Alaska's second Dan Sullivan leaves hometown days before Senate election

Alaska's Senate ballot this year carries two Dan Sullivans: the incumbent senator, and a retired teacher who taught music and fourth and fifth grade in the local school district for nearly two decades. On Monday, days before the November 3 election, a former student told CBS News she saw the retired Sullivan aboard a flight from Petersburg to Anchorage. Petersburg is a fishing community of roughly 3,000 people, reachable only by plane or boat.

Two days after the departure, the New York Times published an investigation linking his candidacy to a recruitment effort involving people associated with Democrat Mary Peltola's campaign — according to the Times, Peltola's campaign lawyers and senior aides at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Peltola and national Democrats deny involvement. Her former campaign manager, Elisa Rios, told the Times that Peltola knew about the recruitment effort, though she did not participate directly. Sullivan maintains he entered the race on his own initiative.

The official response is running on two tracks. Governor Mike Dunleavy has ordered the state Department of Public Safety to examine whether the alleged scheme broke state law and whether criminal charges or civil proceedings are warranted. Federal prosecutors are conducting a separate criminal inquiry into how Sullivan entered the race — an investigation that had been underway for months and gained urgency after the Times published, with investigators preparing to preserve communications and issue grand jury subpoenas.

Name-sharing candidates are among the oldest legal devices in American ballot history. What is new here is federal prosecutors attempting to establish intent in the middle of the election it concerns. In Petersburg, dozens of residents told CBS News they had received no campaign literature or seen signs promoting Sullivan since he announced his bid in the spring, and crews found no visible campaign activity outside his home on the community's main coastal road. "I don't think it's a serious candidacy," local fisherman Andrew Worhatch told CBS News. "I haven't seen a platform." Resident Keely Hankins argued voters could tell the two apart by reading the ballot, where the incumbent is designated as such. "It's just embarrassing to think that we, a small fishing village, have such a hoaxer," Darla Kowalski told the network.

The election is scheduled for November 3. The federal investigation is expected to continue beyond it.