MS NOW host Jonathan Capehart told PBS NewsHour viewers Friday that he "could not muster any kind of enthusiasm" for the Alaska ballot-stacking story, instead accusing the Trump administration of trying to "gum up the works" with the state's Senate race.
Capehart's remarks came during a panel segment with Wall Street Journal opinion columnist Matthew Continetti, as host Amna Nawaz pressed the pair on the Alaska Senate contest. According to Breitbart's account of the segment, Nawaz noted that The New York Times had reported this week that the Democratic Party and the campaign of Democratic candidate Mary Peltola played a role in recruiting a second Dan Sullivan — Dan J. Sullivan — to run against Republican incumbent Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, a tactic known as ballot stacking designed to dilute the incumbent's vote under Alaska's ranked-choice voting system.
Peltola has denied any involvement or knowledge of the recruitment effort, a denial she repeated Thursday night, according to Nawaz's summary on the program.
Nawaz asked Capehart directly whether the maneuver was a smart move for Democrats or whether it fuels claims of rigged elections that President Trump has made. Capehart's answer was to dismiss the story outright.
"I mean, this is a story I could not muster any kind of enthusiasm for," Capehart said. He added that "the administration is hell-bent on gumming up the works with the Alaska Senate race."
Continetti, the Journal columnist who filled the seat normally held by David Brooks on the program, provided what Breitbart characterized as some balance on the Peltola story — though the outlet argued he ultimately served as a substitute for Brooks rather than a full counterweight.
The Alaska race has drawn national attention in the final week of the midterm campaigns. The Times reporting on the recruitment of Dan J. Sullivan is the kind of story that has historically drawn bipartisan condemnation — a candidate openly sharing a name with an incumbent in a ranked-choice system is a maneuver election lawyers have flagged for years. Whether Peltola's campaign coordinated the effort remains disputed; she has denied it.
What is not disputed is that the story exists, that the Times reported it, and that the Department of Justice under President Trump is looking into it. Capehart's segment instead framed the investigation itself as the problem — a media-blaming inversion that drew sharp criticism from conservative outlets covering the exchange.
Breitbart's write-up of the segment argued that Capehart "spun so hard on behalf of Democrats on Friday it is amazing he didn't fall out of his chair," and that the host's position was that the country is only talking about Alaska because Trump and the DOJ are investigating, not because of the underlying scheme.
The exchange came during a broader PBS segment on closing messages and midterm predictions, in which Nawaz also pressed the panel on Trump's rhetoric in the Michigan Senate race and on affordability messaging. Capehart's dismissal of the Alaska story landed as the campaign enters its final weekend, with control of Congress on the line.
For Alaska voters, the practical question is straightforward: if a second Dan Sullivan appears on the ballot and pulls even a small share of the vote in a ranked-choice race, the incumbent's path to 50 percent narrows. That is the mechanism Peltola's critics say was activated. Her defenders say she knew nothing about it. The DOJ inquiry will presumably sort out which account holds up.
What Capehart made clear is that he does not intend to wait for the answer.
Our Take
Here is the tell. Capehart did not say the Times got the story wrong. He did not say Peltola's denial settles the matter. He said he could not muster enthusiasm — and then pivoted to accusing the Trump administration of gumming up the works.
Think about the inversion there. A sitting senator from Alaska may have been targeted by a name-similarity scheme in a ranked-choice election, a scheme the New York Times reported involved the Democratic Party and the Peltola campaign. Peltola denies it. Fine — that is what investigations are for. But Capehart's objection is not to the scheme. It is to the investigation.
This is the same playbook conservatives have watched for years: when the evidence points one direction, attack the people looking at the evidence. The FBI, the DOJ, the administration — anyone who asks a question becomes the story. Capehart delivered that script on PBS, on a Friday, in the last week of a midterm campaign, and he did it without a shred of evidence that the DOJ inquiry is political rather than warranted.
Would the Times report be dismissed as a distraction from the real story — the investigation?
Alaskans deserve a straight answer about who recruited Dan J. Sullivan and why. So do the rest of us. The media's job is to ask that question, not to wave it away because the answer might inconvenience a Democratic Senate candidate.
Capehart showed his hand Friday. The question now is whether Alaska voters — and the rest of America — will accept the media's preferred framing, or whether they will demand the facts the DOJ is apparently still chasing. The ballot box is the only poll that matters. It opens in days.
