Mary Peltola’s Fired Campaign Manager Just Her Ex-Boss’ Goose Over ‘Decoy Dan’ Alaska Denial

A New York Times investigation says Mary Peltola's fired campaign manager admitted she knew about a scheme to confuse Alaska voters.

Governor Mike Dunleavy ordered state police to investigate within hours of the story breaking.

Peltola's campaign says the whole report is wrong, but the operative behind it used a fake name to pull it off.

The Ballot Composition Project Used Fake Names to Recruit a Spoiler Candidate

The New York Times reports that people tied to Mary Peltola's Senate campaign ran an internal operation they called the ballot composition project.

It allegedly involved aides to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, top campaign advisers, and party lawyers.

The Times says the effort began in the summer of 2025, when a Peltola staffer searched Alaska's voter rolls for anyone named Dan Sullivan.

Democratic operative Jerid Kurtz allegedly traveled under an assumed name, "Zane," and dangled outside money to talk conservative and independent Alaskans into running.

Elisa Rios, Peltola's campaign manager until she was fired in August, told the Times that Peltola wasn't directly involved in the scheme but was "definitely aware" of it.

Rios later tried to walk that statement back.

The Times says her original account is backed up by texts, internal documents, and eleven other sources who aren't walking anything back.

Recruits weren't limited to Sullivan either.

The Times reports advisers floated building an entire third-party "MAGA party" line just to siphon more votes away from the real senator, before dropping the idea in May.

That's not opposition research.

That's a political operation trying to manufacture the opposition it ran against.

A Petersburg Teacher Switched Parties Right Before Filing for Senate

Daniel J. Sullivan, a retired Petersburg teacher, reportedly switched his registration to Republican shortly before he filed to run against the actual Senator Dan Sullivan.

Sen. Sullivan calls him a sham candidate built to trick voters into splitting the Republican vote.

Sullivan Jr. insists he's running in good faith.

State election officials tried to keep him off the ballot after finding he intended to confuse voters rather than campaign honestly, but the Alaska Supreme Court overruled that decision.

A fourth name, Gerald Heikes, a drywall contractor, landed on the ballot after a progressive candidate was allegedly pressured to drop out and clear his path.

Alaska uses ranked choice voting, which means every one of those names can peel off votes before they ever reach the candidate voters actually meant to pick.

That's the entire point of running a decoy.

Confuse enough voters in the booth, and the math takes care of the rest.

A Similar Ghost Candidate Scheme Already Sent a Florida Operative to Prison

Alaska isn't breaking new ground with this trick.

A nearly identical same-name scheme in Florida landed a political operative in prison after he recruited a decoy candidate to split votes in a state Senate race.

That case proved this isn't a gray area of campaign strategy.

It's a crime prosecutors take seriously once the evidence is public.

Dunleavy said the new reporting "substantially supports" what Alaska's own Division of Elections had already flagged back in June.

Dunleavy framed it as a basic right: every Alaskan deserves to cast a vote for the person they meant to pick, and he's now directed the Department of Public Safety to find out whether state law was broken.

What the Elias Law Group Emails Could Mean for a DOJ Case

Attorney General Todd Blanche has already sued to block certification of the race if Sen. Sullivan loses because of voter confusion from the matching names.

President Trump wants the case to go further than a certification fight.

"Mary Peltola should suffer the Legal and Political consequences for what she has done," Trump wrote on Truth Social.

A Peltola campaign spokesperson insists the campaign "has no involvement with either Sullivan campaign," and the DSCC says the same thing about Dan J. Sullivan specifically.

Internal messages described in the Times report allegedly show a lawyer at the law firm representing the DSCC being looped in on a separate plan to field a third-party spoiler, an idea the group ultimately dropped in May.

Alaskans vote in days, with Peltola standing against two men named Sullivan and a drywall contractor in the one Senate race Democrats needed most.

None of this required a single Alaskan to actually prefer a second Dan Sullivan, only enough of them to get confused at the ballot box.

Alaska's governor, the state's top election regulator, and now the Justice Department all think that's worth investigating.

Peltola's campaign can call it a smear for as long as it wants.

The texts, the fake name, and the fired campaign manager who first admitted it all say otherwise.

Sources:

• Teri Christoph, "Alaska's 'Decoy Dan' Scandal Just Got a Whole Lot Worse for Democrats," RedState, October 29, 2026.
• Fox News, "Mary Peltola's Campaign, Dems Backed Covert Scheme to Field Spoiler Candidates in Alaska Senate Race: Report," Fox News, October 28, 2026.
• Washington Examiner, "Mary Peltola Allies Accused of Recruiting 'Decoy Dan' as DOJ Inquiry Continues," Washington Examiner, 2026.