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The campaign for Alaska Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola actively participated in an effort to peel votes away from incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan by recruiting namesake and spoiler candidates, according to an investigation The New York Times published Wednesday.
The covert operation, internally dubbed the “ballot composition project,” allegedly involved aides from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), top campaign advisors, party lawyers and an operative who traveled across the state under assumed names.
The effort began in the summer of 2025, when a Peltola staffer was directed to comb through state voter rolls to compile a list of Alaskans named Dan Sullivan, according to the report.
The plan worked earlier this year when Dan J. Sullivan, a retired teacher and left-leaning voter from Petersburg, switched his voter registration to Republican shortly before filing his candidacy in the Senate race.
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Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, and former Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images) (Nathaniel Wilder/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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Elisa Rios, Peltola’s former campaign manager who was fired in August, told the Times that while Peltola was not directly involved in orchestrating the project, she was “definitely aware.”
“Alaskan voters need to know,” Rios said. “There was a lot of speculation, and voters should get the full picture when making their decisions.”
Rios later attempted to retract her comments prior to publication, but the newspaper noted that her initial interviews were corroborated by text messages, internal documents and 11 other sources.
Central to the plan was Democratic operative Jerid Kurtz, who allegedly traveled through Alaska using aliases such as “Zane,” the report states.
Former Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, is part of one of the most consequential Senate races on the midterm map. (Nathaniel Wilder/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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Kurtz allegedly met potential recruits at local pubs and diners, offering outside financial backing to persuade conservative and independent candidates to run and split the right-leaning vote.
Beyond the second Sullivan, operatives recruited other potential candidates, including drywall contractor Gerald Heikes, according to the report.
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They also allegedly successfully pressured progressive candidate David Leslie to drop out of the race to avoid siphoning votes from Peltola, paving the way for Heikes to claim the fourth spot on Alaska’s ranked-choice ballot.
Campaign advisors and the DSCC also weighed creating a third-party “MAGA party” to siphon votes from the incumbent senator before abandoning the idea in May, according to the report.
Jacquelyn Lopez, an attorney with the prominent Democratic firm Elias Law Group, which represents both the DSCC and Peltola’s campaign, was looped into discussions regarding the third-party strategy and field operations, the Times wrote.
Internal messages allegedly showed staff asking whether they needed to “follow up with Jackie about maga party stuff,” while another noted that Lopez was in touch with Kurtz.
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“The Alaskans for Mary campaign has no involvement with either Sullivan campaign and did not recruit any candidates into the race,” Peltola’s campaign said in a statement to the Times. The DSCC echoed that stance, stating it had no role in recruiting either Sullivan or any other Republican candidate.
In a statement to Fox News, the DSCC said it was not involved with Dan J. Sullivan, while pointing to Republicans’ allegations of political shenanigans.
“Republicans have a long history of recruiting and propping up candidates in an attempt to boost their own campaigns, including recruiting a prisoner with a New York address to run against Mary Peltola and spending nearly half a million dollars to secure a spot on the ballot in Alaska for an Arizona resident in the Senate race this cycle,” a DSCC spokesperson said.
The White House pointed to a social media post by Communications Director Steven Cheung on X: “BREAKING: Democrats’ secret, CORRUPT plan to stack Alaska’s ballot EXPOSED!”
The report came just days before Election Day and amid a Justice Department lawsuit seeking to block certification of the election if the incumbent Sullivan loses due to voter confusion over the two identical candidate names.
Under Alaska’s four-person general election system, Peltola enters Tuesday as the sole Democrat on the ballot, facing off against Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, Dan J. Sullivan and Gerald Heikes.
