Lower 48 candidates in Alaska’s 2026 U.S. Senate election

In Alaska’s 2026 United States Senate election, a super PAC (likely run by Washington, DC Republicans) that registered with the Federal Election Commission on July 28, 2026 — and has yet to disclose a single donor — reported spending more than $553,000: roughly $210,000 promoting Richard Grayson, a Green Party filer who lives in Arizona;^[5][6] roughly $209,000 promoting Carol Hafner, a Democratic filer whose campaign address is a commercial mail drop in South Dakota;^[2][25] and $135,000 on mailers attacking Democratic candidate Mary Peltola.^[1][3]

Neither has any documented residence in Alaska.^[5][22] And neither has ever reported raising a single dollar for any campaign of their own — not across the 25 federal campaign committees Grayson has registered since 1979, and not in any of Hafner’s four campaigns.^[2]

This page sets out the public record on both candidates, and on the money being spent to promote them. Alaska’s primary election is Tuesday, August 18, 2026.^[9]

Alaska’s News Source · June 5, 2026^[31]

The prisoner & his mom: How are candidates who’ve never visited Alaska able to run for the state’s federal seats?

South Dakota mother and son serving a New York federal prison are just two examples of multiple candidates seeking Alaska’s federal seats while living in the Lower 48

1. Side by side

Two candidates with no documented home in Alaska, no history in the state, and no fundraising anywhere. One super PAC, with no disclosed donors, spending six figures to put their names in front of Alaska voters. The full public record is below; Alaskans can draw their own conclusions about who benefits.

2. Richard Grayson (Green Party filing)

Richard Grayson

Candidate filing, U.S. Senate (Green)

Grayson on Tucson television during his 2025 Arizona congressional campaign, via his YouTube channel — one of two dozen federal races he has entered since 1979.

Born	June 4, 1951, Brooklyn, N.Y.[9]
Residence	Apache Junction, Arizona[5][6]
Occupation	Writer[9]
Elected office held	None[9]
Has run for office in	Arizona, Florida, New York, Wyoming, Idaho, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Washington — and Alaska. Plus two runs for President.[2]
Total reported raised, all federal campaigns	$0[2]
Grayson’s political parties	Democratic, Green, Reform, Communist, Americans Elect, No Labels[2][9]

2.1 No ties to Alaska

Grayson has never lived in Alaska. He lives in Apache Junction, Arizona,^[5] and his 2026 Senate campaign committee is registered to an Apache Junction address.^[6] This is his third attempt at an Alaska ballot: in 2016 he filed for U.S. Senate as a Democrat and was removed from the primary ballot because he was not a registered Democrat;^[10] in 2024 he ran for Alaska’s U.S. House seat under the No Labels banner and finished 10th in the open primary, with 0.13 percent of the vote.^[11] In June 2026, he wrote a letter to the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner noting that August temperatures in his Arizona town reach 114°F.^[1]

2.2 A half-century of running — everywhere

Grayson is, in his own words, a “perennial candidate.”^[12] His FEC filings date to 1979, when he registered as a candidate for Vice President of the United States — despite not being anyone’s running mate.^[7] Since then he has filed for two dozen federal elections across nine states, plus presidential campaigns, under six different party labels.^[2][9] Every one of his 25 federal committees reports the same fundraising total: $0.^[2]

The parties whose labels he borrows keep trying to get rid of him. In 2010, the Arizona Green Party went to federal court to have Grayson and ten other write-in nominees removed from its ballot line, calling them “shams” who “do not represent the party’s values and platform.”^[14] Grayson responded by announcing another Green primary run “just to piss them off.”^[15] In 2023, the No Labels party sued Arizona’s Secretary of State to keep Grayson from running under its banner;^[16] when the ruling was later reversed, he ran anyway — “I’m running to spite them,” he told the Arizona Republic.^[17]

2.3 In his own words

2.4 “Against her, in quotes”

Grayson does not appear to be running against Mary Peltola in any meaningful sense. In January 2026 he donated to her campaign through ActBlue.^[2] In April 2026, on his own YouTube channel, he said this about the race he had entered:

“What about Mary Peltola? I mean. A lot of us are really hoping she can flip this Senate seat. I’m one of them, even though I’m running in the primary ‘against her.’ Against her in quotes.” — Richard Grayson, YouTube, April 2, 2026^[21]

A candidate who says he hopes Peltola wins — being promoted by $210,185^[3] in shady money likely coming from Republicans.

3. Carol Hafner (Democratic filing)

Carol Ann “Kitty” Hafner

Candidate filing, U.S. Senate (Democratic)

Hafner’s portrait, from her campaign website.

Born	November 1953
Residence	Unclear; campaign registered to Box Elder, S.D. — a commercial mail drop[2][25]
Elected office held	None
Candidacies	U.S. House, Alaska (2018); President (2020 FEC filing); U.S. House, Wyoming (2020); U.S. Senate, Alaska (2026)[9]
Total reported raised, all campaigns	$0[2]
Self-description	“Democratic socialist”[25]
Times she has visited Alaska	None documented[22]

3.1 “I’ve never been there”

Hafner first appeared on an Alaska ballot in 2018, running in the Democratic primary for the state’s U.S. House seat. Asked by an Alaska reporter what year she had moved to the state, she answered:

“Oh, I don’t live in Alaska. I’ve never been there.” — Carol Hafner, Mat-Su Frontiersman, July 2018^[22]

She told the Associated Press she did not plan to campaign in the state in person^[23] — and still received 15 percent of the Democratic primary vote.^[24] Weeks before that vote, the Anchorage vice chair of the Democratic Party had publicly warned that a “fake candidate” could shave votes from the contender she supported.^[4]

Eight years later — now running for the U.S. Senate — she was asked again whether she had ever been to Alaska:

“I’ve flown over it. As far as boots on the ground, that’s in my future.” — Carol Hafner, Alaska’s News Source, June 2026^[31]

3.2 A campaign address at a mail drop

Hafner’s 2026 Senate filing lists an address in Box Elder, South Dakota^[2] — a commercial mail-forwarding site used primarily by RVers^[25] — and she uses a New York City phone number.^[1] County searches found no property in her name there, or in Toms River, New Jersey — the other address that appears in her records.^[27] In 2018, the chair of the Alaska Democratic Party said Hafner was registered to vote as a Democrat in New Jersey and a Republican in South Dakota.^[22]

3.3 Wyoming, and a run for President

Alaska was only the first stop. In 2019 Hafner announced a run for Wyoming’s U.S. House seat — another state she acknowledged she had never visited — in a state whose Democratic Party had just passed a resolution to support only in-state candidates.^[25] She finished second in the 2020 Democratic primary.^[26] She had also registered a 2020 presidential campaign with the FEC, back in 2018.^[2][9] Like her Alaska and Wyoming campaigns, it reported raising nothing.^[2]

3.4 A family history on Alaska’s ballot

In 2024, Hafner’s son, Eric Hafner, ran for Alaska’s U.S. House seat as a Democrat — while serving a 20-year federal prison sentence for threatening to kill judges, police officers and others.^[28][30] He has never lived in Alaska.^[28] Both mother and son are on Alaska’s August 2026 primary ballot — and neither has been to the state.^[31]

4. The spoiler playbook

Under Alaska’s election system, all candidates run on a single August primary ballot, the top four finishers advance, and the general election is decided by ranked-choice voting.^[9]

“They’re just trying to get some people in there to dilute either the Democratic vote that Mary’s going to get, or dilute the Republican vote that Daniel S. Sullivan is going to get… It’s just a tactic.” — Jim Lottsfeldt, longtime Alaska political strategist, on the super PAC spending^[1]

“People on the far left and the far right don’t rank. They just vote for their favorite, and then they quit.” — Jim Lottsfeldt^[1]

Ranked-choice voting is supposed to neutralize spoilers by redistributing votes — but that only works if voters actually rank more than one candidate.^[1] The risk is not hypothetical. In Alaska’s 2024 U.S. House race, more than 7,000 voters ranked only the third- and fourth-place candidates and never expressed a preference between the two finalists — and one of those two also-rans was Eric Hafner, Carol Hafner’s son (see §3.4).^[1][28]

Alaska Democrats have seen this exact play before — from one of these exact candidates. When Hafner ran for Alaska’s House seat in 2018 without ever having set foot in the state, the Anchorage vice chair of the Democratic Party warned:

“Is that on purpose to try to split the Democratic vote? I don’t know… I’d hate to see my candidate lose by a thousand votes that were shaved off by a fake candidate.” — Julie Olsen, Anchorage vice chair, Alaska Democratic Party, 2018^[4]

5. References