Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan‘s X campaign account was suspended on Friday night, days ahead of the November 3 midterm election. His campaign blamed Democrat opponent Mary Peltola and her camp, while they denied any role in the suspension.
Sullivan’s campaign account @DanSullivan_AK, showed the “Account suspended” message. It was flagged by Chris Olmstead, the Regional Political Director for Senate Republicans.
“Polls open in Alaska in 83 hours and, right now, @DanSullivan_AK’s account is suspended by @X after another dirty play by @MaryPeltola & co. who reported it for impersonation. Insane how far Mary’s willing to go to trick Alaskans,” he wrote, tagging Elon Musk, the owner of the social media platform.
Why was Dan Sullivan’s X account suspended?
It appears that Sullivan’s X campaign account was suspended for “violating our rules against inauthentic accounts.” Wil Courtney of Alaska’s News Source shared a screenshot of the message the Sullivan account received.
He also reported on the finger-pointing between the Sullivan camp and Peltola’s side. While the senator’s team has alleged that Peltola and her camp is behind the “effort to say, essentially, that he’s a fake Dan Sullivan,” the Democrat’s camp has responded saying, “These are silly and unsubstantiated claims from the Sullivan campaign. I can confirm our campaign did not make any effort to suspend Sullivan’s twitter account.”
Dan Sullivan name row heats up ahead of Alaska polls
The news of Sullivan’s X account being suspended comes after allegations against Peltola of instructing her camp to find others named Dan Sullivan to run in the Alaska Senatorial race in the midterm elections in a bid to confuse voters.
Peltola and her camp have denied any wrongdoing.
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The Justice Department on Friday pushed for a court order to isolate some Alaska ballots to probe potential voter confusion. Federal officials also confirmed the existence of a criminal probe over the candidate sharing the name with Sullivan.
The scrutiny increased after a New York Times article revealed that Peltola’s campaign appeared to have been involved in recruiting Dan J. Sullivan, a retired teacher, in an attempt to confuse voters.
Alaska Assistant U.S. Attorney E. Bryan Wilson has said the government “seeks to preserve and segregate all ballots ranking Daniel J. Sullivan for the purposes of investigating whether such ranking was the product of voter confusion, should such an investigation become necessary.”
While Peltola has asserted she can win solely on the support of voters, President Donald Trump has also joined in on the accusations against the Democrat hopeful.
(With AP inputs)