Mary Peltola's campaign spent months secretly searching for a man who shared her opponent's exact name.
Now the New York Times has confirmed exactly how that search worked, and Sullivan says it proves everything.
One internal order from inside Peltola's campaign is now unraveling her Senate bid.
How Peltola Staffers Secretly Recruited 'Decoy Dan'
In the summer of 2025, a Peltola campaign staffer received an unusual assignment from top aides: track down every Alaskan who shared Sen. Dan Sullivan's name.
That is not a conspiracy theory invented by angry Republicans.
That is what Breitbart reported, citing the New York Times' own investigation into the campaign.
The staffer dug through voter rolls and built out a list of Alaskans who shared the senator's name.
That search eventually turned up Daniel J. Sullivan, a retired schoolteacher from Petersburg, Alaska.
According to Gov. Mike Dunleavy, he first tried to file for the ballot using the senator's own middle initial before appearing on the final ballot as Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.
Republicans nicknamed him "Decoy Dan" the moment his name landed next to the real Dan Sullivan's on Alaska's ranked choice ballot.
Sullivan called him a "sham candidate" back in June, months before the Times confirmed he was right.
Former Campaign Manager Says Peltola Knew About 'Decoy Dan'
President Trump did not wait for the courts to sort this out.
He called it "Voter Fraud at the Highest Level" and demanded Peltola and the decoy candidate both be removed from the ballot and prosecuted.
Gov. Dunleavy ordered Alaska's Department of Public Safety to investigate whether the scheme broke state law.
According to the New York Times, Peltola's own former campaign manager said Peltola knew about the scheme even though she was not directly involved in running it, before trying to walk the claim back.
Peltola denies knowing anything about it.
Sullivan is not buying her denial, and he calls the whole episode "the biggest scandal in Alaskan electoral history by far."
Even Sen. Lisa Murkowski, no friend of Trump's, said recruiting copycat candidates has no place in Alaska's elections.
The Rejected Absentee Ballot Fight Now Threatening to Flip the Race
This is not two separate stories.
This is one campaign that got caught rigging the ballot before Election Day – and now wants a judge to help with the count after it.
Peltola's team built a fake Republican to split Sullivan's votes, got exposed by the New York Times, and instead of apologizing, went to court for the one thing that could still save the plan: a list of exactly which ballots almost got thrown out.
Her lawyers sued Alaska's Division of Elections on Friday, demanding the names of every voter whose absentee ballot was rejected.
Sullivan's campaign filed Monday to intervene, accusing Peltola's team of trying to "rig the system" while ballots are still being counted.
Campaign spokesman Nate Adams did not mince words.
He said the same operatives who allegedly spent a year working to deceive Alaska voters are now asking a judge to let Peltola ignore state law in the middle of the count.
Peltola leads by roughly 600 votes with about a quarter of ballots still outstanding, and her lawsuit gets a hearing this week.
Democrats Ran This Same Recount Playbook in Florida and Minnesota
Democrats love the rules right up until the rules cost them a Senate seat.
This isn't Peltola's first attempt to bend the process in her favor, and it will not be the last if nobody stops her. The moment the real count got close, her lawyers ran straight to court demanding data the state says isn't ready to release. That is not a coincidence. That is a playbook.
Florida Democrats ran the same playbook in 2018, when a troubled election system turned a close Senate race into weeks of lawsuits before a single winner was declared. Minnesota Democrats ran it too, fighting over individual ink marks for weeks in a Senate race that ultimately flipped the chamber. Every time the count breaks against them, the lawsuits start, and the goalposts move until it works.
Alaska voters do not need a law degree to see what is happening here. They already caught Peltola's campaign running a copycat candidate to split the vote, and now they are watching that same campaign ask a judge for a do-over on the rules while the ballots are still coming in. Sullivan does not need a decoy to win this race. He just needs Alaskans to keep counting.
Sources:
- Anders Hagstrom, "Alaska Senate Fight Heats Up as Sullivan Moves to Block Peltola Lawsuit Over Rejected Absentee Ballot Records," Fox News, November 9, 2026.
- Greg Norman-Diamond, "Peltola Insists 'I Knew Nothing' About Alleged 'Decoy Dan' Scheme as Sullivan Alleges She Is 'Still Lying'," Fox News, October 30, 2026.
- Olivia Rondeau, "Sen. Dan Sullivan's Claims on Democrat Decoy Candidate Vindicated," Breitbart, November 2, 2026.
- Joseph MacKinnon, "Democrat Peltola Feeling the Heat as Alaska Launches Criminal Probe Into Alleged 'Decoy Dan' Ballot Scheme," The Blaze, October 29, 2026.
- Catherine Salgado, "Trump Calls for Disqualification and Prosecution of Peltola, 'Decoy Dan' in Alaska Senate Race," PJ Media, October 29, 2026.
- "Alaska Dems Spent Months Finding a Duplicate 'Dan Sullivan' to Confuse GOP Voters Ahead of Senate Race," The Western Journal, August 2026.
