OPINION:
“By any means necessary” has long been the modus operandi of the far left, and it has now been fully embraced by Democrats. They are taking the concept literally in their all-consuming bid to win control of the Senate in the midterm elections Tuesday.
The Democrats’ most flagrant example this election cycle of “by any means necessary” — a phrase drawn from French intellectual Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1948 play “Dirty Hands” — can be found in Alaska.
In the Last Frontier State, a stalking horse third-party independent candidate, Dan J. Sullivan, with the same name as the Republican incumbent, Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, is running as a nominal independent.
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The ploy is as dastardly as it is devious.
The clear intent is for Alaska voters to confuse the two and split the “Dan Sullivan” vote, enabling the Democrat — former Rep. Mary Peltola — to win the three-way race in a state with so-called ranked choice voting.
“This didn’t happen by accident: It’s the end result of an orchestrated plot carried out by a group of Democratic operatives — also involved in other consequential Senate races, including Maine, Michigan, and Nebraska — who are willing to mislead voters if it gives their party a better chance to retake the upper chamber,” National Review reported on July 10, naming names in the intricate web of connections involved.
On Wednesday, a blockbuster expose in The New York Times — “Inside Democrats’ Secret Effort to Stack Alaska’s Ballot” — quoted Ms. Peltola’s former campaign manager who said she was aware of the operation, but not directly involved.
The ballots that voters there are receiving, however, clarify who is who in a way that should help mitigate potential confusion: “On the general election ballot, Dan J. Sullivan is listed as ’Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.,’ without any party label. Dan S. Sullivan is listed as ’Dan S. Sullivan (Registered Republican) Incumbent,’” the AlaskaBeacon.com reported Oct. 26.
Only slightly less blatantly “by any means necessary” is the Democrats’ “dirty hands” bid to flip a Senate seat in Nebraska, coincidentally with a candidate also with the first name Dan.
Dan Osborn, who ran unsuccessfully for Senate in the bright-red Cornhusker State in 2024 as a nominal independent, is doing so again this year — now, as then, in coordination with Nebraska Democrats.
According to Ballotpedia.com, in the 2024 cycle, “No Democratic candidate filed to run in the primaries or general election. According to Nebraska Democratic Party Chair Jane Kleeb, the party decided not to run a candidate in the Democratic primary after talks with Osborn, saying Osborn ’asked us to keep our ballot line open so we could form a coalition.’
“Following the primaries, Osborn said he would not accept the endorsement of the Democratic Party. In response, Kleeb said the party would put forward a write-in candidate. The Nebraska Examiner reported that the Democratic Party ultimately decided not to run a write-in campaign.”
Despite being plugged into the same network of Democratic operatives behind the Sullivan scheme in Alaska, Mr. Osborn is again running as a pseudo-independent — this time after the Democratic primary winner, Cindy Burbank, agreed to drop out of the general election to clear the way for him.
A former union president who claims to be critical of both parties, Mr. Osborn implausibly asserts that he will not caucus with either party if he defeats Sen. Pete Ricketts, a Republican and former Nebraska governor who is up for reelection.
“We’re not going to caucus with either party. In fact, we’ll caucus with everybody, you could say,” Mr. Osborn said at an Oct. 12 press conference. “Independent means independent.”
We find that hard to believe, particularly given that the two nominal independents now in the Senate, Bernard Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine, both caucus with Senate Democrats and invariably vote in lockstep with them.
Casting further doubt on just how “independent” Mr. Osborn would be as a senator: On Saturday, he was joined on the campaign trail by “progressive” (aka far-left) Rep. Ro Khanna, California Democrat, and gadfly Republican turned Democrat, one-term former Rep. Joe Walsh of Illinois.
Further belying any claim by Mr. Osborn of being “independent,” much less “centrist,” he criticized a commonsense referendum on the Nebraska ballot, Initiative Measure 442, which would ban gender-confused boys and men from participating in girls’ and women’s interscholastic athletics in the state.
Despite polls consistently showing this to be an 85% to 15% issue in favor of such bans, at the Omaha town hall event with Mr. Khanna, Mr. Osborn said Initiative Measure 442 is about “fear” and is “designed to be divisive.”
Mr. Ricketts’ campaign issued a statement ahead of the town hall event, contending it “completely unmasks Dan Osborn’s fake independent facade.”
If Democrats win “by any means necessary” in Alaska or Nebraska or both, their “dirty hands” will most assuredly get only dirtier going forward.
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