Donald Trump asked on Wednesday for Alaska's Democratic Senate candidate to be prosecuted. On Thursday he flew to Rock Hill, South Carolina, to prop up Darline Graham. She is Lindsey Graham's sister. She got his seat in July, after he died, on Trump's recommendation. She is tied.
The New York Times/Siena poll of 707 South Carolina voters, taken Oct. 19 to 26, has Graham and the Democrat, Annie Andrews, at 48% each. Trump won the state by nearly 18 points two years ago. Andrews is a pediatrician who has never held office. Thursday's rally is Trump's second in the state in two weeks and his third in three months. A president does not fly to the same safe state three times.
In Alaska he reached for a lawyer instead. The Times reported Wednesday, from a dozen sources, that Democrats recruited a retired teacher from Petersburg named Dan J. Sullivan to run against Sen. Dan Sullivan, so that two Dan Sullivans would be on the ballot, and that Mary Peltola's campaign staff and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee were in on it. Peltola's campaign and the committee deny it. The Times says it is generally legal. The second Sullivan got 2.5% in the August primary.
Trump's answer was not a court. He told reporters on Wednesday, before flying to Ohio, that Peltola should be prosecuted criminally for what she did, and called it "voter fraud at the highest level." Gov. Mike Dunleavy ordered a state criminal investigation that night. Attorney General Todd Blanche had already sued on Oct. 23, before a vote was counted, to stop Alaska from certifying the race if Sullivan loses. Alaska's own Republican government told the judge on Monday the suit "has no legal basis." This is the same Blanche who lost a grand jury's vote to indict Cassidy Hutchinson on Tuesday.
Why Alaska? Harvard's Gary King and two colleagues posted a forecast on Oct. 15. It expects Democrats to take 54.1% of the national House vote and a median of 52 Senate seats. If the vote runs two points more Republican than that, they write, the morning-after headline "might read" "Democrats win back control of the House, but the Senate comes down to Alaska." The map explains the travel: where a seat is slipping, he goes himself; where one seat could decide the Senate, he sends Blanche to the courthouse first.
CNN's polls on Thursday have the Democrat, James Talarico, ahead of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton 49% to 43%, outside the 4.2-point margin of error; Abdul El-Sayed ahead in Michigan 49% to 42%; and Maine and Kansas inside the margin. Sen. Lisa Murkowski endorsed a Democrat for governor of Alaska this week while calling Peltola's campaign "a pattern of lies and cover-ups." Seven people familiar with FBI discussions told MS NOW that agents fear being ordered to seize ballots or voting machines after Election Day. Ken Klippenstein reported National Guard units mobilizing in all 50 states to watch drop boxes and polling places; the Pentagon told him it has no such plans. By Thursday morning the Justice Department said FBI and ICE agents will not serve as poll monitors, Reuters reported.
Next week the count in Alaska will be slow, because it is ranked-choice, and Blanche's suit will be sitting in front of a federal judge in Anchorage, waiting for a Sullivan loss. If Peltola wins by less than the second Sullivan's share, the Senate majority will be argued in a courtroom in Anchorage before it is seated in Washington.
