Daniel J. Sullivan sued the state today over a denied Senate ballot spot

Daniel J. Sullivan, a retired Petersburg teacher who filed to run for the U.S. Senate currently held by Dan S. Sullivan, was denied a place on the August ballot by the Alaska Division of Elections last week. He responded today by filing a court case in Anchorage Superior Court appealing the Division's decision.

The same afternoon, the Alaska House Judiciary Committee met jointly with House State Affairs for a hearing on candidate eligibility criteria. The hearing packet centered on the Sullivan denial, past Alaska candidate-eligibility disputes and whether the Division had legal authority to remove him.

The Division’s reasoning was that Sullivan’s filing was not made in good faith. In a June 15 final determination, Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher wrote that Sullivan’s declaration of candidacy “was not filed in good faith for the purpose of genuinely pursuing election as Alaska’s U.S. Senator.”

Sullivan, who moved to Alaska in 1980 and worked for the U.S. Forest Service before becoming an elementary school teacher, disputes that. He says his candidacy is real, his motives are his own, and the Division's call wrongly substitutes a judgment about intent for the constitutional qualifications that actually govern federal candidates. That's also the argument his court case will make.

The legal question will be whether the state can go beyond those constitutional qualifications.

It's the argument the legislative hearing centered on too.

The Legislature's own counsel told the joint committee that the Division likely lacked authority to remove him. The U.S. Constitution sets the qualifications for U.S. Senate — citizenship, age, residency — and "good faith" isn't on the list. The Supreme Court ruled in 1995 that states can't add their own qualifications for federal office.

Attorney Thomas Amodio, who has practiced before the Division for more than 35 years, told the committee: "There's nothing that says your motives have to be clean."

Former prosecutor Hollis French added that intent is nearly impossible to prove, and that the Division already has tools — listing full names or middle initials — to keep voters from confusing similarly-named candidates.

Ballots are scheduled to print June 28. If Sullivan's court case resolves in his favor before then, his name appears alongside the senator's. If not, voters will see only one Dan Sullivan in August. The Division and Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom's office are scheduled to testify before the joint committee on July 22.

For now, the dispute has moved on two tracks at once: a court appeal by the denied candidate, and a legislative hearing over whether Alaska election officials had the authority to deny him in the first place.