Why is Dan Sullivan on the Alaska ballot twice?

How this happened

Alaska uses a nonpartisan top-four primary system, adopted by ballot measure in 2020. Primary voters pick among all qualified candidates for a single office, regardless of party affiliation, and the top four then advance to the general election. In the primary, Democratic former congresswoman Mary Peltola and incumbent Senator Dan S. Sullivan finished first and second, followed by Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a former U.S. Forest Service employee, and Republican perennial candidate Gerald Heikes. Daniel J. Sullivan's 4,107 primary votes were enough to place third and land him on the November ballot.

Who Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. actually is

Daniel James Sullivan Jr., born June 1957, is a retired teacher and U.S. Forest Service employee from Petersburg, Alaska, who filed to run as a Republican three days before the filing deadline. He acknowledged that sharing a name and party affiliation with the incumbent gave him "an instant megaphone," but the 69-year-old said he had considered a run for some time and had grown frustrated with the senator. He was a member of the Alaska Independence Party until it dissolved, only registering as a Republican when he filed his candidacy.

The fight to keep him off the ballot

State election officials initially agreed with the senator's camp that the filing was suspicious. Alaska election officials initially determined that the retired teacher's filing was intended to confuse voters and sought to exclude him, but an Alaska trial court ruled against that exclusion and the Alaska Supreme Court summarily affirmed that decision, putting Daniel J. Dan Sullivan back on the ballot. The court's reasoning: the division's decision to exclude him because his candidacy was not "in good faith" was not based on the Constitution, Alaska law, or the division's own regulations.

How the ballot distinguishes them

State officials listed the senator on the ballot as Dan S. Sullivan, noting his status as the Republican incumbent. The challenger was listed as Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., with no party affiliation noted.

The DOJ lawsuit, filed today

This is now a full-blown national story. President Donald Trump confirmed involvement directly, saying, "I'm the one that said 'do it,'" adding "they have two guys named Dan Sullivan, so the Democrats put up a guy." The Trump administration's DOJ lawsuit claimed "the sole purpose of [Dan J. Sullivan's] candidacy is to benefit the Peltola campaign by reducing the number of votes for Senator Sullivan." The incumbent senator and his allies have panned his namesake challenger's candidacy as a scheme by Democrats to confuse voters and give Peltola an edge, a charge Peltola and her supporters deny.

The race is one of the most competitive Senate contests this cycle, and even a small vote split matters. Trump, who has endorsed the incumbent, called the situation a "scam" that could threaten Senator Sullivan's potential victory, writing "Even 1, 2, or 3% could make the difference." Alaska's ranked-choice voting system, where voters rank candidates in order of preference, may limit the confusion somewhat, but the DOJ is arguing that some Sullivan supporters may not rank the incumbent at all, or rank the wrong Sullivan first.