Three hours after hearing oral arguments, the Alaska Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the namesake challenger to U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan can appear on the Aug. 18 primary ballot.
With four justices hearing the case, the court decided that Friday’s order by Anchorage Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews, allowing Dan J. Sullivan of Petersburg to appear on the ballot, will stand.
The state Supreme Court also sent the issue to the Alaska Division of Elections “to determine” how Dan J. Sullivan “shall be listed as a candidate within the confines of existing Alaska ballot design law,” its order said.
“A full opinion will be issued at a later date,” the order said.
The Petersburg Sullivan, 70 and a retired teacher, registered to run for the Senate seat in late May.
He asked to appear on the ballot as a Republican, the same party as Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, though he hadn’t previously affiliated as a Republican in 40-plus years of registering to vote in Alaska, the state asserted.
In mid-June, Alaska Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher, a Republican, determined that the Petersburg Sullivan’s declaration of candidacy was not filed in good faith and declared him ineligible to run.
The division had received complaints from the Alaska Republican Party and the National Republican Senatorial Committee alleging that Democrats had encouraged the Petersburg Sullivan to run, in order to benefit the incumbent senator’s top opponent, Democratic former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola.
Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, running for his third term, also alleges that the challenger is a Democratic plant.
Dan J. Sullivan has maintained that he is running because he believes the senator has done a poor job serving Alaskans. He has rejected accusations that he is trying to trick voters.
In an interview Monday after the ruling, the Petersburg Sullivan said he was “happy” about the ruling.
He said he would plan his next steps, including completing paperwork to set up a committee to raise funds with the Federal Election Commission.
He plans to call it Sullivan for Senate, he said.
It will help him pay for campaign costs, including the attorney fees he’s accumulated since the state launched its case.
“I came out of the gate fairly quickly and got things rolling, and then I got hit with this, and it kind of took the wind out of the sails,” he said. “So I need to sit down and plan with some folks who are helping and see which direction we want to go.”
He said he doesn’t have any campaign events planned yet. But he’ll be busy in July with family coming to town and salmon fishing for subsistence purposes.
“It’s been a whirlwind, it’s been stressful, it’s been hard telling reporters I can’t talk about it” while the case was in litigation, he said.
Incumbent Sen. Dan S. Sullivan’s campaign is “disappointed” in the state Supreme Court ruling, according to campaign spokesperson Nate Adams.
Questions about how the candidate is listed
The Petersburg Sullivan said it’s still unknown how the Division of Elections will list him on the ballot.
State regulations call for using middle initials on the ballot to distinguish between candidates of the same name, in this case Dan J. Sullivan and Dan S. Sullivan.
Adams, with Sen. Dan S. Sullivan’s campaign, said in a statement that “we are encouraged by the fact that the Director of the Division of Elections will be able to use her expertise to differentiate between the Petersburg fraud and the incumbent — Senator Dan Sullivan — to the benefit of Alaska voters."
Similarly, Alaska Republican Party Chair Carmela Warfield said in a prepared statement that while the party disagrees with the Supreme Court’s decision, it is confident the elections division “will take every lawful step available to ensure voters can clearly distinguish” between the two Sullivans.
The Division of Elections on Monday did not immediately respond to a request on how it would distinguish the candidates.
The case has drawn national attention and involves a race that could determine control of the Senate in November. Several parties were allowed to file “friends of the court” briefs in the case, including Iowa and 13 other states that supported the Division of Elections’ argument.
Chief Justice Susan Carney and justices Jennifer Henderson, Jude Pate and Aimee Oravec heard the case.
Supreme Court Justice Dario Borghesan recused himself. He’s related to one of the attorneys for the Petersburg Sullivan, said Rebecca Koford, a spokesperson with the Alaska Court System.
Attorneys on both sides, seemingly anticipating that the court would rule in favor of the challenger, focused much of their arguments during Monday’s hearing on what the Division of Elections could do.
Chris Murray, an Outside attorney who was hired earlier in June by the Alaska Department of Law to represent the state, had told the justices that the state preferred that they let the Division of Elections determine how to distinguish the candidates.
Murray, who works for a Colorado firm focused on conservative issues, will be paid up to $100,000 for three weeks of legal work, under a contract with the state.
The state had proposed in its brief to the state Supreme Court that it would list Daniel James Sullivan Jr. as a nonpartisan, while Sen. Dan Sullivan would be listed as a “registered Republican” and labeled as the incumbent.
Jeffrey Robinson, the attorney representing the Petersburg Sullivan, said that’s not allowed.
Alaska law permits candidates to change their party affiliation upon becoming candidates, regardless of whether they have previously been affiliated with a political party.
“There’s no authority for the proposition that, in order to avoid confusion, the director can change the party affiliation,” Robinson argued.
In a brief filed on behalf of the Petersburg Sullivan, his attorneys argued that designating Sen. Dan S. Sullivan as the incumbent on the primary ballot would provide an “electoral advantage” that isn’t provided for under Alaska law and doesn’t appear to have been granted in prior elections.
Under Alaska’s election laws, all candidates regardless of party affiliation appear on the same ballot in the primary election, scheduled for Aug. 18. The top four vote-getters will advance to the November general election.
Carney on Monday said the case has moved at an “extraordinary” schedule.
Early last week, Petersburg Sullivan appealed to the courts to take up Beecher’s decision disqualifying him.
In fast-tracked court proceedings, Matthews ruled in favor of Dan J. Sullivan on Friday, saying that the Division of Elections’ decision to keep him off the ballot “was based on a ‘good-faith’ requirement” that doesn’t appear in the U.S. Constitution, state statute or the division’s regulations." The state immediately appealed, leading to the Alaska Supreme Court hearing Monday.
The hearing was live-streamed, but not held in person, with justices in different locations, Koford said.
The state faces a noon Tuesday deadline for printing ballots.
[A brief history of same-named political candidates, election hijinks and Dan Sullivans in Alaska]
Legal authority and candidate intentions
In Monday’s hearing, the justices centered many of their questions on whether the Alaska Division of Elections had the legal authority to determine that the Petersburg Sullivan’s name should not appear on the ballot.
Carney asked Murray why the division had chosen “the most extreme possible remedy” by disqualifying the Petersburg Sullivan from appearing on the ballot, instead of using a “lesser” option to avoid voter confusion.
Murray argued that the challenger was clearly trying to deceive voters with his bid for office.
Early in June, the Petersburg Sullivan even told the Division of Elections he wanted to appear on the ballot with the senator’s middle initial, not his own, Murray said.
“That’s not an innocent mistake or a random mistake,” Murray said.
He retracted that request eight hours later, and said he would go by his middle initial, Murray said.
Justice Oravec wanted to know if that series of events warranted removing someone from the ballot.
“The issue is whether that justifies booting someone off the ballot versus mitigating what you’re clearly authorized and empowered to do,” Oravec said, such as using a candidate’s middle initials.
Robinson, representing the Petersburg Sullivan, told justices that even if a hypothetical candidate openly said that he wanted to deceive voters, the candidate could not be removed from the ballot.
“We don’t have any regulations” to determine whether a candidate is running for office with good intentions or not, Robinson said.
“A rule that says you may not run if we think your motive is to confuse voters” is subjective and “discretionary in a way that can be used to advantage incumbents,” he said.
Dan J. Sullivan meets the qualifications in the U.S. Constitution to run office, Robinson said. He is at least 30 years old, has been a U.S. citizen for at least nine years and lives in the state he seeks to represent at the time of the election.
Robinson referenced the state Supreme Court’s order last year, which supported Beecher’s determination in 2024 to allow felon Eric Hafner — who is serving a federal prison sentence outside of Alaska — to appear on the ballot as a Democrat in the race for Alaska’s sole U.S. House seat. Hafner was not elected and is running for the same seat this year.
In that ruling, the court noted that its precedence has favored candidates’ access to the ballot when a case presents legal ambiguities.
“When would there be a better time ... to question the motives of someone’s intent to run for office than a convicted felon living out of state who has no potential to come” to Alaska and serve, he asked.
The state has argued that it has the ability under the Constitution to regulate the “manner” of elections, allowing it to disqualify the Petersburg Sullivan in order to protect ballot integrity.
Justice Pate suggested that might be a valid argument.
In response to his question, Robinson said that people run for office all the time with “un-American and unsavory” goals in mind.
The voters would likely never elect them, but they’re still allowed to be on the ballot, he said.
