Dan versus Dan
Alaska has a damn Dan problem.
Or, maybe more accurately, a Dan Sullivans problem.
Director Carol Beecher went on to claim that “several facts…taken together bring me to this conclusion.”
What followed was her attempt to rationalize why incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, is a legitimate candidate and Doppleganger Dan Sullivan, a retired middle school teacher from Petersbrug, is an illegitimate candidate. In a three-page letter, she defined Doppleganger Dan’s as ineligible because he:
- Filed for election as plain, old Dan when he had previously registered to vote as “Daniel J. Sullivan, Jr.” This, Beecher argued, suggested Dan was “seeking to confuse yourself with another candidate in the race, the incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan, rather than distinguish yourself from him. Indeed, you yourself appeared to be confused when you initially emailed the Division asking to be listed on the ballot as ‘Dan S. Sullivan.’
“S” is Senator Sullivan’s middle initial, not yours.” - Changed his voter registration to Republican, a party with which he had never before been affiliated, to seek access to the “ballot under the same name – in a shortened form you’d never used before – as the incumbent senator strongly suggests an intent to confuse yourself with the incumbent Senator rather than to distinguish yourself from him.”
- Set up a website mirroring that of Incumbent Dan.
- And work with a “known longtime supporter of Democratic candidates (one Amber Lee), including the primary Democratic challenger to Senator Sullivan. This consultant’s work on your behalf is, in isolation, innocuous. Alongside the other facts I have catalogued in this letter, however, it suggests a determined effort and a deliberate attempt to use the similarity of your name to confuse Alaska voters in the upcoming primary
election.”
Beecher’s decision to kick Doppleganger Dan off the ballot is thus based on a whole bunch of behaviors that “suggest” to her that he’s not playing fair. But he has a good explanation for at least one of Beecher’s “facts.”
Doppelganger Dan taught middle school literature and claims he picked his political consultant because he recognized her as an Alaska author of children’s books, which she is. Lee says she even won the 2024 Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association Middle Grade Manuscript award, plus she lives not far away from Doppelganger Dan’s Petersburg home in the Panhandle community of Sitka.
Forrest Dunbar, a state Democrat senator, was quick to shoot holes in another of Beecher’s facts. He pointed out that Sen. Dan Sullivan “iis registered to vote as “Daniel Scott Sullivan,” not plain old Dan. And that Rep. “Nicholas J. Begich III appeared on the 2024 ballot as ‘Nick Begich,” the name of his famous, progressive grandfather. He is registered to vote as ‘Nicholas John Begich.’”
The only thing Dunbar got wrong there was that grandfather Nick was a “progressive.” The Democrats of his era were a long way from the “progressive” Democrats of today. The late Congressman Begich was what was once called a centrist, as was fellow Democrat and then House Majority Leader Hale Boggs from Louisiana, who was campagning in Alaska with the elder Begich in 1972 when their plane disappeared, never to be found.
As for Beecher’s observations on Doppelganger Dan’s last-minute registration as a Republican, such a move isn’t exactly unprecedented in the 49th state. The on-again, off-again Republican Wally Hickel lost a bid to be his party’s nominee for governor in 1990, only to jump ship to the Alaska Independence Party and run as its candidate in the general election.
He won in a three-way race against incumbent Gov. Tony Knowles, a Democrat, and Arlis Strugelewski, the Republican nominee.
But wait
None of which is to suggest that Doppleganger Dan isn’t trying to game the political system in Alaska, but the state set up a system asking to be gamed. In most states, there is no need for a bureaucrat to intervene in the election process to decide which candidates are trying to “confuse or mislead” (don’t they all do some of that naturally?) or “compromise the ballot’s fairness or neutrality.”
And if the Division of Elections is really interested in is “fairness,” all it has to do is put Incumbent Dan on the ballot as Sen. Dan Sullivan, which makes it easy for voters to separate one Dan from the other Dan. If, on the other hand, the desire is ‘neutrality,’ there’s nothing simpler than pitting Daniel J. against Daniel S. – no matter how unfair that might be to ncumbent Dan.
Why would this be unfair ?
It would be unfair because it might well doom both Dans to defeat in a free-for-all, “non-partisan”, state primary featuring 15 candidates, only four of whom move on to the general election. In other states, this would not be a problem. They have “partisan” primaries, as Alaska once did, wherein Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, the Green Party, and other parties can sort out their party choices for the general-election ballot.
For better or worse, Alaska is not most states. Alaska opted for so-called “ranked-choice voting” in 2020.
“Ranked choice voting allows voters to rank candidates by preference rather than casting a ballot for a single candidate,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. ” The system is used in Alaska and Maine for statewide elections and in various municipalities across the U.S. Its use is prohibited in 19 states…
“Proponents of ranked choice voting argue it helps to ensure a majority winner without the need for separate runoff elections and reduces spoiler effects from third-party candidates. Opponents of ranked choice voting argue it is confusing for voters and, because not all voters rank every candidate, violates the principle of one person, one vote.”
Theoretically, ranked choice is a wonderful system – the adult equivalent of ribbons for everyone in elementary school athletics. Almost every voter is destined to ‘win’ thanks to the election of a candidate he or she somehow picked at some point.
Whether the candidate was a first choice or a last choice doesn’t matter. You’re still winner! And, in a perfect world, all of this might make perfect sense.
The problem is that humans are inherently imperfect, and thus the world they create for themselves is imperfect. People do all sorts of crazy things just to get attention, especially in these times of social media. Incumbent Dan and former Rep. Mary Peltola, the one-time Congresswoman for all of Bethel, and the only other well-known political player on the state’s non-partisan ballot should probably be thankful that they aren’t in a dog fight with some social media influencer with greater name recognition.
Cheaters
Alaska Republicans, of course, think Doppleganger Dan entered the race becuase Democrats are cheaters, as if Republicans aren’t. People cheat. It’s that simple. They do it all the time. They are especially prone to cheat in systems designed to let them get away with a little cheating.
Consider drivers in Anchorage, where almost no one drives the speed limit. Drivers get on the road and cheat every day because a little cheating on the speed limit is widely accepted as normal. Much the same attitude applies in politics and actual motorsports, rather than the highway wannabe version of driving fast.
Is it possible in a world like this that Democrat political handlers would put Doppleganger Dan up to filing to run for the Senate as a Republican just to make life harder Incumbent Dan? Hell yes.
It’s likely even probable.
On the scale of “should we bomb Iran because it looks like the country is on the verage of building a nuclear bomb,” it rises to the level of “load the bombers and target the missiles.”
But this doesn’t make Doppleganger Dan’s actions illegal in Alaska. This doesn’t mean some bureaucrat gets to decide on a whim who is a qualified candidate and who isn’t. Alaskans decided they wanted a system that would allow anyone who wants to run for office a chance to throw their hat into the ring, and this is what they got.
Doppelganger Dan is as qualified as the 13 other no-name folks on the ballot, which is a legitimate problem for Incumbent Dan, and something of an advantage for Peltola, who is hoping to return to D.C. as a senator rather than a Congresswoman because she has a nice smile and because “We Stick Together” and “Mary Gets Me.”
Elections can easily fix the Dan v. Dan probem, as noted above clearly identifying “Incumbent Dan Sullivan” or Sen. Dan Sullivan or even Col. Dan Sullivan, given the rank he held in the U.S. Marine Corps. Any of these labels make it easy for Alaska voters to separate sitting Senator Dan from Doppleganger Dan.
And yes, some Democrats might complain that labeling Senator Dan the incumbent gives him an advantage, but it is also a disadvantage. If you’re a voter who believes in term limits, “incumbent” is a reason to vote against someone – not for them.
The same applies to labeling him Col. Dan. There are a lot of folks in Alaska who love the military, but being a retired member of the military in support of the now-on-hold war in Iran isn’t exactly a guranteed asset. Go watch the political advertisements that have been running on YouTube if you have any doubt.
They’re all about how Senator Dan has supported the war in Iran and in the process raised the price of your motor fuel to record levels. Thus he needs to be voted out of office. That the conflict in Iran also boosted the price of crude oil, which is taxed in Alaska to provide much of the state’s operating revenue, was ignored. So too the fact that some of that money is spent to fix the hard-to-maintain and regularly rough roads on which Alaskans drive.
But forget that.
The political propagandists involved in this year’s Alaska Senate race seem to believe the average Alaskan is a petty, little sh*t interested mainly in his or her pocketbook and never mind any discussion of foreign policies that might, or might not, be good for the nation.
Tariffs, or at least those imposed on China, are one of the best things the Trump administration has done. China has stolen and copied more intellectual property than all the other nations of the world combined. China is trying to take over global manufacturing as a matter of policy. It is using economics as a weapon of war because China’s rulers understand why the U.S. won World War II.
It wasn’t because of the nation’s fighting forces, although they performed admirably. It was because of U.S. manufacturing prowess. When the U.S. – not to mention Britain and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) – lost ships and planes and tanks in combat, U.S. manufacturing plants could quickly replace them.
The Germans couldn’t. The Japanese couldn’t. And the result was their defeat.
China understands this dynamic. Whether many Americans do is unclear. Americans increasingly trend toward fat, lazy, out-of-shape and self-involved. So maybe the political propagandists are right. Maybe the way to the hearts and minds of Alaskans is through their pocketbooks.
This would certainly seem to have been the case for the Alaska group of commercial salmon fishermen who pioneered the movement of salmon processing to China, where labor is cheap and sometimes conscripted. But hey, what’s the problem with slave labor if it means you get paid a few more cents per pound for your Alaska catch?
Welcome to Alaska and Alaska politics.
Maybe Dan versus Dan is what the state deserves for voting in a new election system begging to be played. Just think of the fun there might if the incumbent was named Bob Brown. There are at least 46 of those reported to be living in the state. An incumber Sen. Brown could surely be swarmed by fellow Bob’s and knocked out of the race.
That said, it’s obvious Alaskans who voted for ranked choice wanted less partisan politics. So how about this: How about some petitioning to dump “ranked choice” in favor of a Senate lottery open to any Alaskan who buys one or more $5 tickets to “Be Alaska’s Next Senator.”
You gotta figure many Alaskans would be willing to gamble a fiver or a twenty or maybe more for a chance at a $174,000 per year job that comes with a lot of perks, even if the job lasts only six years.
Think about it. If you lived in your D.C. office and took advantage of Washington, D.C. banquets and all the people wanting to take you to lunch there, you could easily live on the $74,000, bank the rest, and come home with a nice, little nest egg after your term ends.
Categories: Commentary, News, Politics
