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A hypocritical cry about rigged elections
By Bruce Scandling Republicans are shocked — shocked! — by news accounts of Democrats urging another Dan Sullivan to run for the U.S. Senate. They apparently think Alaskans are so stupid that Petersburg Dan might pull votes from our incumbent senator — even though the ballot lists Ohio Dan as “incumbent.”
This outrage comes from the same political party whose standard bearer believes his election losses are rigged and only his wins are legitimate.
I assume they were equally shocked when a Republican-aligned PAC spent hundreds of thousands in our August primary supporting fringe candidates to pull votes from Mary Peltola. My mailbox was stuffed with flyers touting Carol Hafner as the true progressive Democrat. Republicans badly wanted her to advance to the general election as a spoiler, not mentioning that she lives in South Dakota.
So-called ballot stacking is nothing new in politics. I wish it didn’t exist and we could focus instead on the agendas of the legitimate contenders. But it’s not illegal.
Nevertheless, if Mary wins we can expect Republicans to deploy the Justice Department to try to delay seating her in the Senate. The groundwork is already being laid, and they say it’s all about fairness.
I wonder if they’ll work as hard trying to find any potential ballot-stacking link between Republicans and the Ohio Dan campaign.
Of course they won’t. And that’s yet another reason to vote for Mary: We’ve had enough of their hypocritical hype about rigged elections.
• Bruce Scandling is retired and has lived in Juneau since 1982. He is a former Juneau Empire reporter and worked on health policy for Gov. Tony Knowles and U.S. Sen. Mark Begich.
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