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By Anna Rahmanan
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Somewhere in Alaska, a Democratic political operative reportedly went looking for a man named Dan Sullivan. Any Dan Sullivan would do, provided he could be persuaded to run for the United States Senate against another man named Dan Sullivan.
The search apparently succeeded.
A New York Times investigation published Wednesday said Democratic operatives spent months trying to recruit candidates who might confuse voters or siphon support from Republican Senator Dan Sullivan. Their most promising discovery was a retired schoolteacher from Petersburg, Alaska, named Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.
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The simplicity of the trick is…magnificent?
After years of algorithmically amplified misinformation, anonymous political advertising, sophisticated voter targeting and dark-money organizations with names resembling charitable foundations, American politics has apparently rediscovered a dirty trick that can be explained in five seconds: find another guy with the same name.
The investigation described an elaborate effort involving Democratic consultants, campaign aides and discussions about engineering the ballot to improve former Representative Mary Peltola's chances. Her campaign and national Democrats have denied involvement in recruiting the second Sullivan, who maintains he entered the race independently.
Whatever the final accounting of responsibility, the reported scheme belongs to a venerable American political tradition.
Some noteworthy examples: New York's Tammany Hall perfected the art of manipulating elections through patronage and the careful management of who got to vote for whom. Richard Nixon's operatives took a more personal approach, using political sabotage and espionage against opponents. The Watergate scandal ultimately exposed the operation and helped bring down his presidency.
Florida supplied a more recent example in 2020, when a ghost-candidate operation sought to divert votes in a closely contested state Senate race.
The basic idea has survived every technological revolution in campaigning: give voters a misleading choice and hope enough of them take it.
Alaska's variation unknowingly goes a step further, perhaps even explaining something about Donald Trump’s political appeal.
The president has spent years demonstrating the power of blunt, immediately intelligible political conflict. He is direct in his attacks and immediately identifies his enemies by name. His accusations need no explanation. His whole approach may be misleading, but the directness and accessibility are political assets—and a candidate with the same name as the opponent fits that sensibility perfectly. There is no intricate theory about election interference that needs to be explained to the public.
The irony, of course, is that Democrats are accused of deploying the kind of bare-knuckled maneuver more commonly associated in contemporary political debate with Trump's willingness to discard conventional restraints.
For Democrats who have spent years presenting themselves as defenders of democratic norms, the allegations are particularly awkward. A campaign cannot easily condemn political manipulation in principle while benefiting from voters mistaking one candidate for another.
There is a serious distinction that deserves to be pointed out, though, specifically regarding the difference between a cynical electoral maneuver and an illegal one. Alaska's Supreme Court allowed the second Sullivan to remain on the ballot, and the two candidates are identified differently.
The allegations have nevertheless prompted Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy to order an investigation, while Trump has called for Peltola to be prosecuted. Neither the reporting nor the political outrage, by itself, establishes criminal wrongdoing.
As usual, voters are the (intended?) victims of the whole thing: they might end up supporting somebody they never intended to elect.
Still, there is a peculiar relief in encountering political trickery whose mechanism is so gloriously visible. In an era when Americans are asked to worry about invisible algorithms manipulating their perceptions, Alaska has produced an alleged scheme whose entire operating principle can fit on a refrigerator magnet.
For once, the dirty trick is easy to understand. Whether voters fall for it and what that means about us as a nation is another matter.
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