Legal trouble facing the Alaska U.S. Senate candidate Daniel J. Sullivan is getting expensive.
Daniel J. Sullivan — not to be confused with incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan, who’s on the same ballot — is more than $21,000 in debt for “compliance and legal fees,” according to Federal Election Commission filings reviewed by The Washington Sun.
Daniel J. Sullivan’s campaign ran into legal trouble in June, when the Alaska Division of Elections disqualified him from appearing on the open primary election ballot. Election officials alleged Sullivan was running in bad faith and his name would confuse voters supporting incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan.
The case, fast-tracked ahead of the state’s primary vote, rose to the Alaska Supreme Court, which struck down the election officials’ decision and ruled Sullivan must remain on the ballot on June 29.
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In a July Facebook post, Daniel J. Sullivan called the case “frivolous” and said he’d spent thousands of dollars to “simply to defend my right to remain on the ballot.” He included a fundraising link in his post.
“When I decided to run for the U.S. Senate, I intended to do so without asking anyone for money,” he wrote. “I believed that sharing a simple message—that twelve years of Senator Sullivan is enough and that Alaska deserves better—would not require a fundraising campaign.”
Daniel J. Sullivan did not respond to The Sun’s requests for comment.
FEC filings confirm that Daniel J. Sullivan is in debt for legal fees. As of Oct. 14, his campaign owes $21,399 to the Washington law firm Caplin & Drysdale, which did not respond to The Sun’s request for comment before publication.
The Anchorage office of law firm Ballard Spahr, which court documents list as representing Daniel J. Sullivan in the June lawsuit, also did not respond to The Sun’s request for comment. (The Sun receives legal counsel from Ballard Spahr’s Washington office.)
According to FEC filings, Daniel J. Sullivan’s campaign also borrowed $10,400 from the candidate himself in June and July, when his case was being litigated, bringing the campaign’s total debt up to over $30,000.
As of Oct. 14, Daniel J. Sullivan’s campaign reported just $1,901 cash on hand.
“These legal challenges have consumed valuable time and financial resources that I never imagined would become part of running for public office,” Daniel J. Sullivan wrote in his post. “If candidates can be burdened with costly legal battles simply for seeking office, it discourages qualified citizens from running and limits the choices available to voters.”
Despite the June ruling, Sullivan the senator, whose campaign had over $2 million cash on hand as of mid-October, continued to rail against the other Sullivan’s candidacy, accusing him of being a Democratic Party plant designed to pull votes away from the incumbent Republican.
Other Republicans piled on. The National Republican Senatorial Campaign sent a letter to the Alaska Division of Elections before the June case was heard to oppose Sullivan’s candidacy. President Donald Trump dubbed Daniel J. Sullivan “Decoy Dan” and vowed during an October visit to Alaska to use federal resources to investigate the candidate.
Trump kept his word: A week later, the Department of Justice filed a complaint against the Alaska Division of Elections (which originally knocked Daniel J. Sullivan off the ballot in June). Trump wrote in a Truth Social post a few days before the lawsuit was filed that the other Sullivan is “totally unrelated to Politics.”
“It’s ridiculous that the Court didn’t stop this SCAM,” he wrote.
On the November ballot, Daniel J. Sullivan’s name is listed without any party label. Sen. Dan Sullivan’s name is listed as “Dan S. Sullivan (Registered Republican) Incumbent.”
The nonincumbent Sullivan isn’t a named party in the lawsuit by the federal government, but his candidacy is still the subject of this brewing election-integrity fight.
Harry Child, a spokesperson for Democratic candidate Mary Peltola’s campaign, said the lawsuit is “a despicable political threat” and attributed it to “Senator Dan Sullivan’s allies.”
Peltola’s campaign currently has over $4 million in cash on hand as of Oct. 14, according to FEC filings.
Daniel J. Sullivan hasn’t filed an amicus brief in the new lawsuit, and it’s unclear if he plans to get involved.
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