Weirdest primaries of 2026: Alaska’s tale of two Dan Sullivans wins the prize for weirdness

By SUZANNE DOWNING

Aug. 17, 2026 – The 2026 primary season has produced candidates who won after quitting, nominees who won so they could quit, scandal-plagued contenders who cruised to victory—and, in Alaska, two Republican candidates for the same US Senate seat with nearly identical names.

Here is our entirely subjective ranking of the strangest primary stories of the year so far.

1. Alaska: Will the real Dan Sullivan please stand up?

Only Alaska could put two Republican candidates named Dan Sullivan side by side on a US Senate primary ballot, and send the dispute all the way to the Alaska Supreme Court.

Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan is seeking a third term. But voters in Tuesday’s top-four primary will also encounter Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired Petersburg teacher who previously belonged to the Alaska Independence Party and entered the race saying he is a Republican and even trying to sneak the middle initial “S” onto the ballot with his name.

His candidacy has led to him being known as “Decoy Dan” and raised suspicions that his intention is to confuse voters and weaken the incumbent ahead of an expected general-election battle with Democrat Mary Peltola.

The Alaska Division of Elections initially removed Decoy Dan from the ballot after concluding that he was not running as a good-faith Republican candidate. A Superior Court judge reversed that decision, and the Alaska Supreme Court affirmed it, ordering the state to let both Sullivans run.

Election officials have taken the unusual step of distinguishing between them on the ballot. The senator appears as “Sullivan, Dan S.” and is identified as the Republican incumbent. The challenger appears as “Sullivan, Daniel J. Jr.,” without the Republican designation displayed beside his name. After all, he was not a Republican until he put the R by his name when he filed for office.

It is a political identity-theft story filled with courtroom drama and a potential voter-confusion experiment by the Democrats.

Alaska wins the 2026 primary election oddity contest, and the votes have not even been counted yet.

Exclusive: Trump, Sen. Sullivan discuss ‘Decoy Dan’ election shenanigans as president warns Alaskans: ‘Don’t be fooled’

2. Nebraska: Win the Democratic nomination—and then disappear

Nebraska Democrats developed a different strategy for challenging Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts: Do not run a Democrat against him.

The state Democratic Party endorsed independent Dan Osborn, a Navy veteran and industrial mechanic who mounted a surprisingly competitive independent Senate campaign in 2024. Party leaders feared that fielding a Democratic nominee in 2026 would divide the anti-Ricketts vote.

There was one problem. Cindy Burbank, a retired pharmacy technician, entered the Democratic primary and repeatedly indicated that she would withdraw if she won, provided Osborn qualified for the general-election ballot.

Republicans accused Burbank of being a plant and persuaded Nebraska’s secretary of state to remove her from the primary ballot on the grounds that she was not a good-faith candidate. She sued and ultimately returned to the ballot after the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that the challenge to her candidacy had not been handled within the required deadline.

Burbank then won the May 12 Democratic primary with nearly 90% of the vote after spending less than $20,000.

And then she did what she had suggested she might do all along: She withdrew.

Her July departure left Nebraska without a Democratic Senate nominee and cleared the way for Osborn to face Ricketts without a major-party Democrat splitting the opposition vote. The withdrawal produced yet another lawsuit, this time from defeated primary candidate William Forbes, who sought to force the Democratic Party to name a replacement.

Nebraska’s primary was therefore built around a candidate who won her party’s nomination in order not to use it. That is difficult to top, but Alaska managed it.

3. Maine: Scandals, a landslide, and then another withdrawal

Maine Democrat Graham Platner did not merely survive controversy in his Senate primary. He overwhelmed his opponents.

The progressive oyster farmer wth the Nazi-inspired tattoo entered the race against Republican Sen. Susan Collins as a political newcomer. His campaign was soon engulfed by scrutiny involving offensive past social-media posts, explicit messages reportedly sent while he was married, allegations of abusive behavior from former partners and a chest tattoo resembling a Nazi Totenkopf symbol. Platner said he had not understood the tattoo’s meaning and later covered it.

None of that stopped Democratic primary voters.

Platner won roughly 72% of the vote — more than 150,000 ballots — against Gov. Janet Mills, who had suspended her campaign but remained on the ballot, and former state lawmaker David Costello.

Then came another allegation. A former girlfriend accused Platner of sexual assault, which he denied. Platner ended his campaign in July and formally withdrew from the ballot, leaving Maine Democrats to select former state Senate President Troy Jackson as their replacement nominee.

Maine Democrats thus handed a landslide victory to a nominee whose campaign lasted barely another month.

4. Michigan: The candidate who quit—and won anyway

Thomas J. Smith suspended his campaign for Michigan’s 8th Congressional District in mid-July. The retired General Motors engineer had raised little money, mounted almost no visible campaign and endorsed one of his rivals, Al Lemmo.

It was too late to remove Smith’s name from the Aug. 4 Republican primary ballot.

Voters nominated him anyway.

Smith received about 50% of the vote, defeating Trump-endorsed Navy veteran Amir Hassan, who finished with roughly 33%, and Lemmo, the candidate Smith himself had endorsed, who received about 16%. Smith won despite suspending his campaign nearly a month earlier and conducting essentially no fundraising.

Faced with the inconvenience of winning, Smith revived his campaign and is now running in the general election.

In Michigan, apparently, the best campaign strategy was to stop campaigning.

5. Arizona: A scandal barrage that barely left a mark

Former Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb entered Arizona’s 5th Congressional District Republican primary with the endorsements of President Donald Trump and Turning Point USA, and enough personal controversy to sink any ordinary candidate.

Allegations surfaced involving explicit photographs and sexually charged messages to women, threats of legal action against people who might speak publicly and questions about whether Lamb had been spending more time in Tennessee than in the Arizona district he sought to represent. Lamb denied allegations of misconduct or declined to address some of the details.

His opponent, self-funding businessman Daniel Keenan, promoted himself as the scandal-free alternative.

Republican voters were unmoved.

Lamb won with 58.6% of the vote to Keenan’s 41.4%, In a heavily Republican district, Lamb is now favored to win the seat in November.

The oddity was not that a candidate faced scandal, but was how little difference the cascade of allegations appeared to make.

6. The emerging Democratic strategy: Nominate, withdraw and back an independent

Nebraska was not an isolated incident of Democrats backing independents. Alaska has been trending in that direction for a few years.

Democratic Senate nominees in Idaho and South Dakota also withdrew after their primaries, clearing the field for “independent” candidates challenging Republican incumbents.

In Idaho, Democratic nominee David Roth left the race to give independent Todd Achilles a clearer shot against Republican Sen. Jim Risch. In South Dakota, Democratic nominee Julian Beaudion withdrew as independent Brian Bengs challenged Republican Sen. Mike Rounds.

Montana Democrats faced pressure to follow the same playbook by stepping aside for independent Seth Bodnar. But Democratic nominee Alani Bankhead declined to withdraw, meaning both she and Bodnar will remain on the November ballot.

The strategy is how Democrats are approaching Senate races in deeply Republican states. Instead of trying to build their party through their own nominees, they are treating the Democratic ballot line as expendable and betting that candidates running as independents will be more competitive. They’ve beta-tested this strategy in the Alaska Legislature.

That makes the 2026 primaries unusual not merely because individual candidates behaved strangely. In several states, the primary itself became part of a broader political maneuver: Win the nomination, surrender it, and hope an independent can win the race. It’s a trend that makes the “weirdness” list because it’s an emerging strategy from the Left.

Still, none of the other states or even that Democrat-independent trend can quite match Alaska’s contribution. For sheer election-year weirdness, the Last Frontier remains first. But then again, the Alaska primary does not end until 8 pm Tuesday.

Breaking: ‘Decoy Dan’ admits he may quit if he reaches final four, and says he registered Republican to ‘take it to’ Sen. Sullivan

Win Gruening: Decoy Dan and the ranked-choice voting scheme

NRA endorses Nick Begich and the Real Dan Sullivan … and not Decoy Dan, Uncle Tom, Rev. Matt, or Maybe Mary

National Review spotlights ‘Decoy Dan’ controversy, ties JKT, Jim Lottsfeldt to Alaska ballot dispute

FBI opens investigation into Decoy Dan wire fraud, civil rights conspiracy: NBC