Battle of the Dans
Dan Sullivan doesn’t want Dan Sullivan to be the senator for Alaska. Dan Sullivan is already the senator for Alaska and wants to keep it that way. He thinks that Dan Sullivan is trying to trick voters into thinking that he is Dan Sullivan, as part of a plot to oust Dan Sullivan.
To add some helpful initials: in May, Dan J. Sullivan, a retired teacher in Petersburg, Alaska, filed to run as a Republican against Dan S. Sullivan, the G.O.P. incumbent, in a Senate race that Democrats see as a promising pickup opportunity; the Party’s much hyped candidate, Mary Peltola, previously won as Alaska’s representative in the House. (The top four candidates in the primary, which is on August 18th, will advance, regardless of party.) Dan S. and his allies claimed that Dan J. was a plant. Among other things, he had made (very small) donations to Peltola in the past, and he had initially asked to appear on the ballot as “Dan S. Sullivan.” (A typo, according to Dan J.) Smelling a rat, officials disqualified Dan J. But the courts soon overturned that decision. Dan J. insists that he is running in good faith. Even if he weren’t, his lawyer argued, candidates with “un-American and unsavory” goals seek office all the time.
Certainly, candidates have run against namesakes before, and have faced cries of foul play. When J.F.K. first stood for Congress, in 1946, his campaign allegedly induced a Boston janitor named Joe Russo to join a field that also included Joe Russo, a popular councilman. More recently, there have been three Bob Fergusons, two Bob Bakers, and two Jerry Garcias (neither of them the late Grateful Dead front man). Sometimes name clashes are clearly coincidental. When Dan S. Sullivan first ran for Senate, in 2014, he appeared on the same ballot as Dan A. Sullivan, the mayor of Anchorage, who was running for lieutenant governor.
In July, a correspondent reached Dan J. Sullivan over Zoom. Dan J. wore glasses, a fraying ball cap, and a light jacket. A pair of banjos and an octave mandolin hung on a wall behind him. (He plays both instruments, plus guitar and fiddle.) It was 7 A.M., and Dan J. had a busy day ahead. His nephew was in town, and they were planning to fish for trout.
Dan J. is a third-generation Dan Sullivan, and one of seven Dans in his family. They use nicknames to tell one another apart. (Dan J. wouldn’t disclose his.) Some voters, it seems, could use such an aid now: when Dan J. posted online about an interview he had done with a local public-radio station, a commenter erroneously took him to task for voting to defund public media in the Senate. He is, at least, drawing attention. “I knew that my name recognition would get me immediate publicity,” he said. “It’s succeeded beyond my wildest hopes.”
To find out more about the importance of standing out in a crowded field, the correspondent wrote to Dan T. Sullivan, a marketing consultant based in Indiana who specializes in search-engine optimization—the magic art of helping businesses surface on Google. Dan T. replied, almost instantly, that the correspondent had found “THE RIGHT DAN SULLIVAN.” Over the phone, Dan T. said that he regularly fields e-mails meant for assorted other Dan Sullivans: pest-control reports (Ohio), hotel receipts (Florida), the details of a Ferrari test-track experience (the U.K.).
Dan T. said that, typically, in business, “you want to differentiate yourself with your name.” In his own line of work, he could easily be mistaken for a Dan Sullivan who coaches entrepreneurs, or a Danny Sullivan who works at Google. If either of the Alaska Dan Sullivans were a client, Dan T. would advise them to emphasize the order in which their names appear on the ballot, to make sure that voters know which is which. On a more philosophical note, he said he’d remind them that “nobody’s one thing. You’re a lot more than what your name is.”
Dan J. Sullivan, on the other hand, said he believes that “your name is your identity, for better or worse.” He acknowledged that this had informed his decision to run against Dan S., but not in a dirty-tricks kind of way. “There’s a visceral tie that you have with someone who shares your name,” he said. “As this person who has the same name as me is my representative and is making decisions that I don’t think are necessarily moving our state forward, maybe it hangs on me a little harder than it does other people.”
Recently, Dan J.’s attention was directed to the 1886 governor’s race in Tennessee, where two brothers, Alf and Bob Taylor, ran against each other. A cartoon at the time showed them side by side onstage, “fiddling for votes.” “That really tickled me,” Dan J. said. “If we were going one on one with Dan Sullivan, I’m sure I could beat him in a fiddle contest.” ♦