Alaska governor orders probe into Peltola Senate campaign

WASHINGTON — Republican Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy has ordered an investigation into the Democratic candidate running for the U.S. Senate in the state after revelations that her campaign appeared to be involved in recruiting another candidate with the same name as Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan.

Dunleavy's order, posted overnight on social media, comes a day after President Donald Trump called for the criminal prosecution of Mary Peltola and her campaign.

In a race that's among a handful of Senate contests this year expected to determine control of the chamber, the Republican president had previously directed his Department of Justice to sue to block certification of it, demanding that Alaska be prevented from certifying a win by Peltola if Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. remains on the state's ballots.

Dunleavy wrote that reporting by The New York Times “reveals disturbing new evidence of an organized effort to manipulate Alaska’s elections by recruiting candidates — including one with the same name as an incumbent U.S. Senator — to deliberately confuse voters and misdirect their votes.”

“Deliberately tricking voters into casting their ballots for someone else strikes at the integrity of our elections,” Dunleavy added, noting that the reporting “substantially supports” earlier findings by the state’s elections board into the matter.

Peltola dismisses the claims as a ‘distraction’

Peltola's campaign didn't immediately respond to a message early Thursday seeking comment on Dunleavy's order. But during a campaign stop in Soldotna, Peltola, a former congresswoman, suggested the Times' report was a "distraction" from issues such as Sen. Sullivan's support of the war in Iran.

“This is just another distraction. It’s another diversion,” she said in a video posted online. “This is all stuff to sell newspapers. This is all stuff to get subscriptions.”

On Thursday, Vice President JD Vance didn’t go as far as the president did in calling for Peltola to be prosecuted but said he supported a probe into possible election fraud.

“I mean, she is a person who, for months now, has pretended that she has had nothing to do with the fact that they have put a fraudulent person, a person explicitly designed to confuse Alaska voters, on the ballot,” Vance told reporters ahead of a campaign trip to Texas. “She is trying to steal a Senate seat from the voters of Alaska, and it’s disgraceful.”

State Supreme Court OK'd the other Sullivan on the ballot

Earlier this year, a top state elections official ruled Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired schoolteacher in the small fishing community of Petersburg, ineligible for the primary ballot, concluding that his declaration of candidacy was filed "with a purpose to confuse or mislead and to thereby compromise the ballot's fairness or neutrality."

The case went to the Alaska Supreme Court, which ruled he was qualified to run. He has long denied he was running at Democrats' behest and has said he had no contact with Peltola's campaign: "Zero, none, zilch," he said in June after announcing his run.

Alaskan voters will see “Dan S. Sullivan” identified as a “registered Republican” and “incumbent” on their ballots, while “Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.” will not have a party affiliation.

The New York Times reported that interviews, text messages and documents prepared for a potential lawsuit showed Peltola’s team aimed to coax candidates into the race, with the aim of splitting support for the GOP senator.

Asked about the reporting on Wednesday, Trump told journalists, “I think they should be prosecuted.” He earlier had posted on social media that “Peltola should suffer the Legal and Political consequences for what she has done.”

Parties have backed other candidates before

While controversial, the situation in Alaska is not that unusual. Political parties often support extra candidates on ballots to try to pull votes from their rivals. If state courts allow it, legal experts say, the federal government has no role challenging the results. In Ohio's Senate race, Republicans have been tied to an effort to boost a socialist on the ballot who would pull votes from the Democratic candidate challenging Sen. Jon Husted.

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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP. AP writer Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.