No one will know the winner of the race for U.S. Senate in Alaska until the state Division of Elections finishes counting several tens of thousands of absentee and early ballots, and that will not happen until the Nov. 18 deadline for absentee ballots to arrive in the mail.
Alaskans — and everyone around the country who is watching and waiting to see who wins — just need to be patient. They can speculate if they want; they can bet on one of the prediction market websites; they can bet their neighbor; they can bet with their dog if they want, though I doubt the dog could pay out if it loses.
As of Tuesday afternoon, Democratic challenger Mary Peltola led Republican incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan by 2,517 first-choice votes out of 220,853 counted ballots, with a lot more ballots still to count. The two other candidates, Gerald Heikes, a drywall installer and hard-core conservative Republican from Palmer, and a retired teacher from Petersburg, also named Dan Sullivan, had 8,516 votes between the two of them.
How the uncounted votes split this week and next between Peltola and Sullivan and which of those two leading candidates the Heikes and Petersburg Sullivan voters selected as their second choice will determine the winner if neither of the two top vote-getters scores 50% plus one in the final count and Alaska’s ranked choice voting system kicks in.
It’s the law. It’s simple math. It’s not that hard to understand or accept.
Unfortunately, President Donald Trump fails on all counts: the law, the math, understanding or acceptance. If he were in high school, he’d be held back a grade.
Last Saturday, the president took to his favorite pastime, posting on his own social media platform, which is misleadingly named “Truth Social,” to declare that the Senate race is over.
“Daniel Sullivan is leading substantially in the Alaska Senatorial Race,” Trump deceitfully said in his post.
“I don’t know what takes so long to announce his win,” Trump wrote. “This should be immediate!…The Alaska Race is OVER. Dan Sullivan WON, BY A LOT! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”
No question the president of the United States has a lot of power. The guy can start wars, order people prosecuted and deported, and give lucrative government contracts to his friends and family, but even Trump cannot declare election winners — though no doubt he would like that power, too.
Two days before his declaration of victory for the incumbent Sullivan, the president declared on social media that the votes for Heikes, who Trump called a “slug,” and for Petersburg Sullivan should be “given” to Sen. Sullivan.
Heikes, who told the Anchorage Daily News that he regularly runs for office because God’s spirit instructed him, said he was slightly “irritated” at being called a name. “I can’t believe he called me a slug because he obviously has been an ignorant fool on this, and you can quote me on that,” Heikes said. “He hasn’t done his background work or his homework, and he should go back home and do a little study.”
There is one big difference between Heikes and a slug. No one wants to see a slug, while Trump’s Department of Justice wants to see Heikes in court. The candidate said he was recently visited by two FBI agents with a subpoena ordering him to appear in court on the Trump administration’s effort to stop and even overturn Alaska’s election results.
Too bad the Alaska public can’t issue a subpoena to Trump to stay out of our elections. We can count, even if he can’t.
Larry Persily is a longtime Alaska journalist, with breaks for federal, state and municipal public policy work in Alaska and Washington, D.C. He lives in Anchorage and is publisher of the Wrangell Sentinel weekly newspaper.
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