Alaska Senate candidate running with same name as GOP incumbent Dan Sullivan ruled ineligible for ballot

A top election official in Alaska has ruled that a US Senate candidate who filed with the same name and party affiliation as incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan will not appear on the state's primary ballot in August, saying that the candidacy declaration was not made in good faith but was to "confuse or mislead and to thereby compromise the ballot’s fairness or neutrality.”

Alaska’s Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher declared in a letter on Monday to the challenger that the candidacy “was not filed in order to declare an actual good-faith candidacy for the office of United States Senator, but was instead filed with a purpose to confuse or mislead and to thereby compromise the ballot’s fairness or neutrality.” 

Sullivan can appeal the ruling if he desires. The ruling from Beecher comes after the challenging Sullivan launched his candidacy just days before the deadline for Alaska's Republican Party primary for Senate, which will take place in August, per the AP. 

A National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesperson told The Post Millennial, "Alaskans saw right through Chuck Schumer and Mary Peltola's tricks to confuse and deceive them with a sham candidate. Nobody delivers for Alaskans like Senator Dan Sullivan, which is why Alaska Last Democrats like Mary Peltola are stooping so low.”

In Alaska, the top four candidates in the primary advance, and then ranked-choice voting is used in the general election, which could have left the incumbent Sullivan vulnerable to having votes taken away due to confusion over candidate names. The metadata on a press release that was used to launch the challenging Sullivan's campaign also indicated that it had been drafted by a Democrat operative who had previously backed Democrat Mary Peltola, who is running to unseat the incumbent Sullivan.

The Democrat operative linked to the challenging Sullivan's press release launch, Amber Lee, has a consulting firm known as Amber Strategies and has helped a number of progressive clients.