Alaska Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews issued a 32-page order on June 26 ruling that a retired teacher from Petersburg named Dan J. Sullivan can appear on the Republican primary ballot alongside incumbent U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan. Same party. Same name. Same ballot.
The only difference voters will see is a middle initial.
Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. filed to run as a Republican — after switching his party registration just two days before filing. The Alaska Division of Elections, led by Director Carol Beecher, disqualified him on June 15 for lacking a good-faith candidacy. That seemed like a reasonable call. Judge Matthews disagreed.
In his ruling, Matthews wrote that "the Division's decision to exclude him for lacking a good-faith candidacy was not based on the Constitution, Alaska law, or the Division's own regulations." His proposed solution: list one as "Sullivan, Dan J. (Registered Republican)" and the other as "Sullivan, Dan (Registered Republican)." Problem solved, apparently.
Attorney Stacey C. Stone filed the original complaint on behalf of Alaska Republican Party Chairman Carmela Warfield, arguing the candidacy was designed to siphon votes. The concern is straightforward — even with a middle initial distinguishing the two, a percentage of voters marking their ballots for "Sullivan" will pick the wrong one. In a state that uses a top-four primary where finishers advance to a ranked-choice general election, every stray vote matters, as reported by 100PercentFedUp.com.
The Alaska Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the case by Zoom at 10 a.m. Monday, with a Tuesday noon deadline for ballot resolution. The August 18 primary is approaching fast, and ballots need to be printed.
The mechanics here aren't subtle. A man with no political profile switches his party registration to Republican at the last possible moment, files under a name identical to the sitting senator's, gets disqualified by the state's own elections division, then gets reinstated by a judge on procedural grounds. You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to notice the pattern. You just have to be literate.
Alaska has seen this kind of maneuvering before. Former U.S. Representative Mary Peltola won her seat in part because the state's ranked-choice system split the Republican vote. The Sullivan-Sullivan ballot scenario creates a similar dynamic at the primary level — dilute the incumbent's vote share by confusing low-information voters who see two identical names and guess.
Judge Matthews's ruling focused narrowly on whether the Division of Elections had statutory authority to make a good-faith determination. He concluded they didn't. That may be legally correct. But a 32-page order explaining why the elections division can't stop an obvious spoiler candidate from cluttering the ballot doesn't make the spoiler any less obvious.
The Republican Party filed the complaint. The elections director rejected the candidacy. A judge overruled both. And now Alaska voters get to play a matching game in August with their Senate seat on the line.
Two days to switch parties. One name to copy. Zero pretense.