By SUZANNE DOWNING
Aug. 10, 2026 – Alaskans opening their mailboxes in the closing days of the primary are finding slick campaign pieces presenting Gerald Heikes as the Christian conservative choice for US Senate and attacking incumbent Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan as insufficiently Christian and insufficiently conservative.
But the money behind the message reveals a darker reality.
The mail campaign is not being funded by a groundswell of Alaska conservatives, as it claims. Through the end of June, the federal super PAC paying for it, Right for Alaska, had disclosed just one contributor: William H. Harris Sr. of Lexington, Massachusetts, who gave the group $100,000.
Harris is no Republican benefactor. Federal campaign-finance records show a long history of substantial giving to Democratic candidates, Democratic Party committees and progressive political organizations.
His record includes six-figure contributions to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, support for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and donations to Democratic state parties around the country. He has also given to groups including Movement Voter PAC, Standing Strong PAC, Fair Fight PAC and House Majority PAC, as well as Democratic candidates such as Seth Moulton, Jaime Harrison, Lucy McBath, Gina Ortiz Jones, Terry McAuliffe and others.
The donor records identify Harris under several variations of his name and generally list him as a Lexington physician, orthopedic surgeon or retiree affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital. The matching records show a consistently Democratic pattern of giving extending over many election cycles, with no evidence of support for Republican candidates or causes.
Now that same donor is financing a campaign that speaks to Alaska voters in the language of the religious and populist right.
Right for Alaska registered with the Federal Election Commission in March. Its filing lists a Hudson, Wisconsin, address and Thomas Datwyler as treasurer. By mid-June, an FEC statistical report showed the super PAC with $100,000 in receipts and no reported spending.
Then the spending exploded.
Recent independent-expenditure disclosures and published reports show Right for Alaska committing roughly $515,000 in Alaska’s US Senate contest. More than $250,000 went toward print advertising opposing Sullivan, with a comparable amount used to elevate little-known candidates who could draw votes away from him, including Heikes. Alaskans won’t know where the other money came from until the next FEC report.
Several of the pro-Heikes mailers have already landed in Alaska homes, demonstrating that this is not a token social-media effort. Designing, printing and mailing statewide political literature is expensive, and the scale disclosed to the FEC confirms a substantial operation.
Heikes, a Palmer Republican and perennial candidate, initially filed this year for Alaska’s US House seat, where Republican Rep. Nick Begich is seeking reelection. He later withdrew from that race and entered the US Senate contest. The Alaska Division of Elections now lists him as a certified Republican candidate for Senate and as withdrawn from the House race.
There is no evidence in the public filings that Heikes has anything to do with the Right for Alaska PAC. It appears he is being used. Federal law allows a super PAC to spend independently for or against candidates, and the group must not coordinate its expenditures with the campaigns it supports. The relevant question is why a Democratic megadonor from Massachusetts is underwriting messages designed to make Heikes attractive to conservative Alaska voters.
The strategy is straightforward. Alaska’s open primary places every Senate candidate on one ballot, with the top four advancing to the ranked-choice general election. Sullivan and Democrat Mary Peltola dominate the race. Any campaign that persuades conservative voters to choose Heikes instead of Sullivan can reduce Sullivan’s primary total and potentially reshape the four-candidate field.
That makes the mailers a political bait-and-switch: Democratic money packaged as a Christian-conservative appeal.
This is not the first dishonest campaign that Alaska Sen. Sullivan has had to face this cycle. A man who shares Sullivan’s first and last name filed for the Senate seat, in an attempt to confuse voters into picking him, instead of the real Sen. Sullivan. That man, Daniel J. Sullivan (known widely now as Decoy Dan), appears on the primary ballot along with Sen. Dan Sullivan, whose middle initial is S.
One thought on “The Alaska Story investigation: Massachusetts Democrat donor bankrolls conservative-looking campaign to siphon votes from Sullivan”
Who is the Wasilla entity and/or person paying for the “progressive” Carol Hafner mailings In the current US Senate race?
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Just like your explanation of the Heikes advertisements (above), I’d like to know who in Wasilla is paying for the many mailings I have received in the mail.