Author Archives: Amanda

Loose Lips: Sunday after skits edition

Loose Lips

Birthdays: Democrats are singing Happy Birthday today to their gubernatorial candidate Byron Mallott. He was born three score, one decade and a year ago. In other words, he’s a very young 71. Today is also the birthday of former legislator Jay Kerttula. He is the only Alaska legislator who has served as both the Speaker of the House and as President of the Senate. He’s celebrating his 86th birthday.
Days until the general election: 212.
Sen. Mark Begich had a fundraising brunch this morning at the home of Frank and Deena Mitchell on Westchester Circle in Anchorage. One of the co-hosts, former Begich staffer and now at BP, Julie Hasquet, appears to have skipped the event for the sun of LA. She was spotted yesterday at a Dodgers game eating ballpark Dodger dogs.
Deputy Commissioner of Commerce, JoEllen Hanrahan, has announced her retirement effective May 1st. This will be the second time this position has been open in the past 6 months.
Mary Streett joins BP as Vice President and Head of U.S. Government Affairs. In that role, Streett will oversee federal, state and local government relations, and will likely make a few trips to Alaska. Streett also worked in the Clinton Administration at the White House and the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Last night was the annual legislative skits, the staffer-produced roast of all things worth roasting in the state capital. Number one victim? Rep. Lora Reinbold and her comment last session about students grinding on dance floors. Or something. Word is, however, she was a good sport. Best party treats? Fred Dyson condoms and Pete Kelly pee sticks, which were on every table. I’m told that all in all, it was a relatively mild skits, but that might have had to do with the fact that staffers for Senate leadership were told they couldn’t partake.
The real drama supposedly happened after the skits, when the beer flowed and a certain legislator began crying over romance going wrong. Take your best guess.
The Republican National Committee is opening a field office to help elect Republicans in the Mat-Su Valley. The office will be manned by political operative Paul Cason who will serve as the RNC Mat-Su Field Director. There will be an open house in the new offices located in the Regan Building in Wasilla on April 12th from 10:00 am – 4:00 pm.
A political committee supporting Ballot Measure #1, Vote Yes! Repeal the Giveaway, was filed with APOC on April 2nd. Former senator Vic Fischer is the Chair and Roselyn Cacy will be the Treasurer. The filing also shows that Rep. Scott Kawasaki, Sean McGuire, David Matheny and Patrick Levin will serve as deputy treasurers.
What I’m looking into this week: SB 211 – HB 317: A mouthful of a bill: “ An Act providing for the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities to hold the surface estate of certain state land; relating to the transfer of certain state land and materials; relating to the lease, sale, or disposal by the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities of rights-of-way, property interests, or improvements; relating to the grant of certain easements over submerged state land to the federal government; relating to the conveyance of land for right-of-way purposes from the Alaska Railroad Corporation to the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities; and providing for an effective date.” What does it do? Lots. From a citizen’s letter: (The bill) creates a new and unprecedented approach for determining land ownership and management in Alaska.

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com

Mayor Dan defends tennis court appropriation

Give Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan credit for responding to stories about his administration. Below is his response to the Friday story on this site about Sen. Lesil McGuire’s attempt to re-appropriate money slated for Anchorage tennis courts:

The indoor public courts were requested by the Alaska Tennis Association so that all kids could have an opportunity to play the lifetime sport of tennis without having to be rich enough to afford the Alaska Club. All the high schools will use the facility for their regular season and regional tournament, as well as teams from around the state for the state competitions. The need became essential with the pending sale of the Alaska Club North, which has 5 of the 9 private indoor courts in town.

The first location considered was in south Anchorage (in Lesil’s district) but because of poor soils the current site was proposed. It does not matter to me where the location is, because I will continue to be a member of the Alaska Club, as I have been for nearly thirty years, because there is a wider variety of exercise options and amenities.

As for investing in our public facilities before building new ones, my administration has invested over $650 million in our parks, trails, public facilities, etc., over the past five years, the largest amount ever invested in our public infrastructure in Anchorage history.

Alaskans trust their government

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.

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Two more conservative super-PACs enter Alaska’s U.S. Senate race

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

McGuire requests Senate Finance re-appropriate tennis-court money

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

Another Koch brothers’ ad making false claim about Begich’s support of carbon tax

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.

Group questions fate of Assembly if Mayor Dan wins lt. governor’s race

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.

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Supreme Court strikes down campaign limits

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

Congressional candidate Forrest Dunbar wins creative-video-of-the-season award

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.

Sullivan’s new radio ad defends against residency attacks

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 fifth time this year, Coast Guard evacuates patient from King Cove

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

Reinbold’s bill adds transparency to regulatory process

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

Mallott calls on Parnell to accept Supreme Court subsistence ruling

On Monday, the State of Alaska lost a big case involving federal subsistence rights. Here’s a summary of the case from the Anchorage Daily News:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a long-running dispute over management of Alaska’s waterways.The decision effectively upholds a lower court’s decision in what’s become popularly known as the ‘Katie John case.’ This continues the federal government control’s over hunting and fishing on navigable state-owned waters adjacent to federal land. The decision, a blow to the state and a victory for the Alaska Federation of Natives, upholds a 2013 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The state of Alaska had petitioned the high court, seeking review.

In a release, Alaska Native leader and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Byron Mallott praised the decision and called on Gov. Sean Parnell to abide by it:

Rather than pursue senseless litigation, the state should engage in meaningful dialogue with its rural residents and Native peoples to protect the subsistence way of life. I call on Governor Parnell to accept the Supreme Court’s decision and direct his administration to work constructively towards a solution that is fair and lasting.

In 2001, when Gov. Tony Knowles was governor, the state also lost its challenge in the Ninth Circuit. Knowles declined to take it to the Supreme Court.

Many in the state were puzzled when Parnell decided to revisit the issue, which outraged many in the Alaska Native community, who described it as an “assault” on their subsistence rights.

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com.

Begich rides through NPR-A in third TV ad of campaign season

On Monday, U.S. Sen. Mark Begich released his third TV ad of the election season, featuring Begich riding a snow machine through the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, or NPR-A, the source of an ongoing development battle between D.C. and the state.

“We had waited decades to drill here in the National Petroleum Reserve, but Washington was still saying no, all because they didn’t want to build a road here…” Begich says. “It took five years before I got the road approved. Next year, the oil starts flowing,” he continues after stepping off the snowmachine.

If approved and drilling begins, it could produce as much as 45,000 barrels a day, and would be the commercial production of oil from the reserve.

The end of the ad says “To be continued.” In other words, watch for a serious of similar action ads.

GOP candidate Dan Sullivan is also releasing two ads this week.
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Alaska politics meets the Pillsbury Bakeoff Contest

I’m calling it. It’s officially breakup. Matching my heart, also breaking up, burdened with grief and shame. My mother had worked for months on a secret mango recipe for the Pillsbury Bakeoff Contest, which offered a grand prize of more than $1 million. I insisted on proof-reading the recipe for her. As I was doing so, the time slipped away. And so did the deadline. Poof went the $1 million do-the-fandango-mango dream.

There’s always next year, she said. Which is what those lawmakers who have been pushing for a constitutional amendment to allow for vouchers are thinking. Poof went the educational no-more-slouchers-choose-vouchers dream. What happened? Teachers. Some people like to beat them up, but I challenge you to find a more committed, organized and hard-working group in Alaska.

Anyhow, it’s not all bad, waiting for the next year, the next big thing. We Alaskans are really good at it. The bridge to Point McKenzie? Boosters have been pushing that dream since 1925. The Susitna Dam? That idea has come and gone and come and gone since the 1940s.

And then there’s the large-diameter natural gas pipeline.

Those perpetual projects and more are all back. Parnell’s really good at keeping all the flickering hopes alive. How does he do it? Even though deficits loom: he never says no to any of them. Keep them all funded just enough so they won’t go away, but don’t give them enough to actually do anything.

Nor does he apparently say no to raises for some around him. If Parnell’s FY 2015 budget goes through, the salary of his chief of staff, Mike Nizich, will have increased from $148,000 in 2010 to more than $209,000, or about 40 percent, not including benefits.

Speaking of money: The former Atwood Mansion was the site of a fund-raiser this past week for U.S. Senate candidate Dan Sullivan. The house now belongs to John and Candace Hendrix. It was packed with about 100 of Alaska’s best dressed, including real estate pro Lisa Herrington, railroad chair and ACS exec Linda Leary, BP Alaska prez Janet Weiss, and many more. Sen. Hollis French might have called them la haute bourgeoisie.

Sullivan charmed as he does with certain deep-pocketed types. Although he needs to work on his common touch, people like giving the man money — witness the checks reportedly pouring in from everywhere. According to one recent poll, Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell is the candidate with name recognition. But few want to give him money and many are writing him off, which surely feels worse than missing the Pillsbury Bakeoff.

Going nowhere? Rep. Lora Reinbold, reportedly perturbed that I write so much about her, seems perturbed about many things, most recently about educational issues and the Common Core curriculum, the current Tea Party bogeyman, on which she recently held a two-and-a-half-hour hearing. What did she learn?

No, Bill Gates didn’t fund it. No, the feds haven’t foisted it on the state. Surely, though, there’s something nefarious in the works, and she’s going to find out what it is. “This is going to be a series. This is only Part 1,” Reinbold said after the particularly torturous first part. “We don’t know how many more meetings . . . This is going to be ongoing for many, many years . . . I’m not going anywhere.”

Going places? Anchorage Sen. Lesil McGuire hired Harmony Shields, Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux staffer and Veep of the Young and Restless, to run her campaign after the session’s over.

Spotted on the tank of the toilet in the unisex bathroom on the fourth floor of the Capitol: a pregnancy test, sitting sad and lonely in a Tupperware bowl.

Only in Fairbanks: Did you hear about the priest for UAF who was pulled over in Fairbanks and blew three times the legal limit? When stopped, he remembered that he had a.357-caliber handgun in the back seat but forgot to mention the 9mm pistol in his back pocket. He was also carrying a bag of pot in his hoodie. Many punch lines with the phrase “higher calling” followed.

More news: Mary Halloran is reportedly going to try to breathe some life into Democratic gubernatorial candidate Byron Mallot’s campaign. Halloran has been around for a long while. She worked at OMB for Gov. Steve Cowper, and was a staffer for the late Speaker of the House Hugh Malone.

Mallott will also get some help from a newly formed SuperPAC called Mallott One Alaska, which has the sweet smell of union money.

Speaking of sweets: It’s Sen. Mark Begich’s 52nd birthday on Monday. The National Republican Senatorial Committee was thoughtful enough to send him a cake, on which was written, “Happy Birthday to the Senator that votes with Obama 97 percent of the time.”

Good enough for the Pillsbury Bakeoff? Nah. Begich’s office said that, like the NRSC itself, the cake was “just plain vanilla with artificially sweetened facts.”

More chow! The Alaska Mental Health Board on Tuesday afternoon hosted a wild game feed in the Capitol’s parking lot. Served up: bear, goose, reindeer, halibut, salmon and deer. There followed a couldn’t-miss reception co-hosted by the NRA, the Alaska Outdoor Council, the Safari Club and the Kenai Sports Fishing Association. Lots more food. Probably some guns. No fandango mango, pot or priests in sight.

Don’t be like me and let your dreams and deadlines pass by: Remember to vote on Tuesday.

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com

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This piece was originally published in the Anchorage Daily News