Alaska Gov. Dunleavy: ‘Decoy Dan’ Tried to Use Sen. Dan Sullivan’s Middle Initial on Ballot
They also apparently don’t know where he is!
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R) revealed more about “Decoy Dan” J. Sullivan, including that he wanted to fake his middle initial.
Incumbent Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan (R) has the middle name Scott. So the ballot lists him as Dan S. Sullivan.
“Decoy Dan” attempted to use S as his middle initial instead of J:
And as a matter of fact, when we did our investigation in late spring, early summer, the Dan Sullivan from Petersburg, Alaska, his initial emails to the Division of Election wanted him put on the ballot as Daniel S. Sullivan. His middle initial is not S. That’s the initial of our incumbent state U.S. senator, and so we knew that the intent was was questionable.
It gets better. It seems officials cannot find “Decoy Dan,” and he refused to answer questions through an affidavit earlier:
SANDRA SMITH: Well, where is this guy? Have you tracked him down?
DUNLEAVY: Well, we have folks that will be again following up on investigations and discussions with this individual and others, but initially he did not want to talk with the earlier inquiries. He didn’t want to do it under oath with an affidavit, and so again, all these things lead you to believe that he, was not intended, not to run.
SMITH: He was asked to respond to this under oath and refused?
DUNLEAVY: Yes, we wanted him to give we wanted him to answer questions you know through an affidavit, and he refused to do that. He answered the questions, but it wasn’t it wasn’t an under oath scenario.
Remember, the Alaska Board of Elections kicked “Decoy Dan” off the ballot over the summer because officials could tell he is a fake. The Alaska Supreme Court put him back on the ballot.
But despite the evidence discovered during that investigation, Dunleavy announced a new investigation into whether members of Democrat Mary Peltola’s Senate campaign should face charges for possible election manipulation regarding “Decoy Dan.”
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Comments
There’s nothing new about this. This was all in the initial reports. He wanted a fake “S” initial, but couldn’t justify it, and when the court ordered the secretary of state to put him back on the ballot it explicitly said “but not with the fake initial”, or words to that effect. It said to do everything you can to distinguish him from the real Sullivan.
The initial ruling was also made because attorneys representing Decoy Dan said his appearance on the ballot was not part of a scheme to deceive voters. With no evidence to that effect, the judge couldn’t do anything else but order the appearance of his name on the ballot. But the situation has since changed.
I think the point of the article is to underscore that a rat was scented early on, but the court didn’t buy the “smells like a rat, walks like a rat” argument. We’re just now beginning to see the rat, lending credence to the assertion that his candidacy is, in fact, a rat.
Decoy Dan should be offered immunity for a song.
The supreme court ruling wasn’t based on it not being a rat. It was based on the Alaska statute’s language not authorizing the secretary of state to exclude rats. As the court read the statute, it only authorized her to exclude candidates who hadn’t filled in the paperwork correctly. Once she’d ascertained that his form was correctly filed, she had to put him on the ballot no matter how much of a rat he was. It rejected her reading of the statute, that allowed her to decide that a form hadn’t been filed properly because it was filed with a dishonest intent.
You can always be relied on to take the side of the lying, thieving, cheating, do anything to win democrats…and you always ignore the fact that they also “judge shop” so they can complete the job.
Why the down vote on Milhouse? His read on the law is correct. Are you down voting because he’s Milhouse? Or because you don’t like his answer? And yes, the other side shops for a sympathetic judge, but so does our side when we can. The Dems just seem to be better at judge shopping than we are.
You can always be relied on to take the side of falsehood, lies, fraud, and what the supreme court calls “actual malice”, i.e. not giving a damn whether what you say is true or false.
The fact that you would even say something like that means that you can’t even conceive of the idea that it is wrong and evil to decide ones position on any question based on whose ox is gored.
And it’s impossible to “judge shop” a state supreme court!
Gosh, you mean ‘not filing their candidacy correctly’ like NOT USING THE RIGHT NAME?
It was incorrect in that he didn’t request the right name on the ballot. You can’t just make up a random name. The courts decided that not only wasn’t that incorrect, but they had the authority to correct it and order a different name on the ballot he hadn’t requested.
They had more than enough leeway to say that it was incorrectly filed, they CHOSE to ‘fix’ it instead.
They tried so hard to do the right thing that they put Decoy Dan above the real Dan Sullivan on the ballot.
No, they didn’t. It’s alphabetical within a letter. Making him use his real initial, J, puts him ahead of the real senator, whose initial is S.
But because the order rotates, on 1/4 of all ballots the real Sullivan is #1 and the fake one is #4.
There is nothing beneath the dignity of the lying Democrats!
They must stop the New Hitler
ReaganBushBush Jr.Trump and his evil associates.This is one of those vote on every page moments.
The ballot is unambiguous.
The best reason for raising hell now is to generate turnout.
I’m sure the early voters knew of this, they are I would think, a bit more informed.
But, Peltola installing him and Gerald Heikes both… they may be a bit disgruntled about that part.
Early voters are often the least informed out there.
Unless you are brain dead you can see who is behind this. This should have been handled many months ago and the question is why was is not done?
“It gets better. It seems officials cannot find “Decoy Dan,”
Maybe there’s a simple answer. Like, he turns up dead.
It’s not as if they can hit him up on his campaign websites which apparently have zero posts nor can he be located out on the campaign trail where he’s out there at events, rallies, meet and greets, glad handing, kissing babies, ya know, actually campaigning.
Homeboy might have gotten in over his head with this thing. At minimum the shenanigans with the name and lack of serious campaign seem to indicate an attempt to deceive voters. Potentially it would fit some sort of statute re misleading elections officials due to his fairly obvious lack of intent to try to mount a campaign, maybe a charge of election interference depending on how elastic the Alaska statutes are written.
Wouldn’t surprise me to see this guy get charged and immediately cut loose by everyone associated with the shenanigans abandoning him to face consequences alone. Could be dangerous if he refuses to go down alone and starts singing.
There are 15 ways to say snow in Eskimo but no word to describe the mess Dan is in.
As far as I know there is no such statute in any state.
It would certainly be odd to have a law requiring candidates to campaign, considering that the USA’s founders thought it was undignified for a candidate to campaign at all, and they never campaigned for themselves, at least not openly. They allowed their names to be put forward for office, and allowed their supporters to campaign for them, but they themselves did not participate.
This is why, while in modern America we speak of candidates “running” for office, in the early days they used the English term “standing” for office. A candidate stands there and waits for the voters to give him the office, or not. He doesn’t pursue it.
So it would be odd to have a law requiring it, and denouncing as a fraud a candidate who harked back to the old ways.
My goodness that’s quite a lot of unearned grace and goodwill you’re extending to the guy at the center of a very obvious plot/conspiracy to mislead voters/election officials.
His initial submission under a false name (middle initial) is almost certainly a violation of some sort of corrupt election practices statute and very likely perjury. If others induced him (and we shouldn’t rule that out given the recruiting efforts of the d/prog) then that’s probably a separate charge. If they merely ‘persuaded’ him without any inducement (bribe) then it would probably be a technical conspiracy.
We have all sorts of electioneering and campaign laws. Can’t engage in electioneering x distance from polling place is very common. Some have statutes re false information in electioneering telephone communications. I’d be very surprised if there’s not at least one Alaska statute this entire episode didn’t violate.
“Standing for office” is a British term, IIRC, and it does not mean literally standing there doing nothing when seeking election to an office. Running for office does not imply literally running either. When an individual seeks election to an office, s/he campaigns whether it’s called “running” for office or “standing” for office. Decoy Dan did neither because he wasn’t a candidate seeking office. Period.
We have all sorts of laws limiting electioneering and campaigning. We have no laws requiring anyone to campaign, and it would be bizarre to have such laws. Especially considering that while nowadays everyone does campaign, it used to be very much not the done thing.
And yes, isfoss, that is where the difference in terminology comes from. Sure, nowadays candidates campaign in the UK too. But the term comes from days when they didn’t, or at least pretended not to.
Milhouse,
I didn’t make.any suggestion much less a straightforward claim that the absence of evidence of a good faith campaign is in and of itself a crime.
I did argue that the absence does add context to the claim that this guy (and the folks who recruited him) are engaged in a bad faith effort (potentially criminal) to mislead voters.
You have a habit of projecting claims onto the posts of others aka strawman. Its tiresome.
But remember the Democrats are the good guys so no level of cheating is really wrong for them.
I hope this is part of what I suggested a couple of times. Until polls close keep this kind of stuff running, remind everyone of how crooked this move is even if it is legal.
Yeah, I remember when the middle initial thing came out. More than a bit sketch.
DOJ has issued 30 subpoenas which Jonathan Turley likens to carpet bombing.
Another commenter likened it to Let’s Make a Deal.
They said something to the effect that the first person to “make a deal” and hand over the encrypted text messages, internal emails, or financial logs usually gets the best immunity package. Anyone who holds out risks being left holding the bag.
Guess all them judges just turned a blind eye….
(1) You requested to access the ballot under the name “Dan Sullivan” even though it appears from Division records that you have never registered to vote or sought ballot access under this name. Our records indicate that you are registered to vote under the name “Daniel J. Sullivan, Jr.” That
you chose the occasion of your declaration of candidacy for U.S. Senate to seek ballot access. under a name you have not used in your interactions with the Division suggests—and in combination with the additional facts I outline in this letter leads me to conclude—that you are seeking to confuse yourself with another candidate in the race, the incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan, rather than distinguish yourself from him. Indeed, you yourself appeared to be confused when you initially emailed the Division asking to be listed on the ballot as “Dan S. Sullivan.” “S” is Senator Sullivan’s middle initial, not yours. – Carrol Beecher, Director, Division of Elections, June 15, 2026,
The judges didn’t ignore this at all. They explicitly authorized Beecher to put him on the ballot as “Daniel J. Sullivan, Jr.”, and to distinguish him as clearly as possible from the incumbent.
The point of the decision was not that Beecher’s suspicions were not justified. It was that the law simply does not authorize her to remove someone from the ballot just because they’re a rat . According to the supreme court, which is the last word on the meaning of state law, the phrasing in the statute that she was relying on simply does not mean what she wanted it to mean. It allows her to remove someone from the ballot only if they didn’t file their candidacy correctly; it says nothing about their honesty. He filled in the forms correctly, so the statute says she has to put him on the ballot.
The US election system is (irreparably) broken and only a fool would argue otherwise.
The conspiracy violated Alaska’s voters’ civil rights.
Since the above ballot clearly identifies the incumbent Republican, I don’t really get why anybody with half a brain would be confused.
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