Green Party Senate candidate Richard Grayson knows flyers with his name and face are clogging mailboxes around Alaska. But he doesn’t get them. He lives in Arizona.
A retired law school administrator, Grayson has run for office a lot, all over the country, with no expectation of winning.
“Egotism. I don't know. Curiosity,” he said, when asked why. “If you look me up, you see I've been doing this since 1979.”
He isn’t in Alaska to campaign and has raised no money. A group called Fair Deal Alaska has spent about $800,000 to help him and another non-Alaskan perennial candidate, Democrat Carol Hafner, with direct mail and text messages.
Fair Deal even has video ads promoting him on social media.
“It was an ego trip to see an actual, like, commercial,” Grayson said.
Grayson, though, is aware he’s a pawn in someone else’s false-flag operation.
Money is pouring into Alaska’s U.S. Senate race as the Aug. 18 primary nears.
While Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan and Democratic challenger Mary Peltola are running multi-million dollar campaigns, pop-up super PACs have spent more than $2 million to elevate political unknowns. Alaska is a battleground state, and they are trying to game Alaska’s unique election system to win control of the U.S. Senate for their preferred team.
Fair Deal hasn’t had to reveal their funding sources yet, but whoever is behind it is hoping Grayson and Hafner will be among the top four finishers in the primary and advance to the general election ballot, along with Sullivan and Peltola.
Anchorage political consultant Jim Lottsfeldt said it appears Fair Deal Alaska is trying to boost Sullivan’s chances by getting two candidates on the ballot who might draw progressive voters away from Peltola. He said it’s a tactic groups on both sides are deploying.
“Depending on what comprises that top four, people feel like it can affect an election,” he said.
On the other side, a group called Right for Alaska is promoting Palmer Republican Gerald Heikes with ads claiming he’s more conservative and more fiercely opposed to abortion than Sullivan is.
Right for Alaska has spent more than $1 million on the race. On the surface, it would seem to be a conservative group. But follow the money. Right for Alaska has listed one funder so far. William Harris of Lexington, Mass. gave $100,000. Harris is a prolific contributor to Democratic candidates who support abortion rights.
Heikes did not respond to a voicemail message.
This is a variation of a strategy deployed in states with a traditional primary: Partisans try to bolster a weak candidate from the opposing party so that their nominee has a better chance to win in November.
Alaska’s ranked choice voting system for the general election would tend to blunt the impact of these false-flag operations. A conservative voter, for instance, might choose Heikes but also rank other Republicans. The vote would accrue to whichever one was in the lead.
But some voters don’t rank, or don’t rank one of the leading candidates, and that slice of the vote is what these operations, on the right and left, are aimed at.
“It means they have too much money,” Lottsfeldt said, with an expletive for emphasis. “They're like, … ‘What about this crazy idea? Yeah, we can fund that.’ That's what's going on.”
The pop-up super PACs behind these efforts can spend unlimited funds but aren’t allowed to coordinate with the candidates.
Democrat David Leslie, a U.S. Senate candidate from Fairbanks, said he has no idea why a group called American Democracy Project has spent more than $240,000 on mailers and digital ads to promote his support of transgender rights.
A major funder of American Democracy Project is a wealthy Texan named Rishi Bhutada, and he didn’t know either. Alaska Public Media asked him about it by email and he quickly responded by phone, sounding alarmed. He said his super PAC never meant to get involved in the Alaska race. He thought it was a filing error.
Bhutada called back hours later to say he found out other funders were using the super PAC to pursue a goal he doesn’t share. He declared himself “flabbergasted” and said he might need to contribute to Peltola to make up for it.
As for Grayson, the Green Party candidate in Arizona, he doesn’t think he’ll finish in the top four of the primary, even with all the promotion.
And if he does advance to the general election? He said he’d do what he could to help Peltola, because he wants her to win.
“If I were on the (November) ballot, I would just tell people — and have her tell people —I support her,” Grayson said. “Don't vote for me.”
No matter how many — or few — votes Grayson gets, Alaskans will probably see his name on future ballots. He said he likes how easy the state makes it to become a candidate.
“You don't need any signatures,” he said. “You just have to give them a $100 check.”
