Sullivan endorses Sullivan against Sullivan in Alaska

Alaska politics has given us a lot of strange stories over the years, but three men named Dan Sullivan running against each other for the same Senate seat might be the strangest. And now a fourth Dan Sullivan, a former Anchorage mayor, has stepped in to endorse the incumbent Dan Sullivan over the other Dan Sullivan. You cannot write comedy this good. Somewhere a campaign staffer is drinking heavily trying to figure out how to make yard signs that actually distinguish these guys.

Jokes aside, there's something almost refreshing about a race that's forcing voters to actually look past the name on the ballot. When three candidates share an identical name, nobody can coast on brand recognition alone. Alaskans are going to have to learn who these men actually are, what they've done, and where they stand, because "vote Sullivan" isn't going to cut it this cycle. That's not nothing in an era where plenty of races get decided by name ID and yard-sign familiarity rather than substance.

It also says something about Alaska itself. This is a state with a small enough political class that a former mayor can inject himself into a Senate primary just by making a phone call to a guy who happens to share his name. There's a genuine local flavor to that which national politics has mostly lost. We'd rather have voters forced to sort out three Dan Sullivans on the merits than watch another race decided by out-of-state money and a candidate nobody outside the district has met. Sometimes the weird stories are the healthy ones.