According to Gallup, 71 percent of Alaskans generally trust their government. Of all the states in the country, only six others have more trust in their government than does Alaska. Below are charts that show states with the most and the least trust. Rife with corruption, the citizens of Illinois have the least trust in their government. That’s followed by Rhode Island, Maine, Pennsylvania and Louisiana. Read more here.
Two more conservative super-PACs have entered Alaska’s U.S. Senate race, both of which are opposing Sen. Mark Begich. According to FEC reports, the Conservative Majority Fund is spending $491 on “contact calls.” The second group, the Conservative Strikeforce, will be spending $1,125 on voter contact calls and emails.
Scott B. Mackenzie is listed as the treasurer for both of the groups and both groups share the same address in Arlington, Va. Dennis Whitfield, former Deputy Secretary of Labor under President Ronald Reagan, is listed as Conservative Strikeforce’s chairman.
The groups are only spending a pittance, but according to political consultant Ben Nuckels with Joe Slade White & Company, $1,000 can buy as many as 66,000 robo calls. If that’s what they’re doing, which is likely. The Conservative Majority Fund has gotten the most press for its robo calls, particularly those that promulgated the conspiracy that President Obama isn’t a citizen. In 2012, the Huffington Post reported the following call which came from the group:
Our only recourse now is to move forward with the full impeachment of President Obama. We suspect that Obama is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors and that there may be grounds for impeachment as is laid out in the constitution. Further, he may not even be a U.S. citizen because nobody, I mean no one, has seen an actual physical copy of his birth certificate. Impeachment is our only option. And Republicans are already considering Obama investigations. As the nation’s most effective conservative group we are launching the official impeach Obama campaign.
Let’s just hope they’ve got your number and not mine.
Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com
In a rather gutsy move, Anchorage Sen. Lesil McGuire has officially entered into the controversial tennis court debate by requesting that the Senate Finance Committee, which drafts the capital budget, re-appropriate the $7 million dollars to be used for courts. She wants that money to go to the Anchorage Loussac Library instead.
The tennis court project has been pushed by Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan. Both he and McGuire are running to be the GOP nominees for lieutenant governor. It’s unclear who, or if, any of the senators on the committee will offer the amendment. Protocol would dictate that either Anchorage Sens. Hollis French, Anna Fairclough, or Kevin Meyer do so.
One thing is clear: it puts the project back into the public glare. Also, McGuire is chair of the Senate Rules Committee, which wields a tremendous amount of power.
The tennis issue has “drawn a great deal of criticism, divided the Anchorage Assembly and served to drive a wedge into our community,” McGuire wrote in a memo to the committee. She also blamed the controversy on failure of the public to vote on an April 1 library improvement bond measure.
The $7 million is part of a $37 million appropriation that was intended to be used on “critical and deferred maintenance” on buildings built in the 1980s. Sullivan has pushed to have the $7 million go to a new tennis court, to be built in the Turnagain neighborhood, where he lives.
McGuire said that the money is “necessary to protect the State’s original investment in this facility.”
Read the full memo here.
Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com
U.S. Sen. Mark Begich has said repeatedly that he doesn’t support a carbon tax. Reputable fact-checking groups have said that those who continue to claim otherwise are wrong. Yet the Koch brothers and their various political arms continue to insist that he does. Below is the most recent ad making that claim, among other claims. This one is funded by the American Energy Alliance, a political action group funded by the Koch brothers. Along with ads targeting Democratic Rep. Nick Rahall from West Virginia, the total spend on the two campaigns is reported to be $630,000.
The other ads about Begich’s supposed carbon-tax support were funded by Americans for Prosperity, another Koch-funded group. The brothers’ insistence that Begich support something he doesn’t support is beginning to borderline on odd. It would be like insisting that he was born in Denmark, say, or maybe Kenya. Perhaps they’re counting on the fact that some people will believe anything if they hear it often enough.
United for Liberty-Alaska, a group run by Alaska Libertarian Party chair Michael Chambers, sent out the following “action alert,” in response to the Tuesday Anchorage Assembly elections:
We do not know the final results of the recent election completely but based on preliminary results, the left and unions will have control of the Assembly. Given this scenario, if Republicans vote to send Mayor Dan Sullivan to Juneau as Lt. Governor, Anchorage will experience Dick Traini as the interim Mayor!! We will have an Assembly dominated by the left and Dick Traini with his hands on the reigns. The consequence of 20% voter participation.
Sullivan is running for lieutenant governor against Alaska state Sen. Lesil McGuire.
The real win for unions would be if, after absentee ballots are counted, Pete Petersen’s 336 vote lead holds over incumbent Assemblyman Adam Trombley.
The left is crying foul, but both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party have much to gain from today’s Supreme Court decision which strikes down federal aggregate giving limits to candidates, parties and party committees. The maximum donation of $2,600 per election cycle for federal candidates still stands, as does the maximum amount an individual can give to a party or a candidate’s committee, which is $5,000 and $10,000 respectively.
But prior to today, a person could only cumulatively give $48,600 to all federal candidates for office during any one two-year election cycle. So, if you wanted to give the maximum amount, say, to all Democratic House members during a two-year cycle, you couldn’t do so. All told, contributions to political parties and candidate committees and candidates were limited to $123,200 per election cycle.
This should be good news for parties and maybe not such good news for super-PACS, which, since the 2010 Citizens United ruling, impose no limits. Allowing for more money to go to parties allows parties greater control of the process and the ability to impose party discipline. Because of those limits, politicians like those in the tea party, who are largely financed by rich individuals, have been able to ignore their parties. This ruling begins to even the playing field.
It also might provide a greater opening for a challenge to Alaska’s state campaign laws, which are some of the most restrictive in the country.
A long held view which informs much, but not all, of campaign finance law is that campaign restrictions are set to combat corruption and the appearance of corruption. If they don’t do that, then they violate free speech.
Here’s Chief Justice John Roberts writing for the majority:
This Court has identified only one legitimate governmental interest for restricting campaign finances: preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption. We have consistently rejected attempts to suppress campaign speech based on other legislative objectives. No matter how desirable it may seem, it is not an acceptable governmental objective to ‘level the playing field,’ or to ‘level electoral opportunities,’ or to ‘equalize the financial resources of candidates…’ The First Amendment prohibits such legislative attempts to ‘fine-tune’ the electoral process, no matter how well intentioned.
It’s unclear how some of Alaska’s state finance laws will stand up to such scrutiny. For instance, state law restricts a non-incumbent gubernatorial candidate from soliciting campaign contributions in Juneau during the legislative session. Recently, the Alaska Public Offices Commission ruled that Democratic candidate for governor Byron Mallott couldn’t accept money from Juneau residents while he was in Juneau during the session, even though he lives there.
I’ve got a few phone calls in today about that, and will update when I get a better idea of potential challenges.
Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com
Democrat Forrest Dunbar is only 29 years old. But he’s clerked for former Sen. Frank Murkowski. He’s been in the Peace Corp, has a Yale Law degree, a master’s from Harvard Kennedy School, is a first lieutenant in the Alaska National Guard, and is now running against Rep. Don Young. And he’s made the video below, which has to be the campaign season’s most creative so far.
Note: The song which Dunbar’s playing off is the 1986 hit “Your Love.” A hit in frat houses all across the country, it is sung from the point of view of a lout trying to get a girl to cheat with him while his girlfriend “Josie” is out of town.
U.S. Senate candidate Dan Sullivan released a radio ad on Tuesday entitled, “Fighter.” In the ad, Sullivan talks about his time in Alaska as the state’s attorney general. But the bulk of the ad is spent defending himself against questions surrounding his residency.
“After the September 11th terrorist attacks, my Marine Recon unit in Alaska did not get deployed. So like hundreds of my fellow Alaskans, I sought other ways to defend our country,” Sullivan says. “Although it meant my family had to leave our home in Alaska, I was honored to serve in the White House and State Department under Condoleezza Rice as part of the war on terror, and was later recalled to active duty by the Marine Corps.”
Put Alaska First, a pro-Begich super-PAC, recently bought $72,613 of more air time for its commercial questioning Sullivan’s residency claims. Anchorage resident Jim Lottsfeldt, who’s running the PAC said on Monday that the group is putting the money into ad “because it’s a good idea.”
Sullivan moved to Alaska in 1997, where he practiced law until moving to D.C. in 2002. He moved back to Alaska in 2009 to be the state’s attorney general.
The ad ends with a line that’s emerging as a theme in Sullivan’s campaign: “I’m Lt. Colonel Dan Sullivan, and I approve this message because Alaskans need a fighter again in the United States Senate.”
Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com
For the fifth time this year, the Coast Guard performed a dangerous rescue operation out of King Cove. On Monday night, a fisherman’s eye was injured while on board the Seattle-based processor near Unimak Island in the North Pacific Ocean. The safest deep water port was King Cove on Alaska’s Aleutian Chain. However, there is no ophthalmologist on King Cove, and as many Alaskans know, the road that could have been used to transport the fisherman to the all-weather airport in Cold Bay, from where he was eventually medevaced to Anchorage, has been blocked by the Interior Department and by environmentalists.
The fisherman made it to King Cove at 11:30 a.m. Due to high winds and seas, the Coast Guard didn’t make it to King Cove until 3 p.m.
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski has been fighting vigilantly to get the Interior Department to allow the road, which would cut through a slice of a wildlife refuge. According to her office, each Coast Guard transport costs as much as $210,000.
Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com
I’ve been known to be hard on Rep. Lora Reinbold, a Republican from Eagle River, but I do want to give credit where credit is due. HB 140, which Reinbold sponsored, passed the House on Monday. All 37 House members present voted for the bill. It’s a good bill.
Hundreds of regulations are enacted each year by the State of Alaska that greatly affect businesses and private individuals, who are often taken off guard, have no idea how and why they originated and how they can speak out about them. The bill puts more transparency into the process by changing the Alaska Administrative Code. As it is now, an agency proposing a regulation must estimate the cost to the agency itself. This bill, if it becomes law, will also require state agencies who propose a regulation to estimate cost to individuals and to businesses, to justify the reason for the regulation and who, exactly, proposed it.
Finally, when federal law is given as a justification for a regulation, the exact federal law, executive order or decision now needs to be identified.
Reinbold introduced the bill last year and has been working hard to pass it since. She gathered letters from across the state, she compromised and got bipartisan support.
Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com