Democrats have settled on a defense of the second Dan Sullivan on Alaska's Senate ballot, and it rests on one confident claim. Alaskans, they say, can easily tell the incumbent from his namesake, so any Republicans crying foul must think that voters are stupid.
That talking point took off after the Justice Department sued last week in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska to block the state from certifying its Senate results if Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) loses. According to the DOJ, the fake Sullivan entered the race as a Republican "with the intention of misleading" the incumbent's supporters.
Of course, that totally triggered Democrats.
Jessica Tarlov turned the accusation around on the GOP. "And they're giving the game up," Tarlov said. "The fact that the DOJ filed to invalidate the results in Alaska, if Mary Peltola wins, because people, I guess, are too stupid to know what 'Dan Sullivan incumbent' means versus Dan Sullivan […], that's what President Trump is saying by filing that lawsuit."
The panel on The View ran the same play. "I don't mean this as dismissive, but they're really only considering Republican voters stupid," Sara Haines said.
"I just think it's insane that either side, Democrats or Republicans, think Alaskans are so stupid they can't read ‘incumbent,’” Whoopi Goldberg added.
Former Biden administration official and Democratic strategist Adrienne Elrod went on MS NOW and compared the tactic to Republican efforts to boost Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s 2024 presidential campaign. "Some of this stuff happens all the time," Elrod told the network. "There are tactics that both campaigns can use."
So the left's case has three parts. Voters won't be fooled, Republicans are the ones insulting them, and everybody plays this game. The facts dismantle each one.
This week, The New York Times reported that Democratic operatives aligned with Peltola went searching in the summer of 2025 for another man named Dan Sullivan to put on the ballot. Their bet was that confused voters would drift away from the incumbent. The effort reportedly involved Peltola campaign aides, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) officials, campaign lawyers, and an operative who allegedly recruited candidates under the fake name "Zane."
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One spoiler wasn't enough. Drywall contractor Gerald Heikes also joined the race and became the fourth name on the ballot. After the primary, the same team reportedly helped persuade far-left Democrat David Leslie to drop out, which opened the slot for Heikes to siphon off Republican votes.
The planning went further still. Aides reportedly looked at funneling money to the new candidates through outside spending and a new super PAC called Alaska Values. They also weighed launching a "MAGA party" to split conservatives before dropping the idea. Former Peltola campaign manager Elisa Rios was a major source for the Times.
For those arguing this wouldn’t confuse voters, and that Alaskans can simply read the word "incumbent" on the ballot, if Democrats believed that, why build any of this? Nobody spends more than a year recruiting a name-double, clearing a ballot slot for a second spoiler, and drawing up a super PAC for a plan they expect to fail.
And let’s not pretend that backing third-party spoilers is the same thing as recruiting another candidate with the same name as the incumbent. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have gone to the trouble to find him. And, if Republicans had planted a second Mary Peltola, Democrats would be calling it an attack on democracy. You know they would.
But here’s what Democrats don’t want you to know: Democrats do think voters are stupid, which is why the scheme exists in the first place. Their own record proves it. For years, Democrats have called voter ID laws racist, an argument that assumes minorities can't manage to get an ID. Now the same party insists every voter can effortlessly tell two identical names apart on a ballot.
Greg Gutfeld weighed in on The Five on Friday. "This is not obviously an ordinary trick or a lie," Gutfeld said. "It's a deliberate strategy to intercept and misdirect votes. So why does it matter? More so than, 'well, the other people do it.' Because this is from the party that spent years accusing Trump of subverting democracy, you know. They would treat every minor procedural objection just like a legal challenge — Post-election, not pre-election, post-election — they would say 'that's an obstruction,' 'that's interference,' 'that's a threat to democracy.' Here, they're trying to break the link between the voter's intended choice and the vote that is recorded. This is before the election; this isn't after where you can complain. So they always insist that questioning a system creates mistrust, but they're actually creating mistrust in the ballot itself."
.@greggutfeld CALLS OUT A DEMOCRATIC BALLOT DOUBLE STANDARD! 🔥🗳️ As an investigation examines allegations of a decoy candidate scheme in Alaska, Greg Gutfeld questions the contrast between Democrats' past warnings about threats to democracy and the allegations surrounding this Senate race. “THEY ALWAYS ACCUSE YOU OF DOING THE THING THAT THEY ARE ALREADY DOING!” Tune in to ‘The Five’ weekdays at 5 p.m. ET on Fox News.
— The Five (@TheFive) October 30, 2026
The left is only defending the fake Sullivan scheme because they want the Democrats to win control of the Senate. None of their talking points defending the scheme hold up under scrutiny.
