As Alaska’s U.S. Senate campaign heats up, super PACs boost out-of-state candidates

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Richard Grayson lives in Arizona and has been a fringe candidate in a number of federal elections. That includes in New York, where records show he’s established campaign committees named “The Leopards Eating People's Faces Party Supports NY-21 Write-In Candidate Richard Grayson,” and “Write In Richard Grayson New York's Cutest Communist.”

This year, Grayson is on the ballot in Alaska’s U.S. Senate race, where two heavyweights, Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan and Democrat Mary Peltola, are running in a contest that could help decide control of the chamber.

And now, two weeks before the primary election determines which four candidates advance to  the general, Grayson, who’s running under the Green Party label, is getting an unexpected boost: A new super PAC has spent more than $100,000 on his behalf.

Fair Deal Alaska registered with federal campaign finance regulators a few days ago and lists as an address a suite in a Wasilla office building that offers “virtual office and mail services.” 

In multiple filings with the Federal Election Commission, it has since reported spending some $180,000 on mailers, phone calls and other media supporting Grayson — as well as roughly the same amount on behalf of another Democrat in the race, Carol Hafner, who lists a South Dakota campaign address and uses a New York City phone number.

Neither Grayson nor Hafner responded to requests for comment Saturday. (Grayson did write a letter to the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner in June saying that the temperature in August in his Arizona town rises to 114 F, and that “just as our town is filled with seasonal residents from Alaska and other northern climes, I now have a good excuse to visit my snowbird neighbors and mooch off them for a while.”)

The apparent purpose of the spending on the two fringe candidates is boosting Hafner or Grayson onto the general election ballot, where either of them could pull a small number of votes from Peltola and potentially tip the race toward Sullivan. Fair Deal Alaska is also spending more than $65,000 on mailers opposing Peltola, according to its disclosures.

A similar group, Right for Alaska, has taken a similar strategy to boost candidates who could pull votes from Sullivan — supported by a six-figure contribution from a retired surgeon in Massachusetts, William Harris.

The group last week spent more than $250,000 on print ads opposing Sullivan, the incumbent Republican, and the same amount boosting lesser known candidates who, if they advance to the general election, could pull votes from him.

“They're just trying to get some people in there to dilute either the Democratic vote that Mary's going to get, or dilute the Republican vote that Daniel S. Sullivan is going to get,” said Jim Lottsfeldt, a longtime Alaska strategist who’s worked with candidates of both parties. “It’s just a tactic.”

The political operative who filed Right for Alaska’s paperwork with the Federal Election Commission, Thomas Datwyler, did not respond to requests for comment. Harris, the surgeon who contributed $100,000 to the group, declined to comment.

Fair Deal Alaska, the group opposing Peltola, did not respond to an email sent to the address it registered with the commission. Its listed address in Wasilla also hosts a gun shop, Arctic Ammo and Reloading Supplies; signs advertising two Republican politicians — incumbent U.S. Rep. Nick Begich III and gubernatorial candidate Bernadette Wilson — stood outside when a reporter visited Friday.

The group has not yet reported any of its fundraising information, though it will have to in a subsequent filing with campaign finance regulators.

A spokesperson for Sullivan’s campaign declined to comment on both Right for Alaska and Fair Deal Alaska. An from Peltola’s campaign said it was not familiar with either group.

There’s a long history of groups boosting third-party and fringe politicians to try to engineer the success of major candidates in Alaska elections. In 2014, incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Begich’s campaign promoted libertarian Mark Fish in an effort to pull votes away from Sullivan, who nonetheless won the election.

In 2024, a group run by Lottsfeldt and aligned with Peltola, who was then running for re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives, spent significant sums running ads with the apparent aim of boosting less-competitive Republicans onto the general election ballot to pull votes from Nick Begich III, the leading GOP candidate.

In theory, Alaska’s ranked choice voting system should minimize the risk that the third- or fourth-placed candidates in the general election will pull significant numbers of votes from the top two — because their supporters’ votes are supposed to be redistributed to the candidates ranked next on each voter’s ballot.

But not everyone ranks all four candidates. In the 2024 U.S. House race, more than 7,000 voters only ranked the third- and fourth-placed candidates, John Wayne Howe of the Alaska Independence Party and Democrat Eric Hafner — and ultimately didn’t express a preference between Begich and Peltola, the top two finishers. 

Begich ultimately won by some 8,000 votes.

“People on the far left and the far right don't rank,” Lottsfeldt said. “They just vote for their favorite, and then they quit.”

Similar types of spending are happening elsewhere around the country, according to Lottsfeldt. 

In Wisconsin, a Republican group is spending millions to boost a democratic socialist gubernatorial hopeful, Francesca Hong, who’s viewed as a more vulnerable candidate in the general election.

Amy Bushatz with Mat-Su Sentinel contributed reporting.