Republican Senators Suggest They Will Refuse to Seat Peltola

Republican Efforts to Subvert the Vote Zero in on Alaska

A couple of Republican senators are looking ahead to January and suggesting they will refuse to seat Democrat Mary Peltola should she win her Senate race.

“Under no circumstances should Mary Peltola be seated if she wins an election in a fraudulent manner,” Tim Sheehy (R-MT) tweeted on Saturday.

In a Sunday Meet the Press interview, Tim Scott (R-SC), the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, also refused to commit to accepting the results, even if they are certified by Alaska, pointing to the DOJ investigation into the dueling Dan Sullivans on the ballot.

Later that day, a federal district court judge rejected the Department of Justice’s preemptive effort to halt Alaska’s certification of the election. The DOJ wants the state to not certify until an investigation is completed into whether voters who intended to vote for incumbent senator Dan Sullivan actually cast ballots for the other Dan Sullivan, who, a New York Times investigation suggested, may have been encouraged by Democratic operatives to run. Such an investigation would be impossible, because voters’ identities are not linked to their ballots, the judge noted.

“Those cast ballots have been commingled and cannot now be segregated or the identity of the person who cast each ballot ascertained,” Judge Sharon Gleason wrote.

The DOJ appealed Sunday’s decision. That litigation is separate from DOJ efforts to investigate the non-senator Sullivan.

As the Times’ story noted, nothing it reported is “fraud,” or a violation of election law; in a world where the DOJ and congressional Republicans were not beholden to Trump, there would not be much to investigate. As many experts have pointed out, Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system is designed to ensure that, in a close election, senator Dan Sullivan will in fact win any voters who intended to vote for him, since it eliminates minor candidates.

Each state is in charge of certifying its own elections and sending the winners to Congress. The Senate, however, plays a role in determining which members to seat; contested races, have, historically, been investigated by the Senate Rules Committee.

These scenarios are rare, however, and the Senate procedures around disputed elections have often been determined by the body itself, not any law. The vagueness opens the door to a huge range of options, including opportunities for Republicans to attempt to block Peltola, and opportunities for Democrats to fight back.

House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-KY), who is also conducting an investigation into Alaska’s election, said Sunday that the Senate might refuse to seat Peltola.

One Republican who said he would accept the results is the senator Dan Sullivan.

“Are you only going to accept the election results if you win?” Jake Tapper asked him Sunday on CNN.

“No, I’m going to accept the election results,” Sullivan replied.

Haley Stevens’ Very Weird Sunday

• In the hours following Stevens’ dramatic switch, from supporting Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed to supporting Republican Mike Rogers — a man who in August she described as “another rubber stamp for Donald Trump’s dangerous agenda” — journalists and Michigan Democrats searched for some clue as to what prompted such a sudden reversal.
• Stevens’ differences with El-Sayed were well known. But, as TPM and other outlets reported, she had the previous night assured Democrats she would not do the very thing she did. Rep. Debbie Dingell, a respected Michigan Democrat, said Stevens told her at “midnight” that the possibility she would endorse Rogers was “all a rumor and it was not true.” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) also described Stevens telling him one thing Saturday before doing the opposite Sunday.
• During an Anderson Cooper interview yesterday evening, the host repeatedly pressed her to explain why the switch happened when it did. Cooper noted that while Stevens had strongly critiqued El-Sayed — saying that he had not adequately distanced himself from streamer Hasan Piker or from a super PAC ad that suggested inflation was caused by U.S. arms sales to Israel — nothing had changed on those topics between the time she assured her party members she would not endorse Rogers, on Saturday, and the time, the next day, when she did.
• Stevens did hint that El-Sayed’s decision to uninvite her from a unity event, scheduled for Sunday morning, in the face of her mounting critiques, prompted her to switch allegiance. “Abdul made very clear that I was not welcome in his campaign, that he didn’t need me there, that he didn’t want me there,” she said at a press conference with Rogers.
• Speculation within Democratic circles also narrowed in on Stevens’ fiancé, the political donor Jason Turkish, who endorsed Rogers last week. Journalist Zach Gorchow reported a story told by former Democratic governor James Blanchard, who was in office from 1983 to 1991 and who said he had recently had dinner with the couple. Blanchard described Turkish “working her over,” telling her fiancé that “everyone is disappointed” in her. Blanchard said he intervened to defend Stevens as a “team player.”
• “I’ve known Haley for a long time. I don’t know her fiancé,” Mallory McMorrow, one of Stevens’ and El-Sayed’s primary opponents, said during a local news interview yesterday. “I don’t. But to see him out there so publicly — I can only speak for myself, but my husband and I talked about this, and my husband said if he ever tried to speak for me the way we see happening now, he was like, ‘you would leave me.’ It’s hard to watch.” Dingell, also part of the interview, added, “it’s very hard.”
• Stevens chief of staff of eight years, and other staffers in her office, resigned yesterday.

Tabs

• Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), a likely Democratic candidate for president in 2028, was hospitalized following a stroke, his team said Sunday. “The doctors are encouraged by his progress, he is awake and alert, and we are optimistic he will make a full recovery,” his staff said.
• The Times’ Nate Cohn has a fascinating look at how the Times/Siena poll has tried to re-weight its results this year — and how that may produce more, but also may produce less, accurate polls. In many cases, the re-weighting has decreased Democrats’ chances. “What does all of this mean for 2026?” he writes. “Well, you can choose your own adventure. More than anything, it illustrates how hard it is to predict how the polls might err.”

Man of the Hour

It’s Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS), who has, per the New York Times, been pushing his own staff for the opportunity to cut a television ad that responds directly to the stories about former patients of his who were sued or arrested after failing to pay their bills. His staff discouraged him from doing so, so Marshall, per the Times, hired his own video crew, and shot the ad himself. When his staff still urged him not to release it, he began texting it to allies. Eventually it emerged on X.