The Democratic Party has so few principles that it will whine about “voter suppression” one minute and then engage in it the next through the most asinine stunts designed to manipulate voters.
Such is the case in Alaska, where the state’s top four primary has inspired Democrats to try to dupe voters out of their votes with an egregious strategy. The incumbent in Alaska’s Senate race is Republican Dan Sullivan. Democrats want to replace him with Mary Peltola. Joining those two in the top four is another “Republican” candidate: Dan Sullivan.
ALASKA SENATE ELECTION POLLS SHOW NAIL-BITER RACE BETWEEN MARY PELTOLA AND DAN SULLIVAN
Yes, Democrats have recruited (or just been so conveniently gifted) a decoy Dan Sullivan, a retired school teacher with the same name as the incumbent Republican, to run in this race in an attempt to manipulate voters. A representative for decoy Dan Sullivan’s campaign has been featured in ads by a nonprofit group affiliated with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s PAC, proving that he has Democrat campaign staffers. He only recently registered as a Republican, ensuring the ballot would show both him and the real Dan Sullivan as Republican candidates.
He even initially requested to list himself as “Dan S. Sullivan” on the ballot, which is notable because “S” is the middle initial of the real Dan Sullivan, but decoy Dan Sullivan’s middle initial is “J.” (According to decoy Dan and his defenders, this was just an honest mistake.) Decoy Dan Sullivan, from all available evidence, is obviously a liberal trying to pretend that he is a moderate Republican, and he is likely running at the urging of Democrats who want to try to splinter votes off of Sen. Dan Sullivan to aid Peltola.
THIRD DAN SULLIVAN WEIGHS IN ON UNPRECEDENTED ALASKA SENATE RACE WITH ENDORSEMENT
This is voter suppression, by any reasonable standard. Running a candidate who is attempting to imitate another candidate on paper, from the fake Republican designation to the attempt to use the same middle initial, is designed to confuse voters and siphon their votes away from their actual preferred candidate. The Democratic panic if Republicans did this in an effort to win the Senate, say with a decoy Jon Ossoff in Georgia, would be apocalyptic.
Instead, Democrats continue to complain about fake voter suppression, such as voter ID requirements, while at best tolerating this voter manipulation tactic and at worst actively facilitating it behind the scenes. It is a dishonest, despicable tactic that Democrats are either cynically capitalizing on or, more likely, intentionally executing, and it should eliminate any other “voter suppression” complaint the party could ever muster.