Dan Sullivan takes on Dan Sullivan in Alaska; DOJ files suit | The Verdict

Charlie Langton. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good. All right. So interesting race. I feel like Michigan is getting so much attention, but we need to shift our focus, shift our gaze up. Sure. Can I just say to the people, be ready to be confused. No, I feel very confused. And it's not their fault. It's my fault. We're going to simplify it. We have gone to the great clarifier. Sure. Charlie Langton. Yes. Yes. Now I'm confused. so we got two guys with the same name running for senate in Alaska right explain Dan Sullivan and Dan Sullivan right so uh Dan Sullivan is a current United States senator from Alaska he happens to be a Republican okay and i don't know how the ballots do you know which one is which do we know we don't know they're both Dan Sullivan, there you go, yeah, look at that This is the same guy. Oh yeah Get out of here. So, the... Beautiful. That's... Okay, so... Yes. So, anyway, I guess that Alaska, they thought there may be some confusion. So, this went through the Alaska process, and the Alaska Supreme Court said, we're going to solve this problem. The challenger, we're going to put a J, Daniel J. Sullivan, on the ballot. And the incumbent, we're going to put just Dan S. Sullivan, and we're also going to say he's a Republican and he's incumbent on the ballot. So that should take care of all the confusion. Well, the Justice Department said we don't like that. We think that's more confusing. So what they did was the Justice Department filed a lawsuit in Alaska. The lawsuit is a weird one, trying to get the other Dan Sullivan off the ballot. No, no, no. Now, they're saying that if the other Dan Sullivan, not the current senator, if he wins, the other one. Can we call him something else, like Frank, just for now? Danny? Danny, yeah, Danny, there you go, thank you. That makes more sense, doesn't it? If Danny wins, little Danny wins. There you go. Mischievous Danny. If little Danny wins, then this lawsuit says that the Justice Department wants to open an investigation as to why little Danny even was on the ballot. But can't anybody be on the ballot? That's a confusion. So it's also important to say, we're saying Republican incumbent who we're calling Danny for the purpose of this. Danny's a challenger. Danny's a challenger. Danny's a challenger. Danny's a challenger. So challenger Danny intentionally allegedly made his sign to look exactly like the real Dan Sullivan. The real one. That's both of their names. He was apparently approached to run because they have the same name. We've been talking about this for months. It was all fun and games until the race got tight. Yeah, now it's tight. And now it's a problem. Mary Peltola, I don't know, Peltola, she's a Democrat. Yeah. And she could win this race because the Sullivans are going to split the vote. And then the Democrat could win, which is unusual in Alaska or whatever. Wait, is Danny the challenger? Is he a Republican? I don't know what he is. He's an independent, I guess. He's probably an independent. But the conspiracy theory, whether it's true or not, would be that the Democratic establishment or whoever they are up there funnel Danny in order to, I see. A plan to confuse voters. I got you. But he's running the race. He's got real views, real issues. He's campaigning. It's just- Okay, Danny's got this hoodie on. But here's the issue. So the issue, and then a couple of legal issues, number one, the feds don't usually get involved in state elections unless there's voter fraud or some kind of impropriety at the polls. We have poll watchers today, they'll be in Detroit or whatever to see if people are able to vote. That's not what this case is about, really. So forget the federal. So I don't understand the federal involvement, but there's another thing. This lawsuit is a bad lawsuit because there's a very weird provision called rightness. Oh my gosh. What does that mean? It means that we don't file lawsuits just to test theoretical stuff. And the way I read this lawsuit, the lawsuit says, if Danny wins, then we'll do an investigation. Right. And we don't file lawsuits like that. No court, I can't imagine a court hypothetically would do it. If Danny wins, then file the lawsuit. Better. You take away the rightness issue. But you still have other issues. You still have to prove why the Fed should get involved in this particular election. But they're saying the same thing. They're just saying, we're letting you know ahead of time. And we're filing this lawsuit if Danny wins. You're saying keep it to yourself until Danny wins? Yeah, there's got to be a controversy. There's got to be a controversy. There's got to be a controversy. There isn't any now. And it's both of their legal names. As far as I know, they're both their legal names. Is it illegal to run? No. What's the lawsuit even? Yeah. Why would that be? I mean, it's so in confusion. Is that illegal? No. Even if someone did tell him to run. Right. Is that illegal? So what's the problem? Well, if the Democrats put up Dan's, Jay, Danny, if the Democrats put up a run, I think that's not a lot. A lot of people in incumbents put other people in the race to dilute the vote. Yeah, it happens in every election, many elections. The entire campaign up until very recently when the latest numbers came out felt like a troll campaign with Danny calling himself the real Dan Sullivan, the new Dan Sullivan, changing his campaign sign to look like Dan Sullivan's star and putting the star in different places. It's been a troll this entire time, and now he might actually win. That might show me that he really wants the job. He was good at it, right. He was good at campaigning. I can make an argument. This guy really wants it. He's pulling out all the stops. Good for little Danny. Good for Robbie. I don't see the issue legally here. I don't see a federal issue involved. for what you were saying. You could put people in the race to skew or deliberately confuse the voters, but it doesn't matter. And I think the Alaska Supreme Court has already tried to undo the confusion by the steps they've already taken. So, the feds are going to have to say that the state court was wrong based on some legal federal theory. I don't get it. And then I still like the rightness. There's nothing in controversy today. So, I think for all those reasons, this lawsuit is no good. It's a preemptive lawsuit. We don't like that, though. I don't know what that means. We don't do preemptive lawsuits. You know, you can talk about a TRO, that if you do something, but there's an immediate harm where they have to show irreparable damage. There's no irreparable. So, suppose Danny Little Danny wins. So what? That's the irreparable damage. That's not going to fly. That's not going to fly just because you lost the election. How rare, though, for the president to be involved in a preemptive lawsuit this early in the game? Well, I think for the political people, it's going to say that the race for the United States Senate is so close. It's so, so close, and every state matters, Michigan being one, but certainly Alaska and Ohio, all of them. I'm perplexed by the other candidate, Patola. How does she work into this equation at all? She just doesn't think, because the Republicans are going to split there, or the Sullivans are going to. They want to undo that. They want to get the incumbent, the current senator, to dilute his vote. Okay. And the public, I guess in Alaska, seriously, are the Alaska voters that gullible? Are they? I'm just saying. I don't think they are. It's confusing, Charlie. You go to the ballot, which Dan isn't. It's hard enough to get people to vote. This has been the case for months though, and they're running almost identical ads. Every time Dan Sullivan puts an ad out, Danny Sullivan makes a very similar ad with the same music and almost the same people in the background you guys should really watch the noon more because we've been showing we've been showing these promo ads and now something about that does feel i mean it's not illegal to troll it's trolling though it's trolling so vote against him the sorry charlie the uh data for progress survey shows um patola leads sullivan 51 to 49 so it's a very close race right when and so the idea is um the retired teacher dan sullivan who we're calling little danny well we said danny so it looks like yeah super tight race between uh the dem uh Paltola and then the incumbent and then you throw in little Danny and that'll muck it up a little bit. What a time to be alive. Oh, this is great. I like this one. What do you think of our people? Okay. So in-person voting has started. We can in-person vote. Anybody can do that or do you have to? Anyway, you have to register. If you're registered. three ways to vote yeah you can vote um uh absentee which you already have your ballot you can vote in person now until sunday sunday and then on november 3rd a week from tomorrow you vote at the polls three ways to vote so two of them right now what you don't want to do is vote in person after they mailed you that thing because they get real testy i tried that then it it's worse than the danny danny you can negate your ballot but let's not it's not easy don't do it don't do it they had to make five phone calls for me to vote uh last election yeah don't dina it up yeah don't dina