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A Democrat serving a 20-year federal prison sentence has advanced to Alaska's general-election ballot for a second time, renewing scrutiny of an unusual candidate whom the state's Republican Party went to court to help keep on the ballot.
Eric Hafner, who has never lived in Alaska, advanced from the state's 2026 U.S. House primary after also making the general-election ballot in 2024. His candidacy is drawing fresh attention amid the explosive controversy over Alaska's two Dan Sullivans.
The episode is resurfacing as Republicans accuse Democrats of helping another unconventional candidate onto an Alaska ballot: Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired teacher who shares a name with incumbent Republican Senator Dan Sullivan.
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The circumstances and legal issues are different. But Democrats are pointing to the Hafner case as Republicans, including President Donald Trump, denounce Sullivan Jr.'s candidacy and GOP Governor Mike Dunleavy orders an investigation into whether alleged efforts to recruit candidates into this year's Senate race violated Alaska law.
The comparison raises an uncomfortable political question for both sides: When does putting more candidates before voters promote choice, and when does it become an effort to manipulate an election?
Newsweek has reached out to Hafner, the Alaska Republican Party and the campaign of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mary Peltola.
Who Is Eric Hafner?
Hafner is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence after pleading guilty in 2022 to making threatening communications and conveying false information concerning the use of an explosive device.
Federal prosecutors said Hafner threatened elected officials, judges, police officers, attorneys and their families while living outside the United States from 2016 to 2018. Prosecutors said he also made false bomb threats targeting government offices, a courthouse, a police department, law firms and a business.
He was sentenced in December 2023 to 240 months in prison and three years of supervised release.
Hafner has disputed his conviction, telling Alaska public radio station KRBD in 2024: "I'm innocent of all charges. I deny all allegations."
Alaska was also not his first attempt to win elected office outside his home state. Hafner previously ran for Congress in Hawaii in 2016 as a Republican and Oregon in 2018 as a Democrat.
In 2024, he entered Alaska's U.S. House race as a Democrat despite having no affiliation with the Alaska Democratic Party, a fact the party itself emphasized in its lawsuit seeking his removal.
Eric Hafner Advances Again in Alaska's 2026 Election
Hafner is not merely resurfacing because of the controversy over Alaska's U.S. Senate race. He is again running for the state's sole U.S. House seat in 2026 and advanced from the August primary while still serving his federal prison sentence in New York.
Hafner received 6,175 votes, or 3.8 percent, according to certified results, far more than the 467 votes he received in Alaska's 2024 primary. Democrat Matt Schultz received 13,149 votes but had withdrawn from the general election before the primary and therefore did not advance.
That leaves Hafner as the only candidate listed as a registered Democrat in Alaska's 2026 U.S. House general election. The other candidates are Republican Nick Begich, nonpartisan Bill Hill and Libertarian James C. "Jim" McDermott.
The development renewed questions about whether Hafner could satisfy the U.S. Constitution's requirement that a House member be an inhabitant of the state when elected. Hafner's candidate information listed a mailing address in Box Elder, South Dakota, and a New York telephone number.
Hafner's mother, Carol Hafner, also ran in Alaska this year, seeking a place on the U.S. Senate general-election ballot, but did not advance.
How Did Eric Hafner Get on Alaska's Ballot in 2024?
Hafner initially finished sixth in Alaska's August 2024 House primary, receiving just 0.43 percent of the vote, according to the Alaska Democratic Party's subsequent court complaint.
That would ordinarily have left him outside Alaska's four-candidate general election.
But two Republicans who had finished ahead of him, Lieutenant Governor Nancy Dahlstrom and Matthew Salisbury, withdrew. Fifth-place finisher John Wayne Howe and sixth-place Hafner were then elevated onto the ballot alongside Peltola and Begich. The Alaska Republican Party's appellate brief said the Division of Elections certified those four candidates after the two withdrawals.
The withdrawals came amid a broader Republican effort to consolidate the party's general-election field.
Before the primary, some Alaska Republican candidates had pledged to withdraw if another Republican finished ahead of them, a strategy aimed at producing fewer GOP candidates in the ranked-choice general election.
The Alaska Democratic Party alleged in its lawsuit that Dahlstrom and Salisbury's withdrawals had been "orchestrated by the Alaska Republican Party" to ensure only one Republican appeared on the general-election ballot.
But those withdrawals had another consequence: Hafner made the ballot.
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Why Did Alaska Republicans Fight to Keep Eric Hafner on the Ballot?
The Alaska Democratic Party sued the Division of Elections in September 2024, seeking to oust Hafner from the ballot.
Democrats argued that state law authorized replacing a withdrawn top-four candidate with the fifth-place primary finisher, but did not authorize officials to keep moving down the results and elevate sixth-place Hafner after a second withdrawal. They also argued that Hafner could not satisfy the U.S. Constitution's requirement that a House member be an inhabitant of the state when elected because he was incarcerated in New York, and challenged the residence information on his candidacy declaration.
The Alaska Republican Party intervened on the other side, arguing that Hafner should stay on the ballot.
In its brief to the Alaska Supreme Court, the GOP said that the purpose of the state's top-four system was to give voters four choices whenever possible and that nothing in state law established a minimum number of primary votes a candidate had to win before being eligible to advance.
The Republican Party also directly rejected Democrats' contention that Hafner could harm Peltola by drawing votes from her.
"Alaskans have a right to vote for whichever candidate(s) they choose, whether the ADP [Alaska Democratic Party] approves of their choice(s) or not," the party argued.
The GOP accused Democrats of asking the courts to rewrite Alaskan election law "in order to increase their chances of reelecting Peltola."
The courts ultimately rejected the effort to remove Hafner.
Could Eric Hafner Run and Serve in Congress From Prison?
Hafner's return to the ballot has revived a constitutional issue that arose during his 2024 candidacy: the difference between being allowed to run for Congress and being legally qualified to serve if elected.
The Constitution requires a House member to be an inhabitant of the state "when elected." In 2024, Democrats argued that Hafner could not meet that requirement because he was imprisoned in New York.
But the dispute did not prevent his name from appearing on the ballot. Superior Court Judge Ian Wheeles concluded that Hafner could run regardless of whether he would ultimately be able to take office if elected.
Hafner said in 2024 that he expected to seek release from prison if elected and relocate to Alaska.
Now, two years later, that issue has returned because Hafner has again advanced from Alaska's primary while incarcerated outside the state.
Is Eric Hafner's Case Like the Two Dan Sullivans Controversy?
There are obvious political parallels but substantial legal differences. In both controversies, one major party argued that an unusual candidate could divert votes from its leading candidate. In both, efforts were made to remove that candidate. And in both, Alaska's courts ultimately left the candidate on the ballot.
But the legal disputes were different. The 2024 Hafner litigation centered substantially on whether Alaska law permitted a sixth-place primary candidate to replace a second withdrawn top-four finisher. The Alaska GOP argued that the statute should be interpreted in light of the top-four system's purpose of maximizing voter choice.
The 2026 Sullivan dispute involved the Division of Elections' conclusion that Sullivan Jr. had filed with the purpose of confusing or misleading voters. The courts nevertheless restored him because the state lacked a legal basis to impose the "good faith" candidacy requirement it had used.
The Sullivan controversy has since escalated beyond the ballot-access litigation. The Justice Department has issued a new round of grand jury subpoenas seeking testimony or documents, along with records-preservation demands, as part of a criminal investigation into the circumstances surrounding Sullivan Jr.'s candidacy, the Associated Press reported Thursday, citing a person briefed on the investigation. The number and recipients of the subpoenas, as well as the potential targets of the investigation, were not immediately clear.
The political contrast with Hafner's case is nevertheless striking. Two years ago, the Alaska Republican Party argued that Democrats could not show irreparable harm simply because Hafner might compete with Peltola for votes. The party argued that ranked-choice voting allowed Alaskans to choose among the candidates and said the Democratic Party was effectively asking the court to protect Peltola electorally.
Republicans are now objecting to Sullivan Jr.'s presence in a close Senate race against Peltola, while Trump has repeatedly argued that the two similar names could confuse voters.
There is an important distinction between recruiting Hafner and later supporting his presence on the ballot. The materials reviewed by Newsweek show that the Alaska Republican Party intervened in court to keep Hafner on the ballot, but do not establish that the party recruited him to run.
There are also important distinctions among recruiting someone to become a candidate, independently spending money to promote an existing candidate and going to court to keep a candidate on the ballot. The controversies surrounding Hafner and Sullivan Jr. involve different types of alleged or documented activity.
Mary Peltola Campaign Points to GOP-Backed Alaska Candidates
Supporting lesser-known candidates in an effort to draw votes from an opponent is not unique to Alaska or to one party. Political parties have supported additional candidates on ballots in efforts to pull votes from their rivals.
In this year's Alaska Senate race, the Peltola campaign is pointing to Fair Deal Alaska, a Republican-aligned super PAC that spent money supporting lesser-known candidates who could draw votes from Peltola.
Federal Election Commission filings show Fair Deal Alaska received $850,000, most of it from the Senate Leadership Fund, a major Republican super PAC.
Fair Deal Alaska financially backed two people who could draw votes from Peltola: Carol Hafner, her fellow Democrat and Eric Hafner's mother, and Green Party candidate Richard Grayson, an Arizona resident who said he was running "for fun." The Republican-aligned super PAC also spent money opposing Peltola.
The Peltola campaign has portrayed that spending, together with Republicans' defense of Eric Hafner's place on the 2024 ballot, as evidence of a double standard in the backlash to Sullivan Jr.
But the documented activities are not identical. Independent spending to promote an existing candidate, intervening in litigation over ballot access and recruiting someone to become a candidate are distinct activities. The Sullivan controversy involves allegations that Democratic operatives participated in candidate recruitment.
Why Eric Hafner Matters to Alaska's 2026 Election Fight
Hafner's 2024 case has renewed relevance because of the increasingly bitter fight over who belongs on an Alaska ballot.
The state's voting system begins with a nonpartisan primary in which the top four candidates advance, regardless of party. Ranked-choice voting is then used in the general election, allowing voters to rank candidates and providing for votes to transfer if a voter's higher-ranked candidate is eliminated.
The system has repeatedly created strategic choices for both parties about whether having multiple ideologically similar candidates on the ballot helps or harms their chances.
In 2024, the Alaska Republican Party argued that keeping Hafner on the ballot promoted the voter choice at the heart of the system. The party's court brief said the intention behind the top-four law was for four candidates to appear on general-election ballots whenever possible.
Now the presence of another unconventional candidate has become a national political controversy, with Republicans alleging that Sullivan Jr.'s candidacy was intended to confuse voters and damage the Republican incumbent.
The criminal investigation and new subpoenas raise the stakes of the Sullivan controversy considerably beyond the 2024 fight over Hafner's ballot access. But the old Hafner litigation remains a revealing part of the political context: The Alaska Republican Party intervened in court to argue that an unusual Democratic candidate should remain on the ballot, while the Alaska Democratic Party sought his removal.
Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here. Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Jason Lemon and Edward T. Cummins
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