Happy last Friday before Election Day, everyone! This morning, I’ll be tackling some excellent reader questions you all sent in, covering:
The legal and political implications of the bombshell New York Times report on the two Dan Sullivans
What outcomes I would consider a “blue wave” on Tuesday night and what would cross the line into “blue tsunami”
The races to watch early on Election Night to get a sense of where things are going
How long it might take for some of the key races to be called
And more!
I’m proud of the coverage Wake Up To Politics has done this entire election cycle. My whole goal with this newsletter is to remain level-headed and offer the long view at times when other news outlets often get stuck in the moment-to-moment (but often ephemeral) changes in the news cycle.
I think I’ve done that throughout the second Trump term, laying out on Day 3 of the administration where I thought the president did and didn’t command a mandate (at a time when many outlets were portraying his election as a massive, potentially permanent, “vibe shift”) and writing as early as March 2025 that Trump had “forgotten why he won,” trading his campaign-trail focus on affordability for other issues less important to his voters.
I do think much of what I predicted has come to pass — though not because I have any extra-special forecasting powers. Instead, I tried to ground myself in the history of how presidential administrations often go, and the swings of backlash that often come shortly after a new president is elected (especially if their presidency cuts against what voters expected of them). All it took was taking a longer view of history.
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Sullivan-gate
Q: Can you help sort through the brouhaha of “Sullivan-gate” in Alaska? What are the legal and political implications of Peltola campaign (and maybe national Democratic Party?) involvement?
Q: What do you think the fallout over the Alaskan senate race will be if the NYT story is true?
Q: So with NYTimes reporting on supposedly illegal things in Alaska are Democrats now going to lose Alaska (and the Senate majority, because everything in our timeline is maximum irony) as a result?
Q: Given the sad story out of Alaska of the Democratic Party creating a stalking horse candidate I wonder how often this occurs in modern politics.
Ever since May, when a man named Dan J. Sullivan filed to run in the Alaska Senate race against Republican incumbent Dan S. Sullivan, questions have swirled around the state about how the “other Sullivan” came to enter the campaign.
Those questions were answered Wednesday by the New York Times, which reported that it was staffers for Democratic candidate Mary Peltola who recruited Dan J. Sullivan into the race. Peltola’s campaign has spent months denying any involvement, a story they are sticking by despite the Times having obtained text messages clearly laying out their role.
This was certainly a dirty trick, and quite a cynical one, attempting to mislead voters and undercut their ability to choose who they want to represent them in the U.S. Senate. But it’s also not unheard of.
A few months ago, when researching a piece on congressional iconoclasts (tied to the primary defeat of Thomas Massie), I ended up going down a rabbit hole about the late Nebraska Sen. George W. Norris, another populist, isolationist Republican lawmaker (he was one of only six senators to vote against the U.S. entering World War I) who crossed swords with a president of his own party. In 1930, allies of President Herbert Hoover recruited a grocer named George W. Norris (they even got someone with the same middle initial!) to run against Sen. Norris in the GOP primary.
The grocer Norris, as well as a Republican operative involved with his campaign, actually ended up going to jail — though in their case, that was because they were found guilty of lying to a Senate committee that had investigated the scheme.
Other examples of this run through history. In John F. Kennedy’s first campaign for Congress in 1946, his aides recruited a janitor with the same name as one of his Democratic primary opponents to join the race. More recently, a conservative activist recruited two Bob Fergusons to run against now-Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson in 2024. In 2020, a similar scheme in a state Senate race in Florida also ended in jail time for a party operative who was charged with violating Florida state law.
The Justice Department is now investigating the Alaska case, as are state prosecutors (Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy told the Wall Street Journal that President Trump called him yesterday to ask about the probe) and House Republicans. Some commentators have suggested that participants in the Alaska scheme could be charged under 18 U.S. Code § 241 — one of the statutes Trump himself was charged under as part of his federal January 6th indictment — which makes it illegal to “conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person…in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.”
In this case, the argument goes, the right would be Alaskans’ ability to vote. I personally think it would be difficult to successfully mount such a case, since no one was attempting to prevent any Alaska voters from casting their ballots, even if Democrats made the ballots more confusing.
A more promising potential case could come under Alaska state law, which has a “criminal impersonation” statute making it illegal when someone “assumes a false identity…with intent to defraud, commit a crime, or obtain a benefit to which the person is not entitled.”
According to the New York Times, a Democratic operative named Jerid Kurtz — Raphael Warnock’s former campaign manager — tried to recruit another candidate onto the Alaska ballot using the fake name “Zane.” Under Alaska law, “intent to defraud” requires only “intent to use deception”; it doesn’t necessarily require someone to receive a benefit from that deception. The “other Sullivan” likely has a First Amendment right to run for U.S. Senate (as long as he didn’t lie to any state officials along the way); Kurtz doesn’t necessarily have a First Amendment right to use a fake name for deceptive purposes.
What about the political impact? This whole situation has reminded me of one of my favorite books, “The Other Divide,” which considers the differences between Americans who are engaged and disengaged in politics. One of the differences the authors lay out is that politically engaged Americans are much more likely to ascribe political significance to events that might not, in the end, do much to move the needle.
One example I always think about is the moment, right around this time two years ago, when a lot of politically engaged Americans insisted that Puerto Rican voters in Pennsylvania would swing towards Democrats after comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” at a Trump rally. But instead, Trump won Pennsylvania, and specifically by picking up support in parts of the state with large populations of Puerto Ricans.
This is one reason why I try to be skeptical when I hear a lot of people who follow every little turn of political news insisting that This Will Be The Thing That Swings This Election. In general, my take would be that this story probably hurts Peltola, but not necessarily fatally; my guess is that a lot of Alaskan voters already assumed Democratic shenanigans were involved in putting the second Sullivan on the ballot. (The idea that he just woke up one day and decided to run for Senate without anyone prodding him was always a little hard to believe.)
On Polymarket, Peltola’s odds of victory have dipped from 75% before the story to 71% now, which seems about right to me: a drop, but only a small one. If Peltola loses, it seems more likely to me that it will be because polls this entire cycle have overestimated her support, not because her support collapsed in light of Sullivan-gate.
That said, I do hope this serves as something of a warning for future politicians: Peltola’s advisers pursued a morally dubious scheme in hopes that it would work to their advantage politically. Instead, the furor may end up losing Peltola more votes than anything she would have gained by people voting for the wrong Sullivan. An important lesson for us all.
Level-setting
Q: What are some of your definitions of what would be considered a “blue wave” and a “blue tsunami?”