Unconstitutional? Alaska's Legislative Attorney Flags Removal Of Southeast 'Dan Sullivan' From Ballot

 COPPER RIVER COUNTRY JOURNAL 

WEIRDLY ENOUGH... 

Name Confusion Is Actually Quite Common In Alaska Voting Due To Family Entanglements 

FROM THE JOURNAL, JUNE 18TH, 2026

The attorney for the Alaska Legislature has flagged the state's decision to remove a Petersburg candidate from the ballot for Senate, saying that dropping the schoolteacher from the ballot is a violation of the constitution. The state has claimed that the two Sullivans running together is confusing and that the Petersburg candidate is trying to trick voters.

Name issues in Alaska’s political ballots are very common, yet totally unique, due to the smallness of the state's population. In Alaska, there have been at least four other relatively recent confusing ballots, all revolving around a name.

LISA MURKOWSKI, 2010

The Tea Party candidate for Lisa Murkowski's U.S. Senate seat, Joe Miller, beat Murkowski in the 2010 Republican primary. Although a Republican, Lisa Murkowski cast around for another party to run under. She considered running as a Libertarian, but the Libertarian party refused. So she started a write-in campaign, which is a very unusual tactic and almost never leads to a win. Nevertheless, Murkowski prevailed - and, after a lengthy effort to train Alaskans how to spell her unusually difficult Polish surname – she won her Senate seat back, becoming the second Senate candidate, after Strom Thurmond 50 years before, to successfully pull off a write-in campaign for the Senate. Lisa Murkowski is the daughter of Frank Murkowski, also a U.S. Senator, who gave his daughter his seat when he became Governor of Alaska.

TWO DANS IN THE SENATE? 2016

Dan Sullivan, the well-known feisty mayor of Anchorage from 2009 to 2015, was the son of Mayor George Sullivan, and followed in his footsteps, parlaying a known Alaskan surname into politics. His dad, George, had the big Sullivan Arena in Anchorage named after him. (This is not the Dan Sullivan who is currently U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan.) A hard-line Republican, Mayor Dan Sullivan was perhaps best known for passing an ordinance that banned people from sitting on sidewalks in the City of Anchorage. In 2016, Mayor Dan Sullivan announced he'd run against Lisa Murkowski for her U.S. Senate seat. If he'd won, there would then have been two Republican Dan Sullivans from Alaska in the U.S. Senate. However, Mayor Dan Sullivan then dropped out of the Senate race, without explanation.

THE BEGICHES. 2026

Many Begiches have run for or achieved public office in Alaska over the years. Nick Begich Senior, who died in a plane crash in 1972, was in the U.S. House of Representatives. At least three public buildings, including a visitor center, an apartment complex and a school in Anchorage, have been named 'Begich' after him. He was a Democrat. Also a Democrat, his wife, Pegge, unsuccessfully ran for U.S. House. Their son, Nick Begich Jr., unsuccessfully ran for governor in 1998 – and also wrote a smash hit book about Gakona's HAARP project in the Copper Valley. Nick Jr. gained prominence as a third-party Alaskan Independence Party supporter. Nick Jr.'s brother, Mark Begich, is a Democrat who was mayor of Anchorage from 2003 to 2009 (before the first Dan Sullivan got the mayoral job). Mark Begich then won the spot of U.S. Senator, from 2009 to 2015, before being replaced by the current Senator Dan Sullivan. Nick Jr. and Mark's brother, Tom Begich, a former state senator, is a singer-songwriter who is currently running as a Democrat for governor in 2026. And simultaneously, Nick Jr.'s son (and Tom's nephew) Nick Begich III is running again – as a Republican – for the seat he has been holding in the U.S. House of Representatives, the same U.S. slot that was once held by his dead grandpa who died in the plane crash. The person who held that House seat, for almost 50 years after his grandfather's death, was Don Young, who was followed briefly by Democrat Mary Peltola, from 2022 to 2025. Now Nick III has taken the seat back, closing the circle and bringing Alaska's sole Congressional seat into the arms of the Begich family once again. Mary Peltola, meanwhile, is running for incumbent Dan Sullivan's current Senate seat – and she is pretty much being blamed for somehow being involved with the schoolteacher Dan Sullivan's decision to run against the seated Dan Sullivan – as a mischief-making ploy by Peltola's group to trick the public and swing the House to becoming Democratic, by confusing the voters. 

The Begich situation is openly acknowledged by at least one faction of the family. The fact that Tom Begich, a Democrat, and Nick Begich, a Republican, will both be on this year's 2026 Alaska ballot has led the Tom Begich campaign to request from the media that they be sure to clearly delineate which 'Begich' is being talked about in political news stories. The two Begiches are not running for the same seat, but the Tom Begich campaign cautions:

"With multiple Begich family members involved in Alaska’s 2026 elections, we would request that you use first names when referring to Tom Begich and Nick Begich in your coverage. Tom Begich and Nick Begich have opposing political views and records. Headlines using only their last names confuse the public and do misrepresent their positions."


SANTA CLAUS. 2022

In 2022, after Don Young, who had held the U.S. House seat for almost 50 years, died, a large number of people filed to run for his seat. One of them was a man who had legally changed his name from Thomas Patrick O'Connor to Santa Claus. Santa told the Journal recently that he had done it so he "could reach U.S. Senators and State Governors, and their Chiefs of Staff and Policy Directors" who were so inundated with daily calls that it helped when he announced himself on the phone as "Santa Claus from North Pole Alaska." Although Santa did not win the U.S. House, he also did not raise any red flags with the state when he signed up to run, despite the distant possibility that voters might confuse him with the real Santa.