Dem
53
Ties
4
GOP
43
The Alaska Senate election is going to lead to big legal battles if Mary Peltola (D) wins. Sen. Dan S. Sullvian (R-AK) is running for reelection and among the other people who filed to run is Dan J. Sullivan, a retired teacher. The administration tried to get Dan J. kicked off the ballot, but the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution has three criteria for being a senator, namely that the candidate is: (1) at least 30 years old, (2) a U.S. citizen, and (3) a resident of the state. Since Dan J. met all three criteria, the court ruled he was entitled to run for the Senate. Call this Plan A.
Since polling has Mary Peltola leading, the administration is trying again. It filed a lawsuit claiming that if Dan S. doesn't win, the state should go back and count all the votes for Dan J. as votes for Dan S. Call this Plan B. That votes for one candidate should count for another is absurd on its face. Imagine that in 2000, Al Gore had claimed that all the votes for Ralph Nader should be counted as votes for him or in 2016, Hillary Clinton had claimed that all the votes for Jill Stein were from people who actually wanted her to win so they should count for her.
The judge handling the case, Sharon Gleason, a Barack Obama appointee, is clearly skeptical and asked why the government waited until Oct. 22 to file—after Alaskans had already begun voting. A ruling to count votes for one candidate for another would open the floodgates for future requests. Also, Dan. J. could file a lawsuit claiming that people are fed up with the current Senate, so all the votes for Dan S. should be counted as votes for him.
Now the State of Alaska has chimed in. It wants the feds to buzz off and let it run its own election according to the Constitution and state law. The state is satisfied with Dan J.'s claim that he is a Republican and is seeking the votes of people dissatisfied with the incumbent. The state also said that the candidate's middle initials are on the ballot and furthermore, the senator is listed as Dan S. Sullivan while the teacher is listed as Daniel J. Sullivan, so voters can tell them apart. Furthermore, since the election is ranked choice, a voter could pick one of them for #1 and the other for #2 so if one were eliminated, the vote would go to the other.
If Gleason rejects the lawsuit, as the state has requested, and Peltola wins, then the Republicans will start Plan C: get the Senate to refuse to seat Peltola. This will put current Majority Leader (and possibly future Minority Leader) John Thune (R-SD) in a real bind. He is largely a straight shooter and if Peltola shows up with a document certifying her win signed by the governor, his inclination will be to accept it and move on. But if Trump starts bellowing, Thune might be afraid to do that. Of course, come Jan. 3, 2027, Thune might not be majority leader, even without Peltola seated, in which case all the bellowing in the world won't work. The worst case is that the Democrats have 50 seats without Peltola, the Republicans have 49, and Peltola narrowly won with fewer votes than the two Dans combined. In theory, this shouldn't happen if all Dan J voters picked Dan S second and vice versa, but some of them may have exhausted their ballots with only a single pick. Then it could result in a huge floor fight.
It is at least conceivable that, in such a floor fight, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) votes for the actual winner, Peltola, because she believes in honest elections and wouldn't mind having another woman as her colleague. Peltola is no fire-breathing radical and she and Murkowski aren't all that far apart on the issues. They also cooperated when Peltola was in the House. Murkowski is not someone who hates Democrats because they are Democrats. She just endorsed Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins (D) for governor. She said: "Jonathan understands that governing requires listening to people with different perspectives and finding common ground to solve the problems all of us face."
Another twist on this is that if Peltola wins in Alaska and James Talarico wins in Texas, Democrats will have senators from two big oil-producing states. Both Peltola and Talarico have promised to defend oil against Democrats who want to phase it out. Depending on the number of seats the Democrats hold and what mood Sen. John Fetterman (D?-PA) is in, the votes for climate legislation may not be there, even with a Democratic majority. On the other hand, Democrats are running on getting prices down, including gas prices, and one way to do that is pump more oil in Alaska and Texas. This could put the lower-the-price-of-gas caucus in conflict with the save-the-planet caucus. It could get very complicated, with horses being traded on some futures market.
Yesterday, The New York Times threw a wrench in the works. It reported that Dan J. was not happily living in his quiet fishing village reading books about fish and tending to his garden when he suddenly decided to run for the Senate. Nope. In fact, Peltola's team combed through voting lists to find all the Dan Sullivans in the state and then carefully selected Dan J. and helped him get on the ballot. This sort of trickery is actually not unusual. Other candidates have been doing this kind of stuff for years. The question is whether it will affect the election. Republicans who were planning to vote for Dan S. will still do so. The big unknown is are there many Peltola voters who will be disgusted by this trick and switch to Dan S. The disclosure may not be fatal, though, because: (1) not all Alaskans will even know about this before they vote, (2) some Alaskans have already voted, and (3) some people who like Peltola will admire her cleverness for pulling this off.
The revelation could possibly affect the lawsuit, but probably not. Parties often recruit candidates. In primaries, it is not unusual for parties to (financially) support someone on the other team who they think would be a weak general-election opponent. This kind of stuff is actually the original use of the thing we call rodent reproduction. Republicans did it this year in a couple of Democratic House primaries, for example. It is scuzzy, but perfectly legal, to contribute to a candidate who you think is a weak opponent to your candidate. In fact, there have been many primaries where a Democrat switched his or her registration to Republican in order to vote for a crazy fringe candidate, and vice versa. Nevertheless, this development is not going to help Peltola. (V)