Alaska Senate Candidate Subpoenaed in Investigation of Alleged Spoiler Recruitment
Federal prosecutors have sought records and testimony from Republican Gerald Heikes as they investigate alleged efforts to recruit spoiler candidates in Alaska’s unresolved Senate race.
By Ricardo Brooks ·
Gerald Heikes, a long-shot Republican contender for Alaska’s Senate seat, was ordered to testify before a federal grand jury and provide records concerning political groups and other candidates, CNN reported Friday. The subpoena called for his appearance days before the midterm elections, according to documents reviewed by the network.
The demand forms part of an accelerating criminal investigation into whether operatives aligned with Democratic candidate Mary Peltola sought to bring spoiler candidates into the contest. The alleged recruitment effort included a person with the same name as incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan. Peltola has said she knew nothing about attempts to recruit additional candidates.
The subpoena was dated the day after The New York Times published a report linking Peltola’s campaign to the effort. It requests communications involving her campaign, several political action committees and associated operatives. A senior official in the Justice Department’s civil rights division in Washington signed the document, rather than a prosecutor based in Alaska. The department declined to comment.
Heikes, a conservative drywall contractor from Palmer, disputed the suggestion that he had been recruited. He told CNN that an operative whose name he did not know had proposed a Senate candidacy earlier this year. He said he was already considering a run for office before the meeting and chose the Senate contest afterward.
“If they think I’m an operative, they’re wrong,” Heikes told CNN. He said curiosity motivated his candidacy and that he had never intended to take votes from another contender. He also indicated that he preferred Sullivan to Peltola. According to Heikes, he first felt a religious calling to seek office roughly two decades ago, when he pursued the governorship.
CNN previously reported that newly established political action committees connected to an out-of-state operative had spent millions of dollars opposing Sullivan and supporting Heikes. Heikes said he did not know who was responsible for that spending. He was in third place with approximately 2% of the vote, while an estimated quarter of ballots remained uncounted.
Peltola held an advantage of roughly 600 ballots in the initial count Friday morning, with 48.2% of the vote. Under Alaska’s ranked-choice system, a winner cannot be confirmed before November 18 if no candidate exceeds 50%. Election officials are scheduled to tabulate voters’ second-choice preferences on that date.
Heikes has appeared on Alaska ballots before. In the 2008 Republican Senate primary, he received 599 votes, or 0.57%. His 2016 Republican primary bid for Alaska’s House seat drew 2,817 votes, or 5.2%. He also competed in the 2018 governor’s race.
