Americans for Public Trust outlined in a Federal Election Commission complaint how “Decoy Dan,” a purported spoiler candidate with the same name as Alaska’s incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, may have violated federal election laws by coordinating with a dark money group. Recent reporting by The New York Times alleges that Democrat candidate Mary Pelota’s campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee actively recruited candidates to confuse voters and manipulate Alaska’s U.S. Senate race.
Together, this suggests a more complicated scheme to influence that race and possibly tip the balance of control of the U.S. Senate. Americans deserve answers about what happened in Alaska and whether federal election laws were in fact violated.
The New York Times reported last week that in the summer of 2025, Mary Peltola’s aides directed a staffer to search for every Dan Sullivan in Alaska. Jerid Kurtz, an operative introduced to the Peltola campaign by aides at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, called a Peltola aide in late May to say he had just arrived in Petersburg, the hometown of Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. (“Decoy Dan”), shortly before he filed to run for Senate.
The Times describes Petersburg as “a tiny fishing village along the Alaska Panhandle, reachable only by air and sea.” Kurtz was not the only notable visitor that spring. Peltola held a campaign event on May 26, three days before Decoy Dan filed his candidacy. Decoy Dan denies any connection, telling KFSK, “I have not been in contact with her or her campaign.”
The Times also reported on texts in which Peltola advisers, watching a focus group, wrote, “Do we have a scheme for you.” The Peltola campaign and the DSCC deny recruiting anyone. Decoy Dan has maintained, including through his attorney in court, that his campaign is genuine.
Public discussion has largely coalesced around the view that ballot-stacking is not illegal. That view misses the bigger legal story. That story is found in Americans for Public Trust’s Sept. 8 complaint.
The complaint describes how Decoy Dan’s only known campaign consultant, who was only made known after metadata revealed her relationship with the campaign, also held a leadership role at a dark-money group that spent more than half a million dollars attacking Sen. Dan Sullivan in the three months leading up to the August primary. Holding both a role within the Decoy Dan campaign and an outside group that attacked the campaign’s primary opponent could have violated federal election rules on coordination.
