Competing Dan Sullivans and name recognition
Petersburg Dan Sullivan, 69, has some good arguments about the unseemly way Nancy Dahlstrom is taking her marching orders directly from Washington, D.C. Republican heavyweights trying to help the campaign of Sen. Dan Sullivan, 61.
Without any evidence, Dahlstrom is amplifying the Republican claims that Petersburg Dan broke the law, committed perjury and is part of a master plot to steal the election from Sen. Dan.
Petersburg Dan is one of 16 candidates who filed for the U.S. Senate. All but two of those candidates, including those from Arizona, South Dakota, Illinois and Wasilla, have no chance of winning. All but one of the 16 have reasons for running that Dahlstrom will never examine.
“Rather than choosing to question the legitimacy of the many candidates that have filed for U.S. Senate in Alaska this year that do not claim Alaska residence, you continue to harass me and my pursuit of office,” Petersburg Dan, who calls the incumbent Ohio Dan, wrote to Dahlstrom.
Dahlstrom said she must determine whether Petersburg Dan “filed with good faith intention to serve.” She is not applying that standard to the other candidates. Petersburg Dan said he did not receive Dahlstrom’s letter from her office, but from a reporter.
Petersburg Dan, a member of the Alaskan Independence Party until its dissolution last year, has been in Alaska for more than 45 years, far longer than Sen. Dan. He is a retired teacher and former employee of the U.S. Forest Service.
“I am not a registered Democrat, and I have had no conversations whatsoever with the Peltola campaign about my candidacy,” he said.
This Wednesday letter from Petersburg Dan is evidence that his campaign is not the product of a conspiracy by Chuck Schumer, other Democratic leaders and Mary Peltola, which is what Sen. Dan says. It’s in Sen. Dan’s interest that Petersburg Dan be portrayed as a pawn, not someone capable of making a political statement on his own.
I’d be surprised if any Democratic political leaders had a hand in this. Sen. Dan will have a harder time getting Petersburg Dan off the ballot if that is the case.
Petersburg Dan is clearly not a professional politician. He is not someone who has a staff of lawyers and PR people to proofread and edit his correspondence. He does not have someone who puts words in his mouth. His letter spells the lieutenant governor’s name wrong.
But he is someone with strong political views. And he has a good shot at making it into the top four candidates on the August ballot because of his name.
His version of events is that friends, some of whom call him senator, have been joking with him for years and he’s talked about running for a long time. He said he finally had enough with Sen. Dan’s silence on Trump’s $1.776 billion slush fund. That’s a more plausible explanation for his filing than the claim that he was recruited by Chuck Schumer as part of an illegal scheme.
He says his “politically attuned” friends thought Dan Sullivan should enter the race against Dan Sullivan.
I can imagine that anyone in Alaska with the same name as a U.S. Senator, strong divergent political views, and an appetite for argument would be tempted to file against an incumbent without needing any Outside prodding.
“The senator is kind of famous for not speaking with constituents or reporters,” Petersburg Dan told the ADN. “And then he had no comment on the anti-weaponization, Jan. 6 slush fund.”
“I’m a really pragmatic guy, and I would have been happy with an explanation (from Sullivan),” he said. “If you support or don’t support that, then tell us why, and I can agree or disagree.”
It’s easy to imagine that for the last 12 years Petersburg Dan’s circle of friends have brought up the senator’s name on multiple occasions and given the retired teacher a hard time about his namesake. He says he has thought about running for office for more than a decade.
Sen. Dan claims his proof that Petersburg Dan is controlled by Schumer and Peltola is that Amber Lee, a consultant who has worked on Democratic campaigns, either wrote or helped write Petersburg Dan’s press release.
Again, Petersburg Dan’s version of events is more plausible. He says he has had no communication with Peltola’s campaign. He said he asked people he knew in Alaska about finding someone to help him file for office and Lee’s name came up, so he looked her up on Google.
“I reached out to as many people around town and the state that I know who are somewhat politically active and was like, ‘How does a guy even go about starting to do this?’ ” Petersburg Dan said of running for office. “And they threw out a few names.”
He told the ADN he also liked the idea that Lee has written novels for kids, “since he also loved teaching literature to middle school kids.”
“I am a first-time candidate and found myself in need of strategic guidance, so I reached out to Ms. Lee. As far as I know, Ms. Lee does not work for the Peltola campaign. She does have prior political experience in the State of Alaska. The fact that a political consultant has done prior political consulting is not a legitimate reason for your office to investigate me and demand I supply you with an affidavit under penalty of perjury on less than 48 hours’ notice,” Petersburg Dan wrote to Dahlstrom.
In an interview Wednesday with KFSK, Petersburg Dan said, “I think I’ve been pretty emblematic of what a good citizen should be in a community. If that doesn’t give me the right to stand up and pursue this goal that I’m after, then I mean, I don’t know who is eligible to do this.”
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