Dazed and Confused in Wasilla. WSJ columnist says Alaskans were baffled by the Sullivans

Confusion now reigns in the Wasilla branch office of the Wall Street Journal.

“The Beltway refrain has been that Alaska did enough distinguishing to make the ballot clear. That’s a hoot,” Kimberley Strassel hooted Tuesday.

“In the runup to Tuesday, I spoke to several voters who wanted to re-elect the ‘real’ Sen. Dan Sullivan, but who remained unclear as to his middle initial,” says Strassel.

She said one of the “several” befuddled voters “confided that she was so daunted by the whole thing that she was debating not voting at all.”

Strassel visited Alaska in 2014 to write a piece attacking the reelection campaign of Sen. Mark Begich and promote Dan Sullivan as the guy whose “pro Alaska brag sheet is long.”

She eventually married the man she quoted in the lead about Begich’s failings and moved to Wasilla: “Nick Van Dyke first moved to the Last Frontier as a child, in 1985, and is today as Alaskan as they come. When the 46-year-old isn't running his metal-fabrication shop here, he's out moose hunting, snowmobiling, flying—or entertaining columnists from Washington, D.C.”

As a Wasillan, Strassel is claiming that if Alaskans elect Mary Peltola the state will be committing “economic suicide,” and that lots of Alaskans were hopelessly confused about which Sullivan was which.

In August, she said there was a problem with having two Sullivans on the primary ballot: “How many Alaskans ticked the first box, unaware they were voting for someone other than whom they intended?”

“Alaskans will be even more confused when they have to ‘rank’ the two Dans in November,” claimed the Wasilla expert on confusion.

On October 28, she told Journal readers, “I’ve spoken to numerous supporters of the senator who are deeply confused.”

Sullivan, Daniel J. Jr. “threatens to deny Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan re-election,” Strassel said.

She kept making that claim while failing to explain that any everyday ordinary fool could tell which was which by just looking at the ballot.

She said at one point that voters might spot the name “Dan” and vote for that guy, without looking for the real “Dan.” She didn’t seem to know that only one of the guys was listed as Dan, the incumbent. The other was Daniel.

On July 21, Sen. Dan Sullivan said on her podcast that he was satisfied with the way he and the second Sullivan would be labeled on the ballot and confusion would not be a problem.

Sullivan said his campaign was going to do everything it could to make sure that Alaskans could tell them apart.

“We're going to make sure Alaskans don't get confused,” Sullivan said three months ago.

“So look, on the ballot, it's been finalized. It's going to say Sullivan, Dan S. Importantly, Kim, it's going to say Republican/incumbent. So that is what's going to be on the ballot. The sham candidate, again, who was put on there to confuse Alaskans going to be listed as Sullivan, Daniel J. With no other indicator of a party or anything else. We think that's going to be enough to educate Alaskans on. I was out with my team already door knocking flyers. We're going to make sure Alaskans are educated on choosing the right candidate on this ballot. And again, we're putting in the extra work. It's important,” Sullivan said in July.

The Queen of Confusion didn’t accept that, however, or chose to forget Sullivan’s pledge.

It was only after Trump started shouting about the Sullivan confusion trope in October that Sen. Dan Sullivan began claiming it was a big problem. It would cost him thousands of votes, he told reporters.

And lots of Alaskans are too dumb to know the meaning of the word incumbent, another line of attack he took from Trump.

The surest sign that even Sullivan knew there was no confusion was that he never bothered to mount the large-scale education effort he announced in July.

With the millions and millions he spent on bad advertising, it would have been easy to pound the message home about how he was listed on the ballot. And what incumbent means. It was not a problem.

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