The revelation that the Mary Peltola campaign may have "planted" a candidate on the November ballot to confuse Alaskan voters is a potential game changer. With the election now only days away, the winner could well determine which party controls the Senate next year.
To be clear, if the allegations in The New York Times are true, it was not only dumb, but as it turns out, totally unnecessary. Peltola has led her opponent Dan Sullivan by 1 to 2 points since November of last year. Larry Sabato recently shifted the race from tossup to lean Democrat. Of all the red states in which Democrats are running, Alaska was considered one of the states most likely to flip. There was no need to gum up the works, as it were.
Having said that, I have a few issues regarding this "scandal." First off, the timing of the Times piece is problematic, to say the least. An article that was worked on for several months is suddenly published less than a week before the election. Really? Less than a week? Secondly, we don't know how many of the twelve sources that were used to compile this article are current campaign workers or former. If they're former workers, it's possible some or all might have axes to grind; and lastly, the principal source in this article recanted her story. Why would she do that unless she knew that what she originally said was not true? At the very least, that should've raised a red flag for the author, as well as the publication, given the gravity of the charges. And yet the Times went ahead and published it anyway.
But let's say, for the sake of argument, that the story is one hundred percent legit. That the campaign did in fact recruit another candidate with the same name as Sullivan to confuse the voters. What is the crime here? Dirty politics? To steal a line from that great movie Casablanca, "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here."
Yes, it was dumb and unnecessary. But illegal? Please. If dirty politics were illegal in this country, every election since Jefferson / Adams would've been voided. You might as well come out and say you hate rainy days and Mondays.
But even if you are one of those who are repelled by such tactics, the last people on Earth who should be complaining are Republicans. This is the same party that in 2020 put a candidate on the Florida ballot with the same last name as the Democrat. The Republican won that election by 32 votes. The same party that in 2024 attempted to put not one but two candidates with the same last name on Washington ballot. They were eventually forced to withdraw the names after legal threats. The same party that challenged the results of a free and fair election in which Trump lost to Joe Biden. And the same party that is standing by while this president weaponizes the DOJ in an attempt to interfere with state-wide elections.
Spare me the crocodile tears. The GOP ceded the moral high ground on this issue a LONG time ago. You don't get to drive 50 miles over the speed limit with impunity and then cry foul when someone drives 10 miles over it.
You don't need to have an I.Q. of 190 to be able to tell the difference between two candidates named Sullivan, especially when one of them has the designation "(Registered Republican) Incumbent" next to it. Most voters understand what the real issues in this election are about. They're not likely to be taken in or "confused" by such a stunt.
And those that are taken in or confused are probably Fox News viewers, Trump rally attendees or both.
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