Alaska voters will find two Dan Sullivans on their Senate ballot Tuesday.
One is the Republican senator. The other is a retired teacher named Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., and according to the New York Times, Democrats were behind putting him in the race. The point was obvious: confuse enough voters to drain votes from the real Dan Sullivan and hand the seat to Democrat Mary Peltola.
Sen. Sullivan called it "the biggest scandal in Alaskan electoral history by far." Peltola says she "knew nothing."
It's a scheme with a victim, a paper trail and an election five days away. Most reporters would kill for a story like that.
At CBS News, it took a fight.
On Thursday morning, editor-in-chief Bari Weiss brought the story to the network's 9 a.m. editorial meeting. "This is a scandal," she told the staff. She called it a "great story" CBS needed to chase.
Most editors don't have to explain to a room full of journalists what a scandal is.
According to network insiders who spoke to Fox News, Weiss ran into "significant resistance." Some staffers waved it off as routine politics. Some said Republicans do it too. Margaret Brennan, host of Face the Nation, was reportedly among the loudest.
When Weiss asked for other examples of confusing names on a ballot, Brennan allegedly brought up John and Chris Sununu, the New Hampshire brothers who have both run for office.
The Sununus didn't need a recruiter. They're a political family with real records, and voters have known them for decades. The second Dan Sullivan was put on the ballot for one reason. Comparing the two is like comparing twins to a forged signature.
The host of Face the Nation didn't want to face this one.
Brennan is a journalist. Her job is to find out what happened and tell people. Her job isn't to decide which stories are convenient for which party. She hosts one of the most-watched Sunday shows in America, and with a scheme built to confuse voters on the table days before an election, she was reportedly in that room making the case against chasing it.
Brennan says Fox has it wrong. "Fox is wrong. That is not what happened in the meeting at all," she posted. "No one who spoke at the network meeting opposed covering the campaign or story but rather exchanged ideas on how to do it."
"Exchanged ideas" is a generous way to describe a meeting where the boss had to insist the scandal was a scandal. A newsroom that's eager to chase a story doesn't need to be told.
She's done this before. In July, after the Trump administration declassified more than 800 pages detailing China's theft of American voter data, Brennan went on CBS and read Beijing's statement to viewers: "China has never and will never interfere in presidential elections." She read it without a word of pushback, hours after the documents came out.
Beijing's denial got airtime on her show without a fight. A Democratic scheme to confuse Alaska voters needed one.
CBS brought in Bari Weiss to rebuild trust after years of slanted coverage. The network did send reporters to Alaska, and the story made it on the air. It got there because the editor-in-chief pushed for it, and the host of Face the Nation was reportedly pushing the other way.
Alaska votes Tuesday, with two Dan Sullivans on the ballot. According to people who were in the room, Margaret Brennan's first instinct was to bring up the Sununus.
