21JUN

Two Dan Sullivans, one Alaska toss-up

1 min read

17:53UTC

Alaska's Supreme Court put a second Dan Sullivan back on the Senate primary ballot on 29 June, and Cook moved the race to Toss-up two days later.

← Back to Wave or grind: the measure splits Jump to analysis ↓

PoliticsDeveloping

Key takeaway

A second Dan Sullivan on the ballot turned a safe Republican seat into a toss-up.

The Alaska Supreme Court reinstated Dan J. Sullivan of Petersburg to the 18 August Senate primary ballot on 29 June, overturning the state Division of Elections' disqualification of him for a bad-faith filing . the Court found the good-faith test the elections director had applied appears nowhere in Alaska's constitution, statute or regulation. Dan J. Sullivan shares no family tie with Senator Dan S. Sullivan.

He now runs against Republican Senator Dan S. Sullivan and Democratic recruit Mary Peltola under Alaska's top-four ranked-choice system, in which the four leading primary candidates advance and voters rank them in the general election. Two identically named Republicans on one ballot let a voter who means the senator rank the challenger first by mistake. Under ranked-choice counting, those stray first preferences can tip a close multi-round tally.

Cook Political Report moved Alaska Senate from Lean Republican to Toss-up on 1 July, citing that siphon risk directly. A seat the party had banked on holding now turns on ballot design rather than on any shift in what voters want. Alaska's Division of Elections has not said how it will distinguish the two names in August.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Alaska's Supreme Court put a second candidate named Dan Sullivan back on the primary ballot, running against the sitting Republican senator, who is also named Dan Sullivan. Election officials had tried to keep the newcomer off the ballot over fears voters would be confused about which one they were voting for. Alaska uses ranked-choice voting, where voters rank candidates in order of preference, but that system was not built to solve name confusion. Cook Political Report has already moved the race from favouring the incumbent to a genuine toss-up.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Alaska's top-four ranked-choice primary was designed to prevent vote-splitting between similar candidates by letting voters rank every option. That design assumes voters can tell the candidates apart in the first place.

When two candidates share an identical name and party label, ranking both does not resolve the underlying problem: a voter who cannot identify which Sullivan is the incumbent may rank them interchangeably, diluting the incumbent's first-choice advantage regardless of how the ballot is structured. The reinstatement exploits a gap in RCV's anti-spoiler design rather than a flaw the system was built to catch.

Sources:Anchorage Daily News

Mentions:Mary Peltola →Cook Political Report →Alaska →Sabato's Crystal Ball →Scott Kendall →Dan J. Sullivan →

First Reported In

Update #12 · Voter-data drive stalls; jobs turn soft

Anchorage Daily News· 9 Jul 2026

Read original →

Causes and effects

Caused by

Alaska blocks the second Dan Sullivan

The Alaska Supreme Court's reinstatement reversed the Division of Elections' 15 June disqualification.

Occurred 12 Jun 2026

Read story →

This Event

Two Dan Sullivans, one Alaska toss-up

A name-duplicate quirk under ranked-choice voting can shave a decisive few points from an incumbent without a single voter changing their mind.

Different Perspectives

Cook Political Report

Cook Political Report published a dated House ratings snapshot on 11 September and changed no seat's rating, holding at 206 Democratic to 208 Republican with 21 tossups since its 3 September batch. Publishing without a change is a dated decision, not an oversight, leaving Republicans ahead on seats while Democrats lead the national vote by 6.6 points.

Department of Justice

A Justice Department official told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that preservation letters like the one sent to Aguilar go to states the department is in active litigation against over incomplete voter registration lists. The department would not answer the paper's specific questions about the personal investigation notice riding inside the same letter.

Francisco Aguilar

Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar publicly rejected Justice Department pressure on 12 September, days after a 4 September letter combined a records-preservation demand with a personal notice that he is under investigation. He said he will not fold until a judge orders him to, making his office's compliance a political stand rather than a routine filing.

Brett Kavanaugh

Justice Brett Kavanaugh denied Missouri's state-track stay application alone on 8 September without referring it, then sent the separate federal-track application in Onder v. State of Missouri to the full Court, which stayed it on 10 September. His choice of which application to keep and which to share decided how much of the fight one justice controlled.

Robert Onder and the federal plaintiffs

Robert Onder and three other Republican plaintiffs won a temporary restraining order from Chief Judge Stephen R. Clark on 8 September ordering Missouri to use HB 1, then lost it when the Supreme Court stayed it on 10 September. Their federal route ran parallel to Hoskins's own reversal and ended the same way, with the 2022 map governing 3 November.

Richard Von Glahn and People Not Politicians

Richard Von Glahn and People Not Politicians won Von Glahn v. Hoskins on 3 September, persuading the Missouri Supreme Court that their referendum petition stripped HB 1 of effect and sent it to voters as Proposition A. The contempt finding against Hoskins this week confirms their win held even after the state's chief election officer tried to reverse it.