In Chicago, they're known as "ghost candidates."
In its heyday, the Chicago Machine would regularly swat away challengers to machine candidates by scouring the phone book to find people with the same last name, even the same initial. Their minions made sure to find enough signatures to put the barber, skid row bum, or mental patient on the ballot, ensuring the upstart candidate challenging the machine would lose.
That's the "Chicago Way."
The New York Times uncovered a scheme in the Alaska Senate race between Democrat Rep. Mary Peltola and incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan where an aide to Peltola's campaign engineered the entry of a "Ghost candidate," also named Dan Sullivan, into the race.
"The Times has found, based on interviews and text messages, along with documents prepared for a potential lawsuit against the campaign, that not only did Ms. Peltola’s team work with people trying to recruit Mr. Sullivan to run for Senate, but the effort was much broader," reports The New York Times. "The group worked to coax other would-be spoilers into the race, to dilute the incumbent’s support and help catapult the Democrat to victory."
One of The New York Times' major sources was a disgruntled former Peltola staffer, Elisa Rios. She was fired in a campaign shakeup last summer, and she apparently changed her mind and tried to get The Times to drop her interview. The Times refused because it had confirmed most of the major points with 11 other sources.
Rios claimed Peltola was not "directly involved" in the scheme but was “definitely aware.” That's like a crook who wasn't "directly involved" in a robbery but was "definitely aware" of the crime beforehand. There is no absolution for that.
Rios said Jerid Kurtz was introduced to the staff as a specialist in secret ballot maneuvers. Federal Election Commission records show a pro-Peltola PAC paid him $87,000, even though it said in a statement it had “never hired or paid Jerid Kurtz for performing any services.”
On Tuesday, the Alaska Senate ballot will have four names: three Republicans, including the two Sullivans, and another spoiler recruited by the Peltola campaign, Gerald Heikes.
The operation began in the summer of 2025 to lure potential spoiler candidates onto the state’s unusual four-person ballot, Ms. Rios said. In one early meeting, she said, aides with the D.S.C.C. introduced a veteran Democratic operative named Jerid Kurtz to Ms. Rios and Anton McParland, who at the time was Ms. Peltola’s chief of staff. Mr. Kurtz, a native of Ohio, was introduced as a specialist in secret ballot maneuvers, Ms. Rios said.
Months later, in early 2026, Mr. Kurtz participated in a video call with members of the ballot composition team, Ms. Rios said. He told the group he had made contact with one of the Dan Sullivans. This Mr. Sullivan lived in the tiny village of Petersburg, and Mr. Kurtz described him as amenable to running if it would help Ms. Peltola, Ms. Rios said.
Mr. Kurtz “told us when he found him,” she said. He said Mr. Sullivan “said he hated Trump, and if it was going to help Mary, he liked Mary. He didn’t have any interest in being a politician, but if this could help.
Sullivan, the ghost candidate, claims he didn't know of the scheme and entered the race of his own accord. Meanwhile, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) was hip deep in the conspiracy.
"Text messages viewed by The Times show officials with the D.S.C.C. and the Peltola campaign communicating for months about the project," The New York Times reports. "Mr. [Anton] McParland asked for updates from 'Jarid,' 'Jared' or 'our friend,' and D.S.C.C. officials quickly scheduled calls, the messages showed."
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Trump sic'ed the Justice Department on the campaign by filing suit to block certification of the vote if the incumbent Senator Sullivan doesn't win. This has no chance whatsoever of succeeding, given the election hasn't even been held yet.
A better bet is the criminal investigation into Peltola's campaign ordered by Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy. While the intent to defraud voters is obvious, proving it in court is another question.
“Deliberately tricking voters into casting their ballots for someone else strikes at the integrity of our elections,” he said in a post on X. “Anyone or any organization found to have broken the law must be held accountable.”
They may get some campaign advisors on a conspiracy charge, but that, too, is hard to prove. Perhaps it's enough that the scheme gets the widest possible exposure so that Alaska voters are fully informed before the Tuesday vote.
The huge advantage to this skullduggery by Democrats is that Alaska is a ranked-choice state. Essentially, they keep counting until someone has a majority. The other Sullivan and the other GOP candidate recruited by the Peltola campaign could siphon off enough votes to deny the incumbent a majority.
That was the intent all along.
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