Mary Peltola, the Democrat running for the United States Senate in Alaska, has denied in her own words that she knew anything about the effort to put a second candidate named Dan Sullivan on the ballot. Speaking in Juneau on Thursday, October 29, 2026, four days before the November 3 midterm elections, Peltola told supporters she had never heard of any candidate in the race other than herself and the Republican incumbent she is trying to unseat.
“I just want to clear the air,” she said at the top of a speech in a downtown bar in Juneau, Alaska’s capital. “I knew nothing about any other candidate on the ballot except for me and the incumbent. That is all I have ever known about. I am not interested in tricking voters.” She added: “I know I can beat Dan Sullivan.”
Peltola’s denial was her fullest personal response yet to a controversy that has consumed the final days of one of the Senate races that could decide control of the chamber. The Associated Press reported that she spoke at the top of a speech in a downtown Juneau bar, choosing to address the claims directly rather than leave them to campaign statements. Until now, her campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee had denied involvement in general terms; on Thursday, Peltola put the denial in the first person.
The same day, the Justice Department escalated its criminal investigation. A person familiar with the matter told the Associated Press that subpoenas seeking grand jury testimony or documents, along with records preservation demands, were issued on Thursday, with more expected. Neither the recipients nor the total number of subpoenas was immediately clear, and the potential targets of the investigation are unclear. The department has been looking into the allegations for months, but the new subpoenas arrived only after The New York Times reported on October 28 that Peltola’s campaign appeared to be involved in recruiting Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired schoolteacher from the small fishing community of Petersburg, as a candidate.
Peltola has also framed the controversy as a deliberate distraction. In a fundraising post on Thursday she wrote: “They can’t win on their record so they’re trying to intimidate me into backing down.” She added: “This is just another distraction as they avoid answering for the skyrocketing cost of living we’re facing because of their tariffs and forever wars. It won’t work.” At an earlier campaign stop in Soldotna she called the report “just another distraction” and “another diversion”, saying: “This is all stuff to sell newspapers. This is all stuff to get subscriptions.” She suggested the row was diverting attention from issues such as Senator Sullivan’s support for the war in Iran.
The row centres on two men with the same first and last name. The incumbent is Republican Senator Dan S. Sullivan, a two-term senator seeking re-election. The other candidate is Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired schoolteacher who, according to the Associated Press, has long denied 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. He is one of four candidates on Alaska’s ranked-choice ballot for the Senate seat.
Earlier this year, a top state elections official ruled Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. 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 Alaska Supreme Court ruled that he was qualified to run. On the ballot, voters will see “Dan S. Sullivan” identified as a “registered Republican” and “incumbent”, while “Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.” will carry no party affiliation. Because Alaska uses ranked-choice voting, a voter who is unsure can rank both Sullivans, and their vote will in all likelihood still count for the candidate they prefer.
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 Republican senator. The newspaper did not establish that Peltola personally directed the effort. That distinction matters: the Justice Department’s revised lawsuit, filed on Thursday, October 29, accused Peltola’s campaign aides of orchestrating what it called a “sham campaign”, saying: “They orchestrated his sham campaign for the purpose of misleading Alaskan voters and getting Peltola elected.” The lawsuit seeks to block certification of the Senate result if Senator Sullivan loses narrowly. The department’s original lawsuit was filed on October 22, and House Oversight Chair James Comer opened a congressional inquiry on Thursday.
Ballot-stacking itself is not new in American politics, and legal experts note it is generally lawful when state courts allow it. Political parties often support extra candidates on ballots to try to pull votes from their rivals. In Ohio’s Senate race this year, Republicans have been tied to an effort to boost a socialist candidate on the ballot who would pull votes from the Democratic candidate challenging Senator Jon Husted. What makes Alaska different is the scale of the federal response: a civil lawsuit seeking to block certification, a criminal investigation with grand jury subpoenas, and a state investigation ordered by the Republican governor, all in the final days before voting ends.
Peltola’s Juneau speech matters because it closes a gap her critics had exploited. For two days, the sharpest attacks had focused on what she personally knew, while her public responses came through campaign statements and fundraising posts. On Thursday she answered directly, in a room full of supporters, and tied the denial to confidence about the result itself: she can beat Dan Sullivan, she said, without tricking anyone.
The reaction from voters in Juneau, as reported by the Associated Press, showed why the row is so volatile. Carter Bancroft, an independent, said he voted on Thursday for Peltola. “I’m very certain in the candidates I wanted to vote for and I wanted to vote for Mary Peltola,” he said. But he added that the latest claims had bothered him, worrying they give “ammunition” to Trump and others to attack Peltola or other Democratic candidates. “And I think I’m bothered by shenanigans on either side,” Bancroft said, especially actions intended “to confuse things or try to trick people”.
John Delgado, an independent who leans Republican, said he has “warmed up” to Senator Sullivan, especially in light of the recent claims, and agreed that Peltola should drop out of the race. That split — a Peltola voter troubled by the tactics, and a Sullivan-leaning voter hardened by them — captures the risk for both campaigns in the final four days: the controversy may motivate each side’s supporters as much as it persuades anyone in the middle.
Trump escalated his language on Thursday. On his way to a rally in South Carolina, he cast doubt on whether Peltola would be seated in the Senate even if she won. “Well, you’re going to have to see what happens,” he told reporters. “It’s hard to believe that she could even be allowed to run.” Later, as he rallied for Republican Senator Darline Graham, he said he felt Peltola “actually should be removed from the ballot and prosecuted”. On Wednesday he had told journalists: “I think they should be prosecuted,” and had posted on social media that “Peltola should suffer the Legal and Political consequences for what she has done.”
Blanche, in a Fox News interview on Wednesday, said he would not discuss any criminal investigations, but accused Democrats of “cheating”. “They are trying to take votes away from the incumbent, not by running an election, not by running on issues but by putting up a person with the same name,” he said.
Vance, speaking on Thursday ahead of a campaign trip to Texas, did not go as far as Trump in calling for prosecution, 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. “She is trying to steal a Senate seat from the voters of Alaska, and it’s disgraceful.”
Alaska’s Republican governor, Mike Dunleavy, has ordered an investigation by the Alaska Department of Public Safety into Peltola, saying the newspaper’s reporting “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”. He added: “Deliberately tricking voters into casting their ballots for someone else strikes at the integrity of our elections.” Peltola’s campaign did not immediately respond to a message on Thursday seeking comment on Dunleavy’s order.
Alaska is one of a handful of Senate contests expected to determine control of the chamber, where Republicans now hold 53 of 100 seats and Democrats need a net gain of four for a majority. A Data for Progress poll conducted October 8-16 had Peltola leading Senator Sullivan 47% to 44%, with Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. at 4%, and a ranked-choice final round of 51% to 49% for Peltola. Decision Desk HQ gave Peltola a 60% probability of winning as of October 29. With more than 61,000 ballots already cast before the latest subpoenas, the practical question is whether a federal court, a criminal investigation or a state probe can change anything about an election that is already substantially under way — or whether, as the Justice Department’s critics argue, the department has historically avoided overt investigative actions against candidates in the weeks before an election precisely because they can be perceived as attempting to influence the outcome.
The case also tests the line between hardball campaign tactics and election manipulation. If recruiting a same-name candidate is lawful ballot-stacking, as state courts have so far treated it in Alaska, then the federal government’s role in challenging the result is, in the view of legal experts cited in earlier coverage, limited. If, on the other hand, prosecutors can show that voters were deliberately misled by a coordinated scheme, the certification fight the Justice Department has already filed could reach a courtroom after the votes are counted. Either way, the voters who have already cast ballots — and the more than 61,000 of them who did so before Thursday’s denial — will have decided on the basis of a campaign whose final chapter is now being written in subpoenas and speeches rather than in policy debates.
Alaskans vote on Tuesday, November 3, alongside voters across the country in elections for all 435 House seats and 35 Senate seats. In the final four days, expect Peltola to keep campaigning on living costs and tariffs — the issues she cited in her fundraising post — while Trump, Vance and Blanche keep the ballot controversy at the centre of the Republican closing message. The Justice Department’s criminal investigation is unlikely to conclude before Election Day, and its civil lawsuit seeking to block certification would only bite if Senator Sullivan loses narrowly. The state investigation ordered by Dunleavy is likewise a longer process than the four days left in the campaign.
The more immediate test comes at the ballot box and in the counting room. Alaska’s ranked-choice system means the first round of results will not settle the race if no candidate wins a majority; second-choice preferences, including votes that ranked both Sullivans, will decide it. And if the margin is close, the certification fight the Justice Department has already prepared — the lawsuit filed on October 22 and revised on October 29 — will move from a warning to a live legal battle. Peltola’s Thursday denial, delivered in a Juneau bar to supporters who had just watched a week of headlines about her campaign, was an attempt to make sure that battle, if it comes, is fought over votes rather than over what she knew.
Mary Peltola is the Democratic candidate for the United States Senate in Alaska and a former congresswoman. She is running against Republican incumbent Senator Dan S. Sullivan in a race that could help decide control of the Senate, with Election Day on Tuesday, November 3, 2026.
Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. is a retired schoolteacher from Petersburg, Alaska, who is on the Senate ballot alongside incumbent Senator Dan S. Sullivan. He has denied running at Democrats’ behest, saying in June that he had no contact with Peltola’s campaign: “Zero, none, zilch.”
Speaking in Juneau on Thursday, October 29, Peltola said: “I knew nothing about any other candidate on the ballot except for me and the incumbent. That is all I have ever known about. I am not interested in tricking voters.” She added: “I know I can beat Dan Sullivan.”
The Justice Department has filed a civil lawsuit seeking to block certification of the Alaska Senate result if Senator Sullivan loses narrowly, and it issued a new round of grand jury subpoenas on Thursday as part of a separate criminal investigation. The recipients and total number of the new subpoenas were not immediately clear.
The midterm elections are on Tuesday, November 3, 2026. A Data for Progress poll from October 8-16 had Peltola leading Senator Sullivan 47% to 44%, with Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. at 4%, and Decision Desk HQ gave Peltola a 60% probability of winning as of October 29.
Related coverage on US News Pulse: DOJ renews bid to block Alaska certification in revised lawsuit; Michigan Senate race becomes a faith fight as Trump and Moreno target El-Sayed; Trump cancels Iowa and Kansas rallies and switches to tele-rallies before the midterms.
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