Democrats never stop lecturing Republicans about racism, and they swear they had nothing to do with one Senate ballot trick.
Their allies on cable keep waving the whole uproar away.
And Caroline Sunshine just turned the race card around on them in a way they never expected.
Caroline Sunshine Aimed the Left’s Favorite Weapon Right Back at Them
Caroline Sunshine has come a long way from her days on the Disney Channel sitcom Shake It Up. She went on to work as a press assistant in the first Trump White House in 2018. These days she trades punches with liberal panelists on CNN.
During a recent CNN appearance, Sunshine took on the scandal over the second Dan Sullivan sitting on the Senate ballot in Alaska. She skipped the usual talk about dirty tricks and went straight for the motive.
“I think it is a disgrace that Democrats don’t think that a woman of color can win a Senate seat on her own, and so they are resorting to dirty political tricks and getting a literal random white man off the street because they don’t believe that a woman of color can win a Senate seat,” Sunshine said.
She kept going. “And I think that tells you a lot about what Democrats actually think about women of color. They do not want to empower them. They do not believe that they can win on their own. Republicans do not have that problem.”
Democrats usually throw that kind of punch. They rarely take one.
What the New York Times Says Happened Behind the Scenes
The woman of color at the center of Sunshine’s argument is former Congresswoman Mary Peltola (D-AK), who is Yup’ik and is challenging US Senator Dan Sullivan (R-AK). The other Dan Sullivan on the ballot is Dan J Sullivan, a retired schoolteacher from Petersburg.
According to a New York Times investigation, aides on the Peltola campaign told a staffer to track down as many Alaskans named Dan Sullivan as possible. The Times also reported that staffers at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee traded texts with the Peltola campaign about the second Sullivan. Elisa Rios, the campaign’s former manager, spoke to the paper.
Peltola’s team denies every bit of it. The campaign said in a statement that it “has no involvement with either Sullivan campaign.” Dan J Sullivan has said he never had contact with the Peltola operation, describing it back in June as “Zero, none, zilch.” Peltola herself called the story a distraction.
But Federal Election Commission records show the Petersburg Sullivan gave a total of $130 to Peltola in 2022 and 2024.
No prosecutor has charged anyone with a crime. Then again, nobody needs a courtroom to ask the obvious question Sunshine raised. Why would a winning campaign go to all that trouble?
Sunshine’s “random white man” line comes across a little rough on a retired teacher whose Petersburg neighbors swear by his character. Whatever he intended, the real question is who went looking for him, and why.
Mary Peltola Already Proved She Could Win on Her Own
Here’s where Sunshine’s charge really stings.
Peltola never needed a decoy to win statewide. She did it twice in 2022.
In the special election that August to fill the seat of the late Congressman Don Young, Peltola beat Sarah Palin and Nick Begich and became the first Alaska Native ever to serve in Congress. Three months later, she won a full term against the same field. She still holds the title of the most recent Democrat to win a statewide race in Alaska.
Begich took the seat from her in 2024. Even in that race, she kept her distance from the national party, refusing to endorse Kamala Harris and irritating plenty of fellow Democrats along the way.
And she came into this Senate race looking strong. In the August top-four primary, Peltola finished first with about 49.5 percent of the vote, while Sullivan took 41.4 percent.
So picture the scene the Times describes. A candidate who beat Sarah Palin, who led the primary, and who had national Democrat money flowing in, and somebody around her still decided she needed a stranger with the incumbent’s name on the ballot to get over the line.
Maybe the operatives just wanted every possible edge in a close race. Campaigns do strange things when a Senate majority might hang on one state. But a team that trusted its candidate to close the deal wouldn’t spend a summer combing through voter lists for namesakes.
The Soft Bigotry Democrats Never Outgrew
George W Bush coined a phrase for this mindset during his 2000 campaign: “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” He aimed it at school systems that wrote off minority children before they ever had a chance to prove themselves.
Democrats spent the decades since perfecting their own version. They treat minority voters and candidates like party property, perfect for photo ops and fundraising emails, and then they get nervous the minute one of them has to stand on her own record.
Joe Biden said the quiet part out loud in May 2020 during an interview on The Breakfast Club. “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black,” Biden told the host.
Same attitude. Different decade.
And when Democrats lose, the excuses follow the same script. After Kamala Harris went down in 2024, Democrat commentators lined up to blame racism and sexism instead of open borders, grocery bills, and a party that had marched far to the left of the country. Voters judged Harris on her record. Democrats just can’t bring themselves to admit it.
But Alaska Republicans saw the condescension coming months ago. Back in June, long before the Times story broke, National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesman Nick Puglia said, “Alaskans are smarter than Peltola thinks, and their scheme isn’t going to work.”
Funny thing is, some of Peltola’s own supporters agree. DJ McBride, an independent from Willow who plans to vote for Peltola, told Alaska Public Media, “Alaskans are smarter than that.”
So somebody inside the Democrat machine apparently didn’t share that faith. Not in Alaska’s voters, and not in the candidate they spent the year praising as a trailblazer.
Election Day Will Settle the Score
Alaskans are already voting early at a record pace, and control of the Senate may run through their ballots. President Trump wants the second Sullivan off the ballot and the people behind him held accountable, and state officials have opened their own probe.
None of that will move as fast as Election Day. Voters will have to sort out two Dan Sullivans in the booth while the investigations grind on.
But Sunshine already landed the hit that will outlast the ballot count. Democrats can’t spend years branding Republicans as bigots and then get caught, according to the Times, building a backup plan for the first Alaska Native in Congress.
The party that never stops lecturing America about racism might want to start the next lecture a little closer to home, maybe in whichever campaign office decided Mary Peltola couldn’t beat one Dan Sullivan without a second one.
Sources: RealClearPolitics, “Caroline Sunshine: Democrats Didn’t Believe A Woman of Color Could Win A Senate Seat And Resorted To Dirty Tricks”; Alaska Public Media, “New York Times report on Democrats’ secret ballot-stacking effort draws mixed reactions from Alaskans”; PBS NewsHour/Associated Press, “Trump calls for prosecution of Alaska Senate candidate Peltola over Sullivan name controversy”; Axios, “Trump accuses Dems of perjury in Dan Sullivan race, governor orders probe”; Anchorage Daily News, “US Senate and House races set with over 30 candidates and battle of the Dan Sullivans”; Associated Press, “Peltola beats Palin, wins Alaska special election”; NPR, “Mary Peltola wins Alaska election to Congress”; CBS News, “Democrat Mary Peltola launches Alaska Senate bid challenging GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan”; Wikipedia, “2026 United States Senate election in Alaska”; CNN, “Former Disney star joins White House press team”
