Trump attacks a retired teacher in Alaska: calls the candidate with the same name as Senator Dan Sullivan a ‘fraud’

President Donald Trump has called a 69-year-old retired teacher from Petersburg, Alaska, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a “disgrace” and a “fraud,” accusing him that his independent candidacy for the U.S. Senate endangers his governing agenda — as The Times reports.

The reason for Trump’s anger is the name: the candidate carries the same name as the Republican senator in office, Dan Sullivan, a close ally of the president, whom he is trying to unseat. In a tense press conference in the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump claimed that the Democrats encouraged the candidacy to confuse the voters and to gift the victory to the Democratic candidate Mary Peltola. “They put up a fake. It’s a fake Sullivan… The guy knows nothing,” he declared, according to The Times.

Alaska is a key state for the midterm elections: the Democrats need four seats to take the majority in the Senate, while the polls show a very close race. The Democrats have not won any Senate seat in Alaska since 2008.

Sullivan Jr., a former fifth-grade teacher, categorically denies being a “plant” of the Democrats: “It’s my name. It’s my father’s name. It’s my grandfather’s name.” He says that he has never voted for Trump and that he supported Peltola in the 2022 and 2024 elections.

The Alaska Republicans have nicknamed him “Decoy Dan” and tried to keep him off the ballot, but the Alaska Supreme Court decided that he has the right to run. On the ballot he will appear as “Sullivan, Daniel J Jr,” while the senator in office as “Sullivan, Dan S (Registered Republican) incumbent.” Under Alaska’s ranked voting system, a few thousand confused votes can be enough to gift the victory to Peltola.

Worried about the race, Trump announced this week a $54 billion South Korean investment in an Alaska gas pipeline, coming out publicly alongside the senator in office.

Sullivan Jr. says that he has received legal threats and that the Department of Justice is reviewing a federal investigation into his candidacy: “It’s intimidating, it’s frustrating, it’s unjust.” Petersburg, the town where he lives, is known as “Little Norway” for the Norwegian origin of its inhabitants.