in Alaska on Thursday. It asks a judge to prevent certification of the results pending an investigation into whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan — a Petersburg retiree listed on the ballot with no party affiliation — were meant for Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, the incumbent Republican.
The lawsuit asks the court to delay finalization of the contest if the votes for the namesake challenger are enough to potentially change the outcome.
Sen. Sullivan has held the seat since 2015. He is in a close race with former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, with control of the Senate on the line. Republicans hold a 53-47 majority, and Alaska is among the battleground states that could decide it. The election is Nov. 3, eleven days away. A recent Public Policy Polling survey showed Peltola up by a single point; a RealClearPolitics average has the race too close to call.
The lawsuit alleges that Daniel J. Sullivan “decided to run for Senator in 2026 as a Republican with the intention of misleading supporters of Senator Sullivan into voting for him,” and that “the sole purpose of his candidacy is to benefit the Peltola campaign.” It describes him as a longtime supporter of Democratic candidates whose campaign website uses a format, color scheme and overall theme similar to the senator’s own site.
Trump called the challenger someone who “has nothing to do with politics” and his campaign “disgraceful.” Earlier this week, Trump said on social media that the administration was weighing “powerful legal options” to get Daniel J. Sullivan off the ballot, saying he was “very concerned” the name could be “totally confusing.”
Justice Department official Stanley Woodward wrote in the filing that if Alaska certifies results tainted by the inclusion of Daniel J. Sullivan, the state and its officers will have failed in their obligations to protect the integrity of the election. The filing asks the court to block certification of any result that may be affected by voter confusion.
Legal experts raise doubts
Election-law specialists were skeptical of the move. “I’ve never heard of it,” Notre Dame professor Derek Muller told USA Today. “I’ve never heard of an election where you try to block certification before the election.” David Becker of the Center for Election Innovation and Research questioned whether the federal government has authority over a state’s certification process.
Reaction split along party lines. Former Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill mocked the case on social media, writing: “DOJ arguing that Republicans in Alaska are too dumb to understand the word incumbent on the ballot.” Mike Davis, head of the conservative legal group Article 3 Project, accused Democrats of running a fringe candidate to knock out the incumbent.
State elections director Carol Beecher had already weighed in on June 15, determining that Daniel J. Sullivan had not declared a “good-faith candidacy” but instead “filed with a purpose to confuse or mislead” voters. Daniel J. Sullivan changed his registration between the primary and general elections and is running as unaffiliated. He has said his candidacy is his own initiative.
Alaska uses ranked-choice voting: voters rank candidates, and if no one wins a majority of first choices, ballots transfer until someone does. That makes it harder to predict where a vote for a minor candidate would ultimately land.
