Trump's new chief of staff has called Alaska's second Dan Sullivan an election 'attack'

President Donald Trump on Friday named Stephen Miller White House chief of staff, putting an aide who has called the second Dan Sullivan on Alaska's U.S. Senate ballot an attack on election integrity in charge of the White House staff while that race is still being counted.

"Dems placing a second Dan Sullivan on the ballot in Alaska (a fake candidate designed to conceal who is the actual US Senator running for re-election) is one of the most egregious attacks we have seen on the integrity of American elections," Miller wrote on X on Oct. 24. "It reveals pure contempt for voters."

Six days later, on Fox News, he described it as a coordinated scheme to confuse voters, according to Fox's summary of the interview.

Miller, a longtime Trump adviser, succeeds Susie Wiles.

Where the race stands

As of Friday, Democrat Mary Peltola led Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan by fewer than 700 votes with about three-quarters of the expected ballots counted. She led by 626 votes after election night, with Republican Gerald Heikes and Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired Petersburg teacher who shares the senator's name, far behind.

The state counts early votes and begins counting questioned ballots Monday. Overseas ballots have until Nov. 18 to arrive, the date of the ranked-choice count that would decide the race if no one wins a majority. The Division of Elections aims to certify results by Nov. 25.

Trump has already declared a winner. In a Truth Social post Saturday, he added the votes for Heikes and the Petersburg Sullivan to the senator's total and wrote that Sullivan "is up by thousands of Votes." He said Heikes "was also fraudulently put into the Race," without offering evidence, and that anyone voting for the Petersburg Sullivan, "a man who tried to change his middle initial, but was unable to get it done in time," was "a vote for Senator Dan Sullivan."

"I don't know what takes so long to announce his win. This should be immediate!" he wrote. "The Alaska Race is OVER. Dan Sullivan WON, BY A LOT!"

No one has won yet. Under ranked choice, votes don't move automatically from one candidate to another. If no one wins a majority, last-place candidates are eliminated one at a time, and each of their ballots goes to that voter's next choice, if the voter ranked one. That count is set for Nov. 18.

Early ballot-level data suggest those votes wouldn't all go to the senator. An Alaska News analysis found that voters who picked Heikes first ranked Sullivan next 44% of the time, Peltola 16% and neither 40%. Voters who picked the Petersburg Sullivan first leaned slightly toward Peltola, 33% to 23%, with 44% ranking neither.

Those shares come from a ballot-level file the state released Wednesday morning, covering a little more than 200,000 ballots, most but not all of those counted so far. The full file, with every ballot, could look different, so the figures are an early snapshot, not a result.

Run through those rankings, the ballots counted on election night put Sullivan about 330 votes ahead, not thousands, with roughly 75,000 ballots still to count. Peltola would win if she takes a little more than half of the remaining votes between the two. She had drawn about 58% of them in early and absentee ballots counted so far, while Sullivan won about 53% on Election Day.

The fight over the second Sullivan

The Justice Department, at Trump's direction, sued Oct. 23 to hold up Alaska's Senate result if votes for the second Sullivan tipped the race. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said the department "should never have filed this lawsuit," and that the state had clearly distinguished the candidates on the ballot.

U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason dismissed the suit Nov. 1, finding the department hadn't shown any order she could issue without exposing how Alaskans voted. The department appealed to the 9th Circuit the same day. Attorney General Todd Blanche has told Fox News the department could scrutinize ballots "if it's clear that voters were confused," according to Newsweek.

Four days after Miller's post, a New York Times report said Peltola aides worked with national Democratic officials to recruit spoiler candidates, including the Petersburg Sullivan. Peltola's campaign said it "did not recruit any candidates into the race," and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee also denied the account. He has said he entered the race on his own.

After that report, Gov. Mike Dunleavy ordered a state investigation and would not commit to signing off on a Peltola win. His term ends at noon Dec. 7, the first Monday in December, under the Alaska Constitution. The new Senate term begins Jan. 3. Under state law, the elections director, not the governor, certifies Alaska's results. Federal law has the governor sign the winning senator's certificate, but the U.S. Senate is the final judge of its members' elections. No court has found that the reported recruitment broke the law.