Alaska rules Dan Sullivan cannot run against Dan Sullivan in key Senate race
Source: The Guardian
Mon 15 Jun 2026 17.26 EDT
Last modified on Mon 15 Jun 2026 17.29 EDT
There will still be one Dan Sullivan on the ballot, but election officials in Alaska determined a second man by the same name cannot run against him in the high-stakes Senate race.
A man named Dan Sullivan, or Daniel J Sullivan Jr, filed to run as a Republican against incumbent Alaska senator Dan S Sullivan, also a Republican. Republicans filed complaints against the other Dan Sullivan, saying the candidate had coordinated with a Democratic campaign to confuse voters.
Alaska’s US Senate election is seen as competitive and is a key target for Democrats hoping to win back control of the upper chamber. Mary Peltola, a former Democratic congresswoman, is expected to face incumbent Sullivan in November. The state has a non-partisan primary, set for 18 August. The top four vote-getters advance to the general election, which uses ranked-choice voting.
In a letter to Daniel J Sullivan on Monday, Alaska elections director Carol Beecher wrote that the “utterly unprecedented facts” in the case led her to conclude that Dan J Sullivan’s declaration of candidacy for US Senate “was not filed in order to declare an actual good-faith candidacy for the office of United States senator, but was instead filed with a purpose to confuse or mislead and to thereby compromise the ballot’s fairness or neutrality”.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/15/dan-sullivan-alaska-primary-election-ballot
REFERENCES
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143676351 (has earlier references)
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143678247
= new reply since forum marked as read
I can't seem to find in my copy of the constitution where it says if you have the same name as a current U.S. Senator from your state you are not allowed to run for that office. I just skimmed it so maybe I missed it somewhere. 
