President Trump said Democrat Mary Pertola “should not be allowed to run” in next week’s Alaska Senate race, after The New York Times reported that people aligned with Pertola’s campaign helped recruit a candidate with the same name as her primary opponent, Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan.
“I believe Mary Pertola should not be allowed to run after committing such a horrific plan because it is election fraud,” the president wrote in one of several Truth Society posts about the issue. “The Democrats cheated!”
Pertola’s campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) vehemently denied any help in getting repeat Sullivan on the ballot.
Voters in Alaska’s closely watched Senate race are choosing among the four surviving candidates from earlier this year’s nonpartisan primaries. Among them were Pertola and Sullivan, as well as a retired teacher named Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. The poll, which allows voters to rank candidates rather than just select one, identifies the current senator as a Republican and the current senator, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., did not list a party affiliation.
On Wednesday, The Times reported, citing briefings and interviews, that a Democratic operative working with Pertola’s campaign and national Democrats helped encourage Daniel J. Sullivan to run. The newspaper reported that this appeared to be part of a broader effort to attract more candidates to the race.
The second-term Sullivan has vexed Republicans for months, with the current senator calling his namesake challenger a “fake candidate” trying to deceive voters. Daniel J. Sullivan has denied the accusations and insisted that he is indeed interested in running for Senate.
State officials initially tried to prevent him from getting on the ballot, finding that he was trying to confuse voters and that he was not a “good-faith candidate.” The Alaska Supreme Court overturned the decision and ruled another sullivan Can appear on the ballot.
Last week, the Department of Justice File a lawsuit Attorney General Todd Branch says Sen. Dan Sullivan’s attempt to prevent election from being certified if he loses due to “voter confusion over Sullivan duel” descriptive Work hard to “set up guardrails.” Asked what he thought of the lawsuit, Trump told reporters: “Well, I’m the one who said, ‘Do it.'”
Nate Adams, a spokesman for Senator Dan Sullivan’s campaign, responded to the New York Times report in a statement, saying “Alaskans deserve to know the truth.”
“Mary Pertola and her campaign have spent months inciting Alaskans to deny the plans they have been pursuing,” Adams said.
In comments to reporters, Trump called the situation “voter fraud at the highest level.”
“What’s happening in Alaska is horrific,” he said Wednesday. “They created a fake candidate.”
Democrats deny having anything to do with Daniel J. Sullivan’s campaign. A spokesman for Pertola’s campaign said it “is not in any way affiliated with Sullivan’s campaign.”
“Mary is running because Alaskans deserve a champion who will fight to lower costs and put Alaska first, and no tweets or threats from Washington politicians will stop her from joining this fight,” a campaign spokesperson said.
A spokesman for the DSCC, the Senate Democratic campaign arm, also said the agency “has nothing to do with Dan J. Sullivan.”
The spokesperson argued that Republicans “have a long history of recruiting and supporting candidates to advance their campaigns.” The group noted that a man serving a 20-year sentence in New York is running for an Alaska House seat in 2024, while an Arizona man is running in Alaska’s Senate primary this year.