In Alaska fishing community, the Dan Sullivan episode takes an ominous turn as FBI comes knocking

PETERSBURG, Alaska (AP) — In the sleepy Alaskan fishing community of Petersburg, nobody has seen Dan J. Sullivan for weeks.

His rustic home stood dark a day after FBI agents visited friends who donated to his quixotic campaign to unseat the Republican senator with the same first and last name — Dan S. Sullivan. The only display of politics at his home was a yard sign from the League of Women Voters: “Stand Up for Democracy: Vote 2026.”

What may have begun as a ploy to harm the reelection prospects of Sen. Sullivan has taken a serious turn as the Trump administration weighs criminal charges over a campaign tactic known as “ballot stacking.”

“It just seems like such a waste of our taxpayer money,” said Sharon Hunter, a Petersburg resident who, with her husband, donated $1,000 to Dan J. Sullivan, a former elementary school teacher. FBI agents knocked on her door Saturday during a round of interviews with the campaign’s dozen contributors.

“I’m a bit incredulous about their whole angle,” Hunter said, “because they’re targeting a person who’s been a real contributor in this community.”

Recruiting candidates to draw votes away from an opponent has been a part of Alaska's quirky politics for years. This time around, the state's open primary and ranked choice voting systems add another wrinkle, making it easier for lesser-known candidates to play spoilers when no contender secures a majority.

The tactic has drawn fresh scrutiny as the incumbent Sullivan fights off a serious challenge from Democrat Mary Peltola, a former U.S. representative, in a race that could determine control of the Senate.

Peltola has denied any role in the alleged chicanery as she has sought to distance herself from a New York Times article published last week that linked a group backing the former congresswoman to a Democratic operative trying to recruit decoy candidates.

“This is Alaska. We’re not in the business of tricking each other up here,” Peltola told supporters at a rally in Anchorage last week.

Dan J. Sullivan’s entry into the race has drawn scrutiny since June, when the Alaska Division of Elections tried to remove him from the primary ballot, determining he had not filed his candidacy as a Republican in “good faith.” That finding was overturned by state courts. To avoid any confusion, state officials identify Dan S. Sullivan on the ballot as a Republican and the incumbent.

Dan J. Sullivan repeatedly said he entered the race on his own accord and had no contact with Peltola's campaign — “zero, none, zilch,” he told The Associated Press in June. He answered “no” when asked if any Democratic operatives had contacted him to run.

“This is my choice,” he said at the time.

A federal lawsuit brought by the Trump administration to revive efforts to undermine the former teacher's candidacy — and challenge a potential Peltola win by blocking certification of the election results — was dismissed on Sunday by a federal judge. The Justice Department quickly appealed.

AP's efforts to reach Dan J. Sullivan since The Times article have been unsuccessful. Several of the donors AP interviewed said they have not spoken to him in quite some time.

The senator, meanwhile, is seeking to ride the controversy to a third term.

“My costume is the real Dan Sullivan – not the fake guy,” he quipped to trick-or-treaters Saturday night.

The controversy has thrust Petersburg, a fishing community of 3,000 known as “Little Norway” for its late 19th century settlers, into the center of a federal investigation and a crush of media attention.

It's the type of small town where everyone seems to know everyone else’s business, and more than a dozen residents said they liked and admired Dan J. Sullivan, calling him a creative teacher who ran an after-school program, Little Kids Rock, to teach guitar.

At a lively Halloween party at Kito’s Kave, a local dive, a patron poked fun at the surge of interest by dressing up as an FBI agent. Another wore a “Petersburg Election Scandal” prison placard around her neck. The charge: “Being a Registered Voter in Alaska."

Retired fisherman Ed Wood said he wrote a $1,000 check to Dan J. Sullivan's campaign to repay the support Sullivan and his wife gave to a costly, decade-long battle to block the state from logging a forested hillside that sits above Petersburg.

Another donor, retired boat seller Charles Flint, described Sullivan as a “liberal thinker” who sometimes voted for Republicans. Flint said that Dan J. Sullivan never told him why he entered the race.

“He probably viewed himself more as a spoiler than a legitimate long shot,” said Flint, who has a “Mary for U.S. Senate” yard sign supporting the Democrat outside his coastal home. “I’m sure he’s probably thinking now, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have done this.’”

Friends said they are certain that Dan J. Sullivan never expected to generate so much attention, let alone from federal law enforcement.

FBI agents have descended on the town in recent days as federal authorities expanded a monthslong criminal probe into allegations that Democratic campaigners sought to recruit candidates to run against the incumbent senator. Most of Dan J.'s donors live in Petersburg and together contributed $7,150. Those questioned said the agents asked them whether they had felt deceived by the lesser-known Sullivan.

Anna Holmes and her husband contributed $500 to Dan J. Sullivan's campaign and were surprised when FBI agents showed up Friday night to question them. The agents told the couple they were investigating “campaign finance” violations, Holmes said.

They also asked the couple whether they had intended to contribute to Sen. Sullivan’s campaign.

“I told the agent I would not have done that,” said Holmes.

Not everyone in Petersburg defended Sullivan.

Amanda Ohmer said she was shocked when her son's former teacher entered the Senate race in May as a Republican, three days after Peltola visited Petersburg on a campaign stop. Ohmer said she believed he was a well-known liberal and attended an anti-Trump protest in town.

“You don’t see a Republican at a No Kings protest,” said Ohmer, a bartender at the local Moose Lodge.

She said she supported the federal investigation and is irked by friends who’ve rallied around Dan J. Sullivan.

“It’s sleazy,” said Ohmer. “Just because Republicans do it, too, doesn’t make it right.”

Electoral dirty tricks such as promoting so-called decoy candidates are not uncommon in Alaska, a state with a history of tight races. About 60% of 600,000 registered voters identify as independents — one of the highest percentages in the country.

As recently as 2024, the Alaska Republican Party fought to keep on the ballot an imprisoned felon with no ties to the state who was running as a Democrat for the U.S. House of Representatives seat then held by Peltola.

Peltola lost that race.

Mustian reported from New Orleans. Associated Press writers Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska, and Nicholas Riccardi in Washington contributed reporting.

A building sits along the ocean Saturday, Oct. 31, 2026, in Petersburg, Ala. (AP Photo/Joshua Goodman) Photo taken with smartphone.

Retired businessman Charles Flint looks at his phone during an interview Saturday, Oct. 31, 2026, in Petersburg, Ala. (AP Photo/Joshua Goodman) Photo taken with smartphone.

A child in a Halloween costume walks down North Nordic Drive in Petersburg, Ala., on Saturday, Oct. 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Joshua Goodman) Photo taken with smartphone.

FILE - Dan J. Sullivan, a candidate in Alaska's U.S. Senate race who shares a name with the incumbent seeking reelection, talks in front of a welcome sign near downtown Petersburg, Alaska, July 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Becky Bohrer, File)

A yard sign stands outside the home of Dan J. Sullivan, a candidate running to unseat Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, R-Alaska, in Petersburg, Ala., on Saturday, Oct. 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Joshua Goodman) Photo taken with smartphone.

The stakes in Tuesday’s midterm elections are so high that Shane Dunn voted for the first time in his life, at age 65.

After a career as a cook up and down the East Coast, Dunn moved to the Philadelphia suburbs and voted last week in Levittown. “I was always a busy man,” he said outside his polling place. But now, “I’m learning what’s going on within our country, and this is actually what brought me out.”

Democrats got his vote. “It feels great, to put my word in,” he said, patting the “I Voted” sticker on his black hoodie.

Voters across the United States are getting their word in, too, as they determine which party controls the Senate and the House and takes charge of governors' offices, legislatures and state leadership posts in the final two years of Republican Donald Trump’s presidency.

What many of them see is that the America they've known is slipping away.

They see lawlessness coming from those who create the laws. They see hate stirred by politicians among neighbors, corruption at every turn, billionaires ruling the roost and a culture that doesn’t speak to how they live — in short, American bedrock at risk of crumbling. Not to mention those crazy gas prices.

In dozens of Associated Press interviews with people who cast ballots at advance polling places or drop boxes across the country, the angst was palpable, most sharply from those who oppose Trump but also from many who support him.

“I saw my vote today as trying to put the brakes on just the madness,” said Arthur Horner, 59, who runs a food importing and marketing company that has been hurt by tariffs, after dropping his mail ballot at Dauphin County’s election bureau in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He voted for Democrats.

In Sioux City, Iowa, cattle rancher Elizabeth Marlett, 61, voted in Woodbury County’s historic Prairie-style courthouse and walked out stewing about a variety of things — the chemicals in processed food, her son’s struggles to get his veterans' benefits and, perhaps most of all, what she sees as society's leftward lurch. Things seem broken to her, too.

“Family values are going by the wayside, and they need to be brought back,” she said. “Our liberties have been stomped all over. Religion has been stomped all over. And I believe we in the majority need to step up and stop being silent.” She voted Republican.

The anger in the air, stirred by a cursing president who abides no slights, is too much for some people.

“He's just destroying us,” Democrat Linda Markle, 72, said of the president. She spoke outside the Warminster Township library in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

“I am so afraid for this country,” she said. “People used to look out for each other. Not anymore.”

“All people do now is just hate each other,” she said, and Trump “seems to have given them the courage to go ahead and be like that. … The division is horrible, absolutely horrible, and I can’t wait to see the back of him.”

Republican Chris Smith, 27, a Harrisburg software engineer who voted for Trump in 2024, sympathizes with Markle's sentiment, to a point.

“A lot of people hate him for various reasons, and I can understand why,” he said, noting that ”I think he’s kind of going a bit crazy on a lot of things.” But he likes Trump’s effort to return manufacturing to the U.S. along with the goals of his tariffs, and he voted Republican because he still thinks that party is more fiscally responsible than Democrats.

In Ohio, Lori Wilkinson, a retired home health worker from New Pittsburg, and her husband, David, a janitor, consider themselves independents. David recently wrote to their Republican governor, Mike DeWine, to tell him what a good job he's doing, and they voted for Republican George W. Bush for president in the past.

Trump? “He’s the worst president in United States history,” David said from the Wayne County election center. “You get up every day, and you’re like, ‘What’s he going to do now?’” Said Lori: “He’s got the hate just so bad, it’s just out of hand. It’s just out of control.” She fears that if Democrats win widely Tuesday, Trump will “go fricking berserk.”

Trump supporter Therese Mennell gets it. “There’s that kind of arrogant vibe about him that people don’t like, and sometimes I shut him off because of the way he talks,” the retiree said from the Wayne County center. “But, I mean, he’s doing the right thing. He is saving our country.”

Despite his striking unpopularity in polls, Trump repeatedly asked supporters to pretend he's on the midterm ballot, betting that would motivate fans to vote who otherwise might not. But that cuts both ways.

Samontae Mwangi, 20, and his brother, Gathenya Mwangi, 19, voted for the first time, casting early ballots Tuesday at their election center in Topeka, Kansas. Both work at a plant that manufactures trackside buildings for railroads.

They went with their grandfather, Lynn Henderson, 68, a retired Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. worker and a former Marine lance corporal who wore a Marine’s cap. Henderson said he took his grandsons to vote because his own mother died recently and he wanted them to have an event to remember him when he’s gone.

All three are hoping that the election produces Democratic victories and political change. Gathenya said the economy and discontent with Trump could motivate people who’ve voted in the past to show up, as well as those who never have. “It really could change, make a difference, I feel, if a lot of people vote,” he said.

Denise Wunder, a retired sandwich shop manager, pulled up to the center in a van featuring a decorative license plate with an American eagle. The strong Trump supporter is the daughter of Democrats. Illegal immigration is her top issue.

“I think Trump is kind of our last hope, because otherwise this world’s going to go to hell in a handbasket,” she said. “Yeah, he says stupid stuff, but, you know, so do we.”

In the Richmond, Virginia, suburb of Henrico County, voters arrived at a steady clip on a crisp fall afternoon a week from Election Day. The moment of decision found one conservative couple, Joan and Frank Bark, lamenting the country's direction.

“I’m afraid Trump has gotten so egotistical, it’s affecting his ability to make intelligent or more favorable decisions," Frank said. But, he said, “I don’t want the decisions that would be generated from that far left side, either.”

Joan, a retiree like her husband, said of Democrats: “I haven’t found very much that they want to change or work with. It’s just mostly, ‘I hate Trump.’" But Trump really isn't on the ballot. They voted for Republican candidates.

In Nanuet, New York, people streamed into the small room of a community center to vote; some were in Halloween costumes. Primrose D. Sullivan, a nurse, is an independent. She scoffed at Trump's wish that voters act as if he's running.

“No, because he’s not,” she said. “When a patient comes into the hospital, you want me dealing in facts, not in, ‘Hmm, let me act like you might have cancer.’ No. Do you or do you not have cancer? We need to proceed based on facts.” She voted for Democrats.

Sullivan was among a number of voters who singled out the billionaires Trump has made common cause with and how that might feed into American decline.

“I don’t begrudge any of our wealthy people, Jeff Bezos or, you know, Elon Musk,” she said. “But I do have a certain problem with them wanting more and more and doing things that really don’t help humanity.”

“If we keep going the way these guys are going,” she went on, meaning both the political and CEO classes, “we’re not going to have anything like what we had in the past.” Theirs is a “self-destructive attitude,” she added, “because, honestly, if the whole planet destroys itself, the wealthy go with us.”

Outside the polling station at the YMCA in Fort Mill, South Carolina, Benjamin Updegraft offered a piercing denunciation of the elite as he traced his evolution from a “full-throated young Republican” who voted for Trump as a young man in 2016 to a “lifetime Democrat,” after casting his ballot in the Senate race.

He cited Musk's throttling of his Starlink satellite internet service in Ukraine, which disrupted a key defense against Russian attacks, and Republican Vivek Ramaswamy's ad in the Ohio governor's race featuring the estranged mother of Democratic rival Amy Acton among the reasons powerful men must be brought to heel.

“That needs to be cut out from this country like a cancer,” Updegraft said. “We have an incredible responsibility to take back the stranglehold that the worst people in this country have on the reins of power and to inflict punishment on them for their actions.”

In Scottsdale, Arizona, David Lee described his conservative upbringing, his past voting for Republicans and now his decision to turn against that party and vote Democratic in the contested races for governors and the House. He considers Trump's heavy-handed immigration enforcement to be lawless.

“Nobody wants open borders, but you’re treating these people without due process, sending people to countries they don’t even belong to,” said Lee, 63. “There’s no more rules.”

The Trump supporters interviewed by the AP at the polls signaled their tolerance of the surge of gas prices from the Iran war, in some cases blaming factors other than the actual cause. Nor did they break with him on the war itself.

Among them was David Stouffer, 59, branch manager for a mortgage bank and three-time Trump voter, who spoke outside the Harrisburg elections office. “Iran has been killing Americans for 50 freaking years,” he said. “Yeah, I’ll suffer with some higher gas prices in the interim until they get that nonsense figured out.”

Does that put a crunch on your household budget, Stouffer was asked. “Of course it does.” How to cope with that? “I just keep driving."

“He’s made the tax cuts real,” Stouffer said. “He has secured the borders. That, to me, is a very, very big deal.”

By the dozens, Democrats, independents and Republicans outside the core of Trump’s support differed with that assessment, even as some of them granted the president his achievements on taxes and immigration.

Horner, the food importer, is going “bonkers” with the tariffs and all the other moves bouncing between the Trump administration and the courts while a “feckless” and now electorally endangered Republican Congress largely stands aside.

“You can’t do business when every month you have to readjust your pricing because the president gets a wild hair on something that he’s not even constitutionally allowed to do,” Horner said. He added, “He’s just playing out the clock on all of this stuff — where you just know he knows it’s wrong.

“And what do we have? Higher healthcare, higher food, higher gas, a business environment that is complete chaos.”

But Jerry Casner, 74, of Mechanicsburg, a suburb of Harrisburg, wants as much of Trump as he can get. Alas, “he can’t run again,” Casner noted.

“Well, technically," Casner said, "he can’t run again.”

Hanna reported from Topeka, Kan.; Levy from Harrisburg, Pa.; Catalini from Levittown, Pa.; and Woodward from Washington. Associated Press journalists Julie Carr Smyth in Wooster, Ohio; Erik Verduzco in Fort Mill, S.C.; Thomas Beaumont in Sioux City, Iowa; Joseph Frederick in Nanuet, N.Y.; Tassanee Vejpongsa in Warminster, Pa.; Mikella Schuettler in Scottsdale, Ariz.; and Sarah Rankin in Henrico, Va., contributed to this report.

C.T. Harris, center, hands out T-shirts supporting Angie Nixon's U.S. Senate campaign during the Souls to the Polls event, Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Octavio Jones)

Linda Markle speaks during an interview about her choices in the election, outside the Warminster Township Library in Bucks County, Pa., Oct. 27, 2026, the final day for voters to request a mail-in or absentee ballot in Pennsylvania. (AP Photo/Tassanee Vejpongsa) Image from video

Brothers Gathenya Mwangi, left, 19, and Samontae Mwangi, center, stand with their grandfather, right, Lynn Henderson, outside the Shawnee County Election Office after casting early ballots, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026, in Topeka, Kansas. (AP Photo/John Hanna) Photo taken with a smartphone

David Lee poses for a photo, Friday, Oct. 23, 2026, at a polling station in Scottsdale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Mikella Schuettler) Photo taken with a smartphone

Herman Jamerson, 91, left, and his daughter Joni Borrell, 67, both staunch conservatives who voted for Republicans, are pictured after they cast their ballots in Henrico County, Va., Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Sarah Rankin) Image taken with smartphone

Benjamin Updegraft is interviewed after casting his ballot at an early voting center, Friday, Oct. 30, 2026, in Fort Mill, S.C. (AP Photo/Erik Verduzco) Image taken from video

Denise Wunder, 69, of Topeka, Kansas, stands in front of her car outside the Shawnee County Election Office after casting an early ballot, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026, in Topeka. (AP Photo/John Hanna) Photo taken with a smartphone

Shane Dunn is pictured during an interview, Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026, in Levittown, Pa. (AP Photo/Mike Catalini) Image taken from video.

Voters enter the C. Blythe Andrews Jr. Public Library to cast their ballots on the final day of early voting for midterm elections in Tampa, Fla., Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Octavio Jones)

Benjamin Updegraft is interviewed after casting his ballot at an early voting center, Friday, Oct. 30, 2026, in Fort Mill, S.C. (AP Photo/Erik Verduzco) Image taken from video

Linda Markle speaks during an interview about her choices in the election, outside the Warminster Township Library in Bucks County, Pa., Oct. 27, 2026, the final day for voters to request a mail-in or absentee ballot in Pennsylvania. (AP Photo/Tassanee Vejpongsa) Image from video

David Lee poses for a photo, Friday, Oct. 23, 2026, at a polling station in Scottsdale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Mikella Schuettler) Photo taken with a smartphone

Denise Wunder, 69, of Topeka, Kansas, stands in front of her car outside the Shawnee County Election Office after casting an early ballot, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026, in Topeka. (AP Photo/John Hanna) Photo taken with a smartphone

Shane Dunn is pictured during an interview, Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026, in Levittown, Pa. (AP Photo/Mike Catalini) Image taken from video.

Brothers Gathenya Mwangi, left, 19, and Samontae Mwangi, center, stand with their grandfather, right, Lynn Henderson, outside the Shawnee County Election Office after casting early ballots, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026, in Topeka, Kansas. (AP Photo/John Hanna) Photo taken with a smartphone

A person drops a vote-by-mail ballot in a secure ballot intake station at the Office of the Supervisor of Elections during early voting in the 2026 midterm elections, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026, in Doral, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)