By SUZANNE DOWNING
Oct. 28, 2026 – Sen. Lisa Murkowski has suddenly discovered that manipulating elections is a bad thing.
After publicly rebuking President Donald Trump and the Department of Justice for challenging the installation by Democrats of a second Dan Sullivan on Alaska’s US Senate ballot, Murkowski is now demanding answers from Democrat Mary Peltola and her campaign over revelations that Peltola’s political allies were involved in recruiting the so-called “Decoy Dan.”
What changed? The New York Times published an investigation Wednesday exposing the political operation behind the candidacy of Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., whose name closely resembles that of incumbent Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan.
Murkowski, who just days ago dismissed the Trump Administration’s concerns about voter confusion, issued a sharply worded statement Wednesday condemning the apparent effort to manipulate Alaska’s election.
“While some may try to write this off as just how politics works now, ballot-stacking should have no place in our electoral process. Run and win on your merits: your views, your policy ideas, and your accomplishments. By contrast, recruiting candidates to manipulate the field and influence voting outcomes is simply wrong. Alaskans deserve the honest truth from Mary and her campaign—what has been revealed is a pattern of lies and coverups and a culture of deception that belongs nowhere in our elections or among our elected officials.”
Just days earlier, Murkowski was criticizing the Trump Department of Justice for attempting to address the very ballot confusion at the center of the controversy.
When the Department of Justice filed its lawsuit challenging Alaska’s handling of the two Sullivan candidacies, Murkowski took an oppositional approach:
“Alaskans don’t need any help voting for their preferred candidates, and the State of Alaska has already handled this by clearly distinguishing the candidates on this year’s ballot. The Department of Justice should never have filed this lawsuit.”
Murkowski linked to reporting about the federal lawsuit, which Trump said he had directed.
The Justice Department’s lawsuit seeks relief that could, in theory, delay certification of the Senate election if Dan S. Sullivan loses by a margin small enough that votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. could have affected the outcome.
The federal government raised concerns about voter confusion. Murkowski brushed those concerns aside.
Now that the New York Times has connected the candidate-recruitment effort to Peltola’s political circle, Murkowski is condemning the manipulation itself.
Murkowski’s relationship with Peltola makes the reversal even more remarkable.
In 2022, Murkowski publicly supported Peltola in her race for Alaska’s congressional seat, crossing party lines to back the Democrat rather than the Republican candidate.
She again supported Peltola in 2024, even when Republican Nick Begich challenged the incumbent Democrat for Alaska’s lone US House seat.
Murkowski did not endorse Begich the Republican. She supported Peltola.
And just this week, Murkowski endorsed Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins for governor rather than Bernadette Wilson, the leading Republican candidate and President Trump’s endorsed choice.
The senator’s willingness to support Democrats over Republicans is no longer an occasional departure from party politics. It’s not a bug, but a feature of her political career.
Yet the latest allegations surrounding Peltola have apparently crossed a line even Murkowski is unwilling to defend.
The question is why she was so quick to condemn the Trump administration’s legal intervention before the New York Times exposed the political machinery behind the Decoy Dan candidacy.
There is another layer of irony in Murkowski’s sudden concern about ballot manipulation.
Murkowski was a major beneficiary of Alaska’s 2020 election overhaul, which replaced traditional partisan primaries with an open top-four primary and ranked-choice voting in general elections. In fact, she was the intended beneficiary.
The system was promoted by her minions at Alaskans for Better Elections and Outside dark money, who argued that it would give voters more choices and reduce the influence of partisan politics.
It also eliminated the traditional Republican primary that Murkowski would otherwise have faced during her 2022 reelection campaign. She could not win a Republican primary at that point in her political career.
Murkowski had already demonstrated she was willing to bend the rules for her own political power: In 2010, she lost the Republican primary to Joe Miller, then returned as a write-in candidate and won the general election.
Under the system adopted in 2020, she no longer needed to win a Republican nomination to advance to November.
Now that same top-four primary system has provided a pathway for a candidate sharing the incumbent senator’s name to reach the general election ballot with only a small percentage of the primary vote.
Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. received roughly 2% of the August primary vote but still qualified for the November ballot.
Under Alaska’s former partisan-primary system, his route to the general election would have been impossible. Ranked-choice voting itself can mitigate spoiler effects when voters rank additional candidates, but it cannot prevent voters from mistakenly selecting the wrong candidate in the first place.
This is the system Murkowski and her political allies put in place and have defended.
And now she is condemning a candidate-recruitment operation that exploited its rules.
The timing is precious: When Trump called attention to the two-Sullivan ballot and directed the Justice Department to intervene, Murkowski criticized the federal government’s involvement.
When the New York Times documented the Democratic recruitment effort, she demanded accountability from Peltola.
This is the kind of inconsistency that fuels accusations of Trump Derangement Syndrome among her critics.
And with Election Day less than a week away, Alaska voters are left to wonder whether Murkowski’s newly discovered concern about ballot manipulation will extend to reconsidering the election system that made it possible.
