There are a couple of oddities in the current election season. Strangely enough, the Alaska Senate race, where two Dan Sullivans are competing against Democrat Mary Peltola is not the oddest of the odd.
Alaska’s incumbent senator, Republican Dan S. Sullivan, is locked in a reelection battle with Peltola, the Democratic challenger, as well as another Republican Dan Sullivan.
Dan J. Sullivan, a retired teacher, emerged as a strong enough candidate to earn a spot on the November ballot after placing third in the state’s nonpartisan, jungle primary. Dan S. Sullivan, the incumbent, finished second behind Peltola.
Republicans are crying foul and blaming Democrats for playing shady tricks, but both the Peltola campaign and Dan J. Sullivan deny coordinating with each other. The state Division of Elections removed the non-senator Sullivan from the ballot, saying that his campaign was designed to cause confusion, but he was restored by a judge. Sullivan says that he is running in good faith, despite the fact that he voted for Peltola in her congressional bids.
What makes this even funnier is that this is not the first time that Dan Sullivan has been on the same ballot as another Dan Sullivan. When Senator Sullivan was first elected in 2014, yet another Republican Dan Sullivan was running for lieutenant governor. That third Dan Sullivan has endorsed Senator Dan Sullivan in the current race.
As a footnote, Senator Sullivan trailed Peltola by more than 10,000 votes in the primary. Even assuming that all Dan J. Sullivan voters would have voted for Senator Sullivan if Dan J. wasn’t on the ballot, his 3,847 votes would not have changed the outcome. I do wonder how many of the Senator’s voters intended to vote for Dan J.
You might wonder what could be more weird than the saga of the Alaskan Dan Sullivans, and the answer would be found in Nebraska, where Democrats are fighting to not have a candidate. No, that is not a typo.
In the Cornhusker State, Democrats are fighting a legal battle to keep their primary winner off the ballot and not have a candidate in the general election. The backstory is that when Nebraska Democrats held their Senate primary, they overwhelmingly chose Cindy Burbank over William Forbes, a Trump-supporting, pro-life candidate who, in a parallel to Alaska, some Democrats consider to be a plant. For his part, Forbes says he is a registered Democrat even though he voted for Trump multiple times and attended a training session for Republican candidates.
Burbank promised during the campaign to withdraw from the race if nominated in order to support independent candidate Dan Sullivan. No, I’m just kidding. The Nebraska candidate is a Dan, but his last name is Osborn. Osborn is not a Democrat and has rejected both parties, but he has strong support among Nebraska Democrats. As an aside, I’ll also note that promising to withdraw or resign is a strategy that I’d love to see more candidates use.
To make a long story short (too late!), when Burbank filed to withdraw from the race, Republicans sued to place Forbes, the alleged ringer, on the ballot, while Democrats fought to keep him off. The case hinged on the wording of the Nebraska statute, which stated that ballot vacancies “may be filled,” but also says, “the vacancy shall be filled by the majority vote of the proper committee of the same political party.”
The case was decided this week when a state judge threw out Forbes’ lawsuit. Per Courthouse News Service, the judge held that the word “may” gave the party discretion on whether to replace its nominee, but the “shall” dictated the procedure to follow if the decision to replace was in the affirmative.
Barring any further developments, Osborn will face incumbent Republican Pete Ricketts in November. The only recent poll is one sponsored by the Osborn campaign, and that one shows a 47-47 tie.
It remains to be seen whether Osborn can upset Ricketts, but it is a certainty that he has a much better chance of doing so without a Democratic nominee in the race. That is true even if the Democrat is a DINO (Democrat in name only), who only entered the race to sow confusion. Every vote will matter in this race.
This is an important election year. The outcome of these and other races matters a great deal, but despite that - or perhaps because of it - there seems to be ample weirdness in the electorate. File these stories away for use in trivia contests a decade or so from now.
DEPT OF ED COMPARES TRUMP TO HITLER A deleted post by the Department of Education featured a movie clip of Winston Churchill talking about Hitler, followed by a montage of Trump pictures. This creates the opportunity for a multitude of jokes that can easily write themselves. I’m starting to agree with abolishing the DOE.
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Why nominate candidates who can discuss issues and their solutions to those issues when there are so many shenanigans that can be played to win the Blue v Red game.