Democrat Skullduggery in the Senate Showdown in The Last Frontier (Alaska)

President Trump has waded into the Alaska U.S. Senate race, to castigate the Democrat skullduggery of running a fake “Republican”, ‘Decoy’ Dan J. Sullivan – who originally wanted to call himself Dan S. Sullivan – who shares the same name as the two-term incumbent Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan. Trump also ordered the Department of Justice (DOJ) to take legal action, which several RedState commentators have already discussed. 

In 2026, unfortunately, these kinds of Democrat shenanigans are not unique. For example, see The Indy Imitation Game.

Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan is facing off against Decoy Dan Sullivan, Democrat former Rep. Mary Peltola, and another Republican candidate, who got on the final ballot after another Democrat stepped down at the last minute rather than split the Democrat vote. This is because Alaska has a ridiculous, screwy electoral system that was approved in 2020, by a ballot initiative, which established ranked-choice voting (RCV). Under Alaska's system, all candidates for an office run in a single primary election. The top four vote-getters, regardless of partisan affiliation, then advance to the general election. In general elections, voters rank the four candidates that advanced. A candidate needs a simple majority of the vote to be declared the winner. If no candidate wins a majority, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. Voters who selected that candidate as their first choice have their votes redistributed to their second choices. The tabulation process continues in rounds until a candidate receives a majority.

The RCV system was pushed and designed by rogue Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Murkowski has antagonized much of the Republican base over the years, and as a result, she even lost her primary in 2010 under the old system, only to win the general election as a write-in. To make her reelections easier, her allies produced the current RCV monstrosity. 

However, the RCV system also helps the Democrats. It is the reason that Mary Peltola won her initial election to Congress (running statewide). 

Mary Peltola won her 2022 special election by 5,240 votes. There were 11,290 exhausted GOP ballots in the 2nd round of rank choice counting. Across the 4 Alaska elections that used extra RCV rounds exhausted ballots averaged roughly 4%. Meaning on average 4% fewer people cast votes in the 2nd & 3rd rounds of RCV counting. The Democrats strategy for winning in Alaska is to trick GOP voters into literally wasting their ballots so a Democrat can win with less than 50% of the votes cast.

Had there been a more traditional system in that 2022 race, now-Rep. Nick Begich would likely have defeated the unpopular former Gov. Sarah Palin in the GOP primary and then defeated Peltola in the one-on-one general. In 2024, Peltola was ousted by Begich when Palin finally decided not to run for the House. 

It is important to remember that the Democrats have had success in Alaska Senate races before because of their dirty tricks. In 2008, longtime Republican Sen. Ted Stevens “was the victim of vicious, politically-motivated prosecutorial misconduct” that cost him his Senate seat and gave the Democrats their first Senate victory in the Republican state in decades. While this happened under the Bush administration, it is widely believed to have been done by Democrat partisan DOJ bureaucrats who were not punished for their actions. 

Back to the DOJ lawsuit; as my hard-left, partisan nemesis, Politico exults, it is likely to fail on its merits. But, as our RedState legal beagle attorney theorizes, the lawsuit looks “to be as much an effort to more broadly inform the electorate of the issue the Dems in Alaska have created by their promotion of the fake Dan Sullivan.”

Godspeed, DOJ. Thanks to the Democrat mischief, the Alaska seat is very competitive.

The normal introduction: in the upper chamber, the Republicans have a 53-to-47-seat majority, with 35 seats up. The Democrats need a net pickup of four seats to win control. But only two Republican seats are in competitive states. The other 20 GOP seats, including Alaska, are in states Donald Trump won by double digits. Trump carried Alaska by over 13 percent. Picking up a double-digit seat for the opposite party rarely happens. 

RealClearPolitics’s congressional generic vote shows the Democrats have an 8.2-point margin. This public polling is in "blue wave" territory. Of course, all this public polling has a bias towards the Democrats, thanks largely to the likely over-sampling of leftist voters and the under-sampling of right-wing voters. And that is not even considering the fake polls that have been revealed, most of which are on the left.

Alaska: Dan Sullivan / 54 percent R / Tilt R

The Democrats are providing some real funding for Decoy Dan, with the hope that this, coupled with Peltola’s “moderate” reputation, will carry them to an upset victory. The RCP average has Peltola up by 1.2 percent, with both main candidates slightly under 50 percent. But polling is hard to evaluate with such a wacky election process. Further after months of hyping Democrat chances to flip the Senate, even the New York Times is belatedly reporting how tough an actual victory in heavily Republican states will be, especially if there is the usual polling error. 

Recently, it was revealed that Decoy Dan’s son works for Democrat Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, who was the co-chair of the Blue Dog Democrats with Peltola in 2024. Peltola also has some alleged corruption concerns. The spending between the two main candidates has, so far, been almost two-to-one favoring the Real Dan Sullivan over Peltola, and the GOP seems likely to maintain an advantage. The Real Dan Sullivan and Mary Peltola have squared off in three contentious debates. 

In Alaska, I am at Tilt R, because the Real Dan Sullivan is a solid candidate, and the primary election was 100,000 votes short of the average general election for midterm elections, with the general ballot likely to be more Republican. So far, the early vote turnout has shown no real signs of a blue wave. 

Editor's Note: The Democrat Party has been infected by socialism, and it's spreading FAST. Democrats are claiming there's nothing to worry about, but we know the truth.

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