Even if Mary Peltola wins Alaska’s Senate race on Tuesday, I encourage Americans not to view her as a legitimate U.S. senator. That is her fault, and she and her party will have to live with it.
For years, the left hectored Americans about “attacks on democracy.” It built networks of groups with names like the Democracy Defenders Fund. A feeble Joe Biden stood in the Capitol and accused his opponents of holding “a dagger at the throat of America,” then delivered a prime-time speech in Philadelphia against a blood-red backdrop. Under that banner, the Biden administration and its apparatchiks destroyed lives, jailed people, and attacked reputations and livelihoods. To them, casting doubt on an election was the greatest sin imaginable, deserving severe punishment — fair process be damned.
Given what we now know, no Peltola victory should be called legitimate. The count may be certified in her favor when the dust settles, but there will forever be an asterisk next to her name.
What is happening in Alaska shreds whatever credibility that crusade had left.
Underhanded gamesmanship and dirty tricks are as old as politics. This is not that. A New York Times investigation, drawing on a dozen sources, text messages, and internal documents, describes an elaborate operation involving Peltola campaign aides, lawyers, and staffers at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. The purpose was to confuse voters by recruiting another Dan Sullivan to appear on the ballot alongside the actual Republican incumbent, Senator Dan S. Sullivan.
The Times, no friend to conservatives, quoted Peltola’s former campaign manager, Elisa Rios, saying Peltola herself was “definitely aware.” Rios later sought to retract her remarks. Peltola denies knowing about the operation. But the messages and documents reported by the Times cannot be waved away with a press release.
When it comes to dirty tricks, this is a difference in kind, not merely degree. The victim isn’t just the real Dan Sullivan. It is the voters and the electoral system itself. The Justice Department amended its lawsuit to incorporate the Times reporting. Alaska’s governor ordered an investigation, and House Republicans opened a probe of their own.
On Sunday, a federal judge dismissed the Justice Department’s lawsuit, finding that the government lacked standing and had proposed no workable way to examine ballots without compromising voter secrecy. The department plans to appeal. The dismissal resolves neither the Times’ reporting nor the underlying question of who arranged the scheme.
Recall that the Biden Justice Department prosecuted my friend Douglass Mackey over an election meme. When Mackey was sentenced, Biden’s U.S. attorney in Brooklyn declared:
One of the foundational rights we hold as Americans, a right that many fought so hard to obtain, is the right to vote. The defendant weaponized disinformation in a dangerous scheme to stop targeted groups, including black and brown people and women, from participating in our democracy. … This groundbreaking prosecution demonstrates our commitment to prosecuting those who commit crimes that threaten our democracy and seek to deprive people of their constitutional right to vote.
The government never produced a single voter who was tricked out of casting a ballot. In July 2025, the Second Circuit unanimously overturned Mackey’s conviction and ordered an acquittal because prosecutors had failed to prove he knowingly joined the alleged conspiracy.
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The Biden Justice Department’s certainty about Mackey far outran its proof. Yet the language of its denunciation describes the Peltola operation perfectly. Our constitutional republic depends on an informed and virtuous citizenry. Recruiting a candidate to mislead that citizenry is beyond the pale and devoid of virtue.
A few hundred confused voters could decide a Senate race. And in this contest, a few hundred votes could help decide control of the chamber.
Democrats have largely minimized the matter or said nothing. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who personally courted Peltola into this race, had a spokeswoman say he knew nothing of the scheme and wasn’t involved. Notice what that statement leaves out: any suggestion that it was wrong. The DSCC’s response was to change the subject to Republicans.
For five years, the left insisted that silence in the face of election lies is complicity. Fine. By their own standard, the Peltola campaign’s conduct attaches to the Democratic Party’s political apparatus, especially given the reported involvement of its Senate campaign committee. Every one of them should have to answer for it.
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But we shouldn’t let Lisa Murkowski off the hook either. Although the Republican senator has now condemned the scheme, she helped create the conditions for it.
In 2020, Alaska abandoned its traditional partisan primaries for a top-four “jungle” primary and ranked-choice general elections. Under ranked-choice voting, the candidate leading in first-choice votes can lose as the lowest finishers are eliminated and their ballots transfer to voters’ next choices. The top-four primary is how the other Sullivan made the November ballot.
The whole arrangement was designed to insulate Murkowski from a primary challenge, and her longtime political operatives helped put it in place. Scott Kendall, a leading architect, had worked on her campaigns. A campaign manager for the ballot measure later worked on communications for Murkowski’s 2022 re-election. Alaska Democrats even derided it as the “Lisa Law.” It is inside this system that the deception documented by the Times can do damage.
Recall that Murkowski endorsed Peltola for the House twice and went out of her way to praise her character.
Given what we now know, no Peltola victory should be called legitimate. The count may be certified in her favor when the dust settles, but there will forever be an asterisk next to her name. This sinister plot was designed to sow confusion in Alaska’s elections. The people who ran it don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt, and neither does any Democrat who refuses to condemn it.
2026 midterms, Dan sullivan, Douglass mackey, Joe biden, Justice department, Lisa murkowski, Mary peltola, New york times, Opinion & analysis, Democratic party, Ranked-choice voting, Fraud, Alaska
