“Do we have a scheme for you,” chirped a consultant to Alaska Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign for the U.S. Senate in an online chat.
According to her then campaign manager, Peltola was “definitely aware,” The New York Times reported yesterday, that her campaign worked closely “for months” with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) to successfully recruit a candidate with the same name as her Republican opponent, incumbent U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan.
“[N]ot only did Ms. Peltola’s team work with people trying to recruit Mr. Sullivan to run for Senate, but the effort was much broader,” the paper explains. “The group worked to coax other would-be spoilers into the race, to dilute the incumbent’s support and help catapult the Democrat to victory.”
In fact, on Alaska’s four-person ballot, the choices are incumbent Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan; Democrat Mary Peltola; the other Dan J. Sullivan, recruited by the Peltola campaign and the DSCC; and a registered Republican, Gerald Heikes, also recruited into the race by the Peltola campaign and the DSCC.
All while lying about it, of course.
“Peltola advisers seemed to make fun of voters while watching a focus group,” The Times disclosed, “surmising the participants would be susceptible to being tricked into voting for a ballot spoiler.”
In that same chat, a pollster with the Peltola campaign referred to it as “our ballot strategy plan :)”
A spokesman for Dan Sullivan — Alaska’s U.S. Senator, not the DSCC-recruited replica — reminded that Mary Peltola has “spent months gaslighting Alaskans” about this matter . . . which turns out to be a very obvious plot by her campaign to manipulate voters.
Not illegal. Just deceptive and anti-democratic.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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