In a twist that few saw coming, Alaska’s Senate race — or at least the campaign media coverage around it — has just acquired a third person with the same name, and he’s already taken a side.
Former Anchorage Mayor Dan A. Sullivan endorsed Sen. Dan S. Sullivan on primary day, August 18, in a Facebook post that billed himself as “the OG Dan Sullivan,” according to NBC News. He asked Alaskans to send the senator back to Washington, calling his record good for the state.
The former mayor was on a statewide ballot in 2014 as a candidate for lieutenant governor, the same year the senator first won his seat, though the two were seeking different offices.
And here’s where this story truly tests the limits of your ability to follow along. The man at the heart of it isn’t one of the two Sullivans, but a third Sullivan. He is Dan J. Sullivan, a retired schoolteacher from Petersburg who put his name forward on May 29, 2026.
It’s a tangled mess, to say the least. “Dan Sullivan has endorsed Dan Sullivan to defeat Dan Sullivan,” one person gave his read on the story. “Welcome to Alaska politics.”
Is everyone in Alaska named Dan Sullivan? The jokes and memes practically write themselves.
The senator and the National Republican Senatorial Committee are saying his campaign was manufactured to bleed Republican votes and hand the seat to Democrat Mary Peltola, but the teacher rejects that claim. He says that he’s an ordinary Republican with ordinary grievances. “My intention is not to trick people,” he told The New York Times, arguing that voters can probably tell a sitting senator from a schoolteacher.
The count so far corroborates that claim. Peltola led the all-party primary with 48.1% to the senator’s 42.7%, while the teacher sat at 2.4% and the fourth and final slot remained unsettled. The top four advance to a ranked-choice general election on November 3.
They tried to take him out of the competition, but he has managed to remain in the fight.
The rules are for ballots, not identities
Elections Director Carol Beecher threw the teacher off the ballot on June 15, concluding his paperwork was not a sincere bid for office. A superior court judge reinstated him in late June.
Beecher’s decision leaned on a regulation (via Cornell Law School) that prohibits printing a name in a form that misleads voters or skews the ballot’s fairness. The state can apparently fix the issue by printing a clearer ballot instead of deleting a candidate.
Her letter also contains a detail that might be damning to the teacher’s case. She says that when he first wrote to the division, he asked to be listed as Dan S. Sullivan — an initial belonging to the senator, his own middle-name being James. Beecher read that as proof of intent, though allowed that even he seemed muddled about which Sullivan he was.
Confused about which Sullivan to vote for? It turns out even the Sullivans themselves aren’t entirely sure who’s who.
Published: Aug 25, 2026 02:40 pm