The Ghost Candidates: America's Long History of Electoral Dirty Tricks

October 29, 2026

From JFK's 1946 congressional campaign to Florida's 2020 elections and today's Alaska controversy, political operatives have repeatedly tried to manipulate the ballot with gangster-style tricks

By Yiannis Damellos and Mars Strangelove Jr.

American politics has a peculiar tradition. Politicians spend enormous amounts of money telling voters how important democracy is, how sacred the ballot must remain, and how dangerous it is to allow their opponents to undermine the electoral process. Yet, behind the campaign slogans, political operatives have repeatedly found ways to manipulate that very process for partisan advantage.

One of the oldest tricks is surprisingly simple: put another candidate on the ballot who can confuse voters, divide an opponent's electorate or divert votes that might otherwise determine an election.

They are sometimes called spoiler candidates. In more elaborate operations, they become ghost candidates: individuals recruited, encouraged or financially supported to enter an election not necessarily to win it, but to influence who does.

A reminder here for those who cry over somebody else's spilled milk: this is not a new invention, nor does it belong to any one political party. The American electoral record contains examples involving Democrats, Republicans, and political organizations operating through intermediaries. Some were documented, some were investigated, and others remain allegations that have never been conclusively established.

But the historical record is revealing. And the latest controversy in Alaska has brought this old political practice back into the national spotlight.

The Kennedy connection: Two Joseph Russos in 1946

The story takes us back to Boston in 1946, when a young John F. Kennedy was running for Congress.

His opponent was Joseph Russo, an established Italian-American political figure. According to a historical account presented in the PBS documentary The Presidents: John F. Kennedy, another candidate with exactly the same name appeared on the ballot. 
The documentary's interviewees alleged that Kennedy's father, Joseph P. Kennedy, and people around him had arranged for the second Joseph Russo to enter the contest, potentially dividing the Italian-American vote.

The account is striking because it describes essentially the same mechanism now under scrutiny in Alaska.

Kennedy won the election by a large margin, but the precise circumstances surrounding the second Russo's candidacy have to be treated carefully, as the documentary records retrospective allegations, not a judicial finding establishing that the Kennedy campaign orchestrated the operation. Nevertheless, the episode illustrates how long the idea of manufacturing electoral confusion has been part of American political history.

Arizona, 2010: Republicans recruit Green Party candidates from the street

More than six decades later, the practice resurfaced in Arizona.

Republican political operative Steve May recruited a group of people in Tempe to run as Green Party candidates in several state races. The recruits included a tarot-card reader, a pedicab driver and a street musician. They had little or no political experience, and Democratic and Green Party officials accused May of attempting to siphon votes away from Democratic candidates. May acknowledged recruiting the candidates but disputed the allegation that the operation was designed to manipulate the election.

The episode demonstrated something important: a political organization does not necessarily need to convince voters to support its own candidate if it can persuade enough voters to support an alternative who weakens its opponent.

The operation attracted considerable controversy, and the Green Party challenged the candidacies. The Republican operative's involvement was documented and of course, the broader allegations about the intended electoral effect were contested.

Florida, 2020: The ghost candidates

If Arizona demonstrated the mechanics, Florida provided a particularly consequential example.

During the 2020 election cycle, three Florida state Senate races featured independent candidates accused of being recruited and supported to divert votes from Democratic candidates.

An investigation published by Integrity Florida in December 2022 examined the operation, relying on leaked documents from an Alabama-based political consulting firm and examining political committees that promoted the candidates. The investigation described an organized effort involving political intermediaries and dark-money financing.

The most consequential race was Florida Senate District 37. Democratic incumbent José Javier Rodríguez lost to Republican challenger Ileana Garcia by just over 30 votes.

A third-party candidate sharing Rodríguez's surname received more than 6,000 votes.

The investigation concluded that the operation had successfully siphoned votes away from the Democratic incumbent and affected the result.

But just so as to distinguish the documented electoral numbers from the investigation's conclusions about the operation, the existence of the third candidate and the narrow result are facts while the attribution of responsibility and the precise number of votes diverted are matters requiring another kind of examination. Eventually, the investigation identified connections between political committees, an Alabama-based consulting firm and interests associated with Florida's largest utility, Florida Power & Light. This was no longer simply a matter of putting another name on a ballot. It raised questions about political financing, consulting networks, intermediaries and the influence of powerful interests on elections.

2024: The Patriots Run Project

The practice did not disappear after Florida.

In 2024, the Associated Press investigated an organization called the Patriots Run Project, which recruited conservative and pro-Trump individuals to run as independent candidates in competitive congressional districts. The apparent objective was to attract conservative votes that might otherwise go to Republican candidates. The AP identified recruitment efforts in Iowa, Nebraska, Montana, Virginia and Minnesota.

One recruit, Joe Wiederien, was encouraged to run against Republican Congressman Zach Nunn in Iowa. He later withdrew, saying he believed he had been manipulated. Others said he was forced to say that. 

The investigation examined text messages, emails, business records and other documents and found that some of the money and services involved could be traced to Democratic consulting firms. However, the ultimate management and financing of the operation remained unclear, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee denied involvement.

The same AP investigation reported that Trump-aligned operatives were working behind the scenes to secure independent presidential candidate Cornel West a place on the ballot, potentially drawing votes away from Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. West initially denied knowing about Republican operatives helping his campaign, saying: “This campaign does not welcome gangster elements from whatever party.” But in a later interview with the AP, he expressed ambivalence about their involvement, saying he knew nothing about who they were and that his campaign simply wanted to get on the ballot. He also described American politics as “highly gangster-like activity.”

The two efforts illustrate the same underlying political calculation: an additional candidate can be useful even when nobody seriously expects that candidate to win.

Alaska, 2026: Two Dan Sullivans

Now we arrive at the latest controversy, which brings to mind the Suicide Squad from Monty Python's Life of Brian: a band of would-be rescuers who could have saved the day by attacking the Romans, but instead proceeded to kill themselves. Some Democratic candidates seem to have mastered the same art of political self-sabotage.

Alaska's Senate race features Republican incumbent Dan S. Sullivan and Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired teacher from Petersburg.

The New York Times reported on October 28 that people associated with Democratic challenger Mary Peltola's campaign, its legal team and national Democratic operatives had been involved in efforts to recruit candidates, including the second Sullivan.

The alleged objective was to divide support for the Republican incumbent.

Peltola's campaign has denied wrongdoing, while Daniel J. Sullivan has denied being recruited by the campaign and maintains that he is a genuine candidate.

The matter has now escalated beyond campaign rhetoric.

On October 29, Reuters reported that the Justice Department had issued more than 40 subpoenas and document-preservation requests in connection with the investigation. The requests included the campaigns of Peltola and the second Sullivan. The department has not established criminal wrongdoing through these investigative steps, and nobody involved had been charged at the time of the reporting. There is also a significant legal distinction. Alaska's Supreme Court previously allowed Daniel J. Sullivan to remain on the ballot. The state uses ranked-choice voting, and the ballot identifies the incumbent as the registered Republican and sitting senator.

The Trump administration has separately pursued legal action seeking to block certification of the result under certain circumstances if the incumbent loses. Trump has publicly demanded Peltola's prosecution and the removal of the second Sullivan from the ballot.

Well, if you ask me, let the dog bark “wolf” — then hold up a mirror. He might discover that the creature barking back at him looks remarkably familiar.

To me, however, those demands remain political statements, not findings of criminal liability. At the end of the day, the investigation must establish what happened, who coordinated it, and whether any applicable laws were violated.

The machinery behind the ballot

What connects these episodes?

Not necessarily the same political party, the same financiers or even the same legal circumstances. What connects them is the use of electoral mechanics as a political instrument.

The recurring participants in these cases include campaign operatives who identify opportunities to divide an opponent's electorate, political consultants who recruit candidates and organize their entry onto ballots, intermediaries who can conceal the identities of the people directing an operation, political committees and outside organizations that finance campaigns or promotional activity and finally, candidates who may or may not understand the broader political purpose of their recruitment.

The Florida and Patriots Run Project investigations are particularly revealing because they show how an operation can extend beyond the candidates themselves, involving consulting companies, political committees, financing and recruitment networks.

Still, the important question is not simply who appeared on the ballot. It is who arranged for that person to appear there, who paid for the effort and who expected to benefit. And that question should be asked regardless of party affiliation.

Democracy is more than counting ballots

There is an uncomfortable contradiction at the heart of these episodes.

Political parties publicly defend the integrity of elections while some of their associated operatives have been accused of manipulating the conditions under which voters make their choices.

The American electoral system provides considerable room for independent candidacies, political competition and ballot access. These are important democratic protections. But the same openness can be exploited by people who view elections as contests to be engineered rather than public decisions to be respected.

Independent candidates will always exist. Political parties will always attempt to persuade voters to support their preferred candidates. That is politics. The problem arises when candidates are recruited primarily as instruments to confuse voters, when financial relationships are concealed, or when the real purpose of a candidacy is deliberately hidden from the electorate.

The historical examples also expose the limitations of partisan outrage. Republicans cannot reasonably present this practice as exclusively Democratic when Republican-aligned operatives have employed similar tactics. Democrats cannot dismiss it as a Republican invention when Democratic-connected consultants have been implicated in comparable operations.

And neither party can claim that the problem disappears simply because its own candidate benefits.

There is a larger institutional question here: how much manipulation can an electoral system absorb before public confidence in its basic fairness begins to deteriorate? Because after Election Day, the ghost candidates may disappear, yet the political machinery that produces them will not.