• Al Jazeera America has come to Alaska and has a five-part series called “Fed up in Alaska,” based on our local issues that voters will be taking to the polls. The current topic: Pebble Mine. To view all parts of “Fed up in Alaska”, tune in to “Al Jazeera America News” with John Seigenthaler next week at 4:00pm AKSD.

• Becky Bohrer’s piece regarding Gov. Sean Parnell’s press conference on Ebola can be found in The Republic. The Fairbanks News Miner also has an article detailing the very low risk Alaskans have in being exposed to Ebola and the steps that are being taken by health care facilities to ensure our continued safety. For more on “The Plague,” the Huffington Post has a segment with Fox News’ Shepard Smith blasting the media hype for Ebola Hysteria.

• The National Republican Senatorial Committee Executive Director Rob Collins told The Hill “We are going to win the Senate.” The hows and whys are detailed in Cameron Joseph’s story.

• United for Liberty has had to cancel tonight’s debate and turn it into and educational forum about Ballot Measure 1, the Anchorage Labor law many considered to have been pushed through passage without enough public input. The Dispatch reports that Anhorage Assemblymen Bill Evans and Ernie Hall agreed to represent the “Yes” side of the issue, but the “NO, Repeal 37” campaign declined to participate. “We have a lot of respect for our elected officials here in town,” said Brian Murphy, a spokesman for the Anchorage firefighters’ union. “We want to continue to have long-term relationships with current Assembly members. And we don’t think this is an appropriate forum for us.”

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The Campaign to Regulate Marijuana like Alcohol, or more easily, the pro-pot people, are up on the airwaves with some pretty good ads. This commercial features former Deputy Commissioner of Corrections Bill Parker, who has long advocated for legalizing pot:

This one features a Valdez police officer:

The group also has a radio spot featuring another cop and a school teacher.

All told, the pro-pot people are spending $500,000 on the ads. So far, the campaign has received $860,759 in contributions to convince Alaskans to vote on Ballot Measure 2. Most of that money has come from the D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project.

The other side, Big Marijuana. Big Mistake. Vote No on 2. Or, more easily, Continue reading →

U.S. Sen. Mark Begich has had two town halls in Anchorage this past week, which I’ve been remiss in covering. Alaska Commons has been diligent, however. Begich will be having another one tonight at the Spenard Rec Center, starting at 7 p.m. Then he’s off to Fairbanks to hold a veterans town hall on Friday.

According to a campaign press release, “From now through Election Day Mark Begich will speak directly with Alaskans about their ideas for the future of our state, his first term accomplishments and goals for a second term.”

Begich is calling it his “Standing Up For Alaska Tour” which has already visited Bethel, Homer and Petersburg, and will continue on to Fairbanks, Juneau, Palmer and Kenai and back to Anchorage.

GOP candidate Dan Sullivan may have the wind at his back, but Begich is at his best at these kinds of events.

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, GOP Senate candidate Dan Sullivan’s former boss, is up again on T.V. with an ad urging Alaskans to vote for him. This is her second appearance in the Senate race and her first for the official campaign. If you’re going to have a surrogate speaking for you, Rice isn’t a bad get.

• University of Virginia Center for Politics’ Sabato’s Crystal Ball has changed his Alaska U.S. Senate race from “toss-up” to “leans Republican.”

• More awfulness about the National Guard scandal from leaked documents.

• Rasmussen Reports came out with a poll yesterday revealing that gubernatorial candidate Bill Walker is now leading with 50% to Gov. Sean Parnell’s 41%. The poll says that there are still 7% of undecided voters and it was conducted with a 4% margin of error.

• The sudden tilt in the governor’s race from a solid Parnell/Sullivan win to a potential Walker/Mallott victory has caught the eye of the National Journal. In an article that explains the political dynamics behind Parnell’s fall from election grace, Jim Lottsfeildt sums it up with the closing quote. “I don’t see how [Parnell] pulls it out right now.  You could hand the guy $2 million right now and I don’t see how it’d be felt because the airwaves are choking with other messages. I don’t see this wave changing.”

• Speaking of the governor’s race: If Parnell expected to have any votes in Government Hill, he likely lost them. The Dispatch reports that the neighborhood’s sole gas station, Tesoro, has opted to stop pumping gas amid uncertainty over the very uncertain fate of the Knik Arm Bridge. All of which took the neighborhood by surprise, which isn’t a good thing to have happen before an election.

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The latest numbers from the Alaska Division of Elections tallying the registered voters in the state for this election cycle, as well as the party to which they belong, show some potential holes in Sen. Mark Begich’s supposed superior ground game. A ground game involves getting people to the polls—the success of which can’t be quantified until they go there. But it also involves registering new voters, which the Begich campaign and the Alaska Democratic Party, helped by the national party, have been working hard at. The national Democrats have sent up to 90 people to Alaska to work on that ground game. Lots of money is being spent and as many as 15 offices have been opened across the state. On the other side, the RNC has only sent 11 people to Alaska, and Sullivan’s campaign has been less verbal, publicly at least, about touting its ground game.

It may very well turn out that all the efforts will win the race for Begich. However, the numbers from the Alaska Division of Elections show that when it comes to new voter registrants, the results are less than overwhelming, particularly compared to 2008 when Begich first won his Senate seat. And the numbers should be especially concerning for the Alaska Democratic Party as a whole, which continues to loose numbers.  Continue reading →

I have in the past been critical of Gov. Sean Parnell for his seeming lack of leadership on a whole host of issues, including his handling of the National Guard scandal. But the video below, where Parnell talks directly to the public about the situation, is much needed and long overdue. I don’t know how he could have handled the situation differently, though I suspect there were better ways. (I defer to Lynn Willis on this.) And I don’t know if the current course he is on to fixing it is the right one. But I do know that, using his words, this is turning into a political witch hunt. (The countless, breathless press releases sent out by the Democrats are just one indication of this.) Parnell might deserve this. But the innocent people who are being swept up in the mix don’t. Nor do the victims of the abuse.

I know I’ve missed a bunch of ads in the last weeks. Some of it is time restrictions. Some of it is that none of have been necessarily exciting. This one, however, featuring Joey Merrick, head of Local 341, is pretty good, in a local, rough-sawn, union kind of way.

Three auditors from the National Guard Bureau have touched down in Alaska. They’re here to dig into allegations of financial fraud. Here’s the statement from Gov. Sean Parnell’s office:

In August, Governor Sean Parnell called for an expanded investigation into allegations of fraud in the Alaska National Guard. Today, the governor announced that a team of three auditors from the National Guard Bureau has arrived in Alaska to determine the adequacy and management of federal resources handled by the Alaska National Guard.

“We take the allegations of fraud extremely seriously,” said Governor Parnell. “I called for an immediate investigation of these fraud allegations. Those found Continue reading →

• The Koch brothers launched a Super PAC last summer that allows them to directly attack candidates, but also requires them to file  donors with the FEC.  Politico has the overview and history of the Koch brothers original super PAC and their newest entity.

• The Fairbanks News Miner’s adjective to describe yesterday’s Fairbanks gubernatorial debate is “animated.”

• Rasmussen Reports unveiled a new poll of 700 likely Alaskan voters that has Dan Sullivan in the lead with 48% and U.S. Senator Mark Begich with 45% with an error rate of 4%.

• If Ballot Measure 2 passes on November 4, then it looks like Alaska might already have found its new Pot Czar. The Juneau Empire has an article about Cynthia Franklin, and her potentially new role as the person in charge of writing the Alaska regulations regarding legalized marijuana.

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Here’s Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan, who, it should be noted, gets some of the best, tax-payer funded healthcare available, talking to KCAW, Sitka’s public radio station, about Medicaid expansion:

Sullivan said he opposes expanding a program that will inevitably add to the federal debt.

Sullivan: Doesn’t make sense for me to say we should borrow more money from China to expand a government program.

KCAW: Does that mean that you wouldn’t accept federal funds for anything in Alaska? Or specifically Medicaid?

Sullivan: “Well, take it issue by issue. If somebody said, you know, federal highway dollars for example can help build a road that could lead to good jobs and economic development, then you can see an end game there that’s positive…”

Medicaid, he said, doesn’t meet that bar.

“As far as expanding Medicaid, again, I’m not sure where it was ever determined that it’s the government’s role to provide Medicaid to x number of people…It was supposed to be a safety net. And it’s expanded to where the levels that are qualified I think go beyond a safety net and really just become I think another government entitlement program that’s unsustainable.”