A retired teacher with no political experience, who only registered as a Republican two days before filing his candidacy, is now positioned to hand Democrats a crucial Senate seat in Alaska. And that’s exactly the plan.
Daniel J. Sullivan, dubbed “Decoy Dan,” captured 2.4 percent of the vote in Alaska’s primary election, securing himself a spot on the November ballot alongside the real Republican incumbent, Sen. Dan Sullivan. The scheme is as brazen as it gets: confuse enough voters to siphon support from the sitting senator and deliver victory to Democrat Mary Peltola.
The New York Times recently reported that veteran Democrat consultant Amber Lee has been assisting the fake Sullivan in his campaign. The impostor initially tried to register with the Alaska Division of Elections as “Dan S. Sullivan,” adopting the incumbent’s middle initial so both names would appear identical on the ballot. He even created a website strikingly similar to Sen. Sullivan’s official reelection site in format and color scheme.
As of the latest count, Sen. Sullivan trails Peltola by approximately 5 points in the primary, with some 30,000 votes still uncounted. But the damage is already done. Under Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system, the top four candidates advance to the general election, meaning Decoy Dan will appear on the ballot alongside the legitimate candidates.
This is how ranked-choice voting works in practice. Alaska replaced its traditional party primary system with an open “jungle primary” where any resident can sign up as a candidate. In the general election, voters rank their preferences instead of simply choosing one. When two Republicans appear on the same ballot against a single Democrat, the conservative vote splits and the Democrat wins.
It’s happened before. Peltola won her House seat in 2022 through this exact mechanism. She ran in a special election to replace the late Rep. Don Young, who had held Alaska’s sole U.S. House seat for 49 years. The Republican vote split between Sarah Palin and Nick Begich, and Peltola secured victory in the second round of vote counting.
The ranked-choice system has produced other outlandish results. In November 2024, a convicted felon serving a 20-year prison sentence in New Jersey appeared on the ballot simply because he came in sixth in the open primary.
The entire purpose of Decoy Dan’s candidacy is voter deception, plain and simple. He filed in bad faith. He has no legitimate campaign. He exists on the ballot solely to trick Alaskans into casting their vote for the wrong Sullivan.
