AP — 

A top Alaska elections official has threatened to disqualify from the state’s August primary a US Senate candidate who shares the same name and party affiliation as incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan.

Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher in a letter to challenger Dan Sullivan said her office had received two complaints regarding his eligibility and determined “that the preponderance of evidence does not support your eligibility for the office of United States Senator.”

She gave him a Thursday deadline to submit “any additional information and evidence” in response.

Sullivan, the challenger, did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment about the letter from Beecher, a registered Republican who in the past has donated to Republican groups and campaigns. Her letter, dated Wednesday and published by the Anchorage Daily News, did not specify the evidence it found to potentially remove him from the primary ballot, and her office did not respond to requests for comment.

Sullivan’s candidacy has caused a stir in one of the most prominent US Senate races in the country. It’s a seat Democrats have targeted as they try to regain the majority in the chamber in this year’s midterm elections.

Sen. Sullivan has accused his namesake challenger of working with Democrats to try to trick voters and boost the chances of his top opponent, former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, a claim both deny. The challenger, who lives in the small fishing community of Petersburg south of Juneau, told The Associated Press earlier this week that the decision to run was “my choice.” He said he had no contact with the Peltola campaign — “zero, none, zilch.”

This week, the challenger also pushed back in response to Republican Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom’s announcement that she was opening an investigation into his candidacy.

“The law forbids your office from denying me access to the ballot just because Senator Sullivan and the NRSC would prefer I not be allowed to run,” he wrote, referring to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

He called the investigation “an unprecedented affront to my rights as a candidate and the rights of Alaska voters to select their own representation in the U.S. Senate.”

It was not immediately clear whether he had retained an attorney to help him remain on the ballot.

Some attorneys also have raised questions about Dahlstrom’s investigation, which among other things demanded that Sullivan explain his party affiliation, how long he had been going by the name Dan Sullivan, his affiliation with a consultant and any interactions he might have had with other candidates in the race or the Democratic Party.

Dahlstrom, who oversees elections, said in her letter to the challenger that the investigation pertained to “credible allegations” that he did not declare his candidacy “with a good faith purpose to seek office but rather with a purpose to confuse voters and have them mistakenly vote for you rather than the incumbent with the same name and same political party affiliation.”

The questions are in line with claims outlined in a letter to her and Beecher earlier this month from an attorney with the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

The ACLU of Alaska, in a statement, said it is “unaware of any other instance where the Lieutenant Governor has investigated a specific candidate for reasons other than determining whether a candidate meets federal, state and local eligibility requirements.” The group said it was monitoring the situation.

Jahna Lindemuth, who was an Alaska attorney general under an independent governor, said investigating why someone would run for office “starts infringing on free speech concerns and other protections under the Constitution.” She said Dahlstrom could label the senator as the incumbent on the ballot if she were concerned about voter confusion.

The Constitution requires senators to be at least 30 years old, a US citizen for at least nine years and live in the state they’ve chosen to represent at the time of election. Sullivan, who will turn 69 this weekend, told the AP he moved to Alaska in 1980 and worked for the US Forest Service before switching careers and becoming a teacher. He’s now retired.

The declaration that the elections division requires candidates to fill out asks for their name, the party affiliation they want on the ballot, their address and how they want their name to appear. In signing the declaration, candidates are asked to affirm they meet citizenship, age and residency requirements.

The division previously certified challenger Sullivan’s candidacy, noting him on the candidate list as Dan J. Sullivan. The senator is listed as Dan S. Sullivan and as the incumbent.

At least one group running ads in support of the senator, One Nation, has begun referring to him as Sen. Dan S. Sullivan.

Tyron “Ty” Keyonnie has been missing since a kayaking trip at Canyon Lake in the Tonto National Forest last week. His truck and camping gear were found at Acacia Recreation Site, and his kayak, phone, keys and bag later turned up elsewhere. Now his family and search crews are looking for answers as authorities ask anyone with information to contact MCSO.

When Rickey Spivey Towner had a heart attack in his Coachella Valley home last September, his stepdaughter Megan Conner found him unconscious and called 911. 

But there was a problem: The equipment used to answer 911 calls at the Desert Hot Springs Police Department malfunctioned and Conner couldn’t connect with a dispatcher for more than two minutes, according to dispatch records obtained by NBC Bay Area.

In a recording of one of Conner’s 911 calls, the dispatcher is immediately disconnected, and Conner is met by silence for 25 seconds until the dispatcher can get back on the line.

Towner did not survive. His family said he died of a heart attack.

Towner’s death may be the first documented fatality potentially linked to the state’s ongoing 911 system overhaul.

Newly obtained records under the California Public Records Act reveal the connection problems were linked to call processing equipment approved by the state as part of California’s troubled Next Generation 911 rollout, sold by a state contractor called NGA 911, and deployed by the Desert Hot Springs Police Department in 2023. 

Police records reveal emergency dispatchers were unexpectedly logged out of their phone system as Conner called 911 to report her stepfather lying unresponsive on the floor.

It’s unclear if Towner could have been saved had his stepdaughter been able to summon help faster, but records show a police dispatch manager sent a scathing email shortly after his death to NGA 911. She also copied top officials with the California Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES).

“People’s lives are on the line and your failed system may have just cost this person their life,” the dispatch manager wrote on September 12, 2025. “I believe that your engineers are continuously making changes to our live environment which is affecting our user experience. Which again is unacceptable, especially when I had continuously asked you to stop.”

Records from the police department lay out the details of what went wrong and show Conner had to call 911 three times that morning before she was finally able to relay any information to a dispatcher. It took nearly two-and-a-half minutes.

The national standard calls for 90% of 911 calls to be answered within 15 seconds.

The equipment that failed is called call processing equipment (CPE) and it was purchased by Desert Hot Springs police after Cal OES suspended new sales of existing call processing equipment and began pushing dispatch centers toward cloud-based systems designed for the state’s Next Generation 911 network.

State officials say the Next Generation 911 project is a critical upgrade to California’s antiquated 911 system and will improve emergency response.

After a series of reports by NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit, however, the overhaul has faced mounting scrutiny from lawmakers over delays, technical problems and a rising price tag exceeding $450 million.

WATCH NBC BAY AREA’S INVESTIGATIONS CA 911: TOO BIG TO FAIL

Like most emergency dispatch centers across California, Desert Hot Springs has not switched over to the new Next Gen 911 network. However, it was among the first to use the new cloud-based CPE that Cal OES promoted after suspending sales of legacy call processing equipment that failed to meet Next Generation 911 standards.

NGA 911’s equipment had passed state lab testing conducted by Cal OES and was among a handful of vendors approved to sell the new cloud-based CPE when Desert Hot Springs purchased its equipment.

While Cal OES, NGA 911, and Desert Hot Springs police were discussing the equipment failure during Conner’s 911 call, the family says they were left in the dark. They say nobody had told them about what happened until they were recently contacted by NBC Bay Area.

“Why didn’t I know any of this,” said Lakisha Romero, Towner’s daughter. “My dad has been talked about around the state and I had no clue what was going on.”

A timeline of “major events and challenges” in the state’s implementation of Next Gen 911 that has since been posted on Cal OES’ website shows the CPE purchased by Desert Hot Springs had been plagued by persistent problems since it was first deployed more than two years before Towner’s death.

“911 calls that were disconnected before being answered by the [911 center] are not displaying for dispatchers,” the Cal OES timeline states. “A workaround was immediately implemented that required dispatchers to use third party technology. NGA 911, LLC is notified of the problem and indicates it is working on a solution.”

About a year later, the Wasco Police Department also purchased NGA 911 call processing equipment and experienced “the same problems as [Desert Hot Springs],” according to Cal OES.

By May 2025, police in Desert Hot Springs and Wasco had opened roughly 300 trouble tickets concerning issues with NGA 911’s CPE, including 17 of “critical importance” and 99 of “high importance.” Two months later, both departments canceled their CPE orders with NGA 911.

In a statement, the Desert Hot Springs Police Department said it “worked collaboratively with NGA and Cal OES regarding operational and technical concerns that arose during implementation and operation.”

Cal OES said it took “immediate steps” to help both departments swap out the problematic CPE with equipment from a new vendor, but the process took months to complete and had not occurred before Towner died.

Three weeks after his death, Cal OES said it removed NGA 911 from the approved CPE vendor list and the agency eventually cancelled the company’s CPE contract in March of this year. 

Cal OES declined an on-camera interview request but said in an email the agency is committed to oversight and accountability of its contractors.

NGA has not responded to NBC Bay Area’s repeated requests for comment regarding Towner’s death and the equipment failure in Desert Hot Springs. It has posted this timeline on its website explaining its project record in California.

California’s Next Generation 911 project is years behind schedule, but state officials say there’s a new plan in place to get the project moving forward again and hope to have the Los Angeles region hooked up to the network in time for the 2028 Olympics. 

The state agency recently requested another $142 million to meet that goal, which would be paid for by an additional 13 cent surcharge on the phone bill of Californians. 

As the state moves forward with Next Generation 911 and upgraded call processing equipment that 911 centers desperately need, Towner’s family continues to seek answers.

Romero visited the Desert Hot Springs Police Department in May to get some clarity about what happened in her father’s case but said she was disappointed by the response.

“I went asking for answers and nobody wanted to tell me anything,” Romero said.

In a statement, the department said it’s “committed to transparency and reliable emergency response services.”

Towner’s family said nobody has contacted them about the long history of problems associated with the 911 equipment and questioned why it wasn’t removed a long time ago.

“Why should it take someone dying for them to do that,” Romero asked.

Candice Nguyen is the reporter on this story. If you have a comment or a question, email her at candice.nguyen@nbcuni.com.