On one of Petersburg’s rare warm, sunny days, Dan Sullivan was sitting in a little folding chair in his home workshop. All around him were shelves full of various tools and parts.
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“I play music down here with friends sometimes, and make lots of sawdust and clean my fishing gear,” Sullivan said, looking around.
The candidate for U.S. Senate had recently finished up the paperwork for accepting campaign donations, a process he described as “excruciating.” He said that originally, he hadn’t planned to do it.
“They took me to court, and then I had to do it because ,” Sullivan said.
In June, the Alaska Division of Elections attempted to take Sullivan off the ballot after Republicans, including the incumbent namesake Sen. Dan Sullivan, alleged he was running dishonestly. Petersburg Sullivan sued, and the Alaska Supreme Court determined Sullivan could appear on the ballot. But the court left it up to the Division of Elections to determine how he’d be listed.
In August’s primary, Petersburg Sullivan will appear as “Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.” His Republican party designation will not be included next to his name. Sen. Sullivan will be labeled as the incumbent.
Petersburg Sullivan said he has mixed feelings about how he appears on the ballot and maintained that he never ran to fool anyone.
“It seems a bit unfair, but it also takes out this idea that there’s some trickery involved here, and that’s fine with me,” he said.
He said he’s running because of his dissatisfaction with the senator.
“As I look around Petersburg, as I look around Alaska, maybe even the country, I don’t see great strides forward,” he said. “In fact, I see a decline, and so I’m using this as a way to voice that.”
Sullivan’s most prominent Democratic challenger is former congresswoman Mary Peltola. He said he’s not familiar enough with her campaign to draw comparisons to her policies.
He said the issues that are important to him include affordable housing, improving access to healthcare, and decreasing the cost of living. All are issues he says he’s seen while living in Petersburg.
Sullivan was originally a member of the Alaska Independence Party. After the party dissolved last year, he joined the Republican Party. Sullivan has been vocal about his unhappiness with the Trump administration, and he said he wants to appeal to Republican voters who are also critical of the president.
His father and grandfather were lifelong Republicans, and he said he draws on the values hegrew up with in his household.
“It was business-oriented, and keep taxes low and support law and order; those traditional beliefs that most people come away with,” he said. “But it was also compassionate.”
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There are some Republican policies that he thinks could be effective but just haven’t been utilized properly, like tariffs.
“Tariffs are a tool if you use them precisely, with some real specific intended goals,” he said. “It seems like we went in with a hammer and just started smashing things. To my mind, they weren’t very effective, they raised the price on lots of things.”
He also said watchdog programs for federal agencies can be useful. Sullivan spent 15 years working for the U.S. Forest Service. But he felt the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, did too much damage. Sullivan pointed to cuts to federal employees and data.
“We lost a lot of people. We lost a lot of programs. We lost a lot of money,” he said. “We lost a lot of scientific data that’s important to our fisheries programs.”
Sullivan said he believes in a collaborative approach to politics, which he learned from the decades he’s spent in Petersburg’s small island town.
“You learn if you want to survive here, you have to get along with people,” he said. “And it means you have to compromise, and you have to work with other people who may not share every belief you have to get things done.”
Looking forward to the primary, Sullivan said he supports Alaska’s ranked choice and open primary system. He recognized that he wouldn’t have made it very far if he’d been in a traditional primary against Sen. Sullivan.
on the ballot, and Sullivan said he thinks Alaskans benefit from having more choices on the ballot because of that system.
“Not all of those candidates are highly qualified — some might even think I’m not highly qualified — but we all have that same right to jump out and give this a shot if we think we have something to add,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan said he feels Alaska’s system makes voting easier, which he thinks is a good thing.
“I have yet to see where widespread voter fraud is a problem in this country. No one has proven that to me, to my satisfaction yet,” he said.
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Alaska’s primary election is Aug. 18.