We don’t hear a lot from Carolyn “Care” Clift, who’s running for governor on the Libertarian ticket, and one of two women running for statewide office. (The other is Maria Rensel, who’s running for lt. gov. on the Alaska Constitution Party ticket.) So I thought I’d ask her a few questions.

First some background:  Clift moved from Arizona to Alaska with her husband Rob in 1979 to Aniak, where, while raising three children, she held various jobs, mostly in the education field. In 1996, Clift was hired by the Anchorage School District to teach special education, which she did for 17 years. Clift was always a libertarian, but became more involved with the Alaska Libertarian Party in 2010, after she retired from full-time teaching. While teaching part-time, she served as the communications director, treasurer, and now secretary of the Alaska Libertarian Party.  When the question of who could run as governor came up, Clift volunteered.  She feels that her background in organizational skills in both rural and urban settings gives her the insight to meet Alaska’s needs.

How are you different from the two major party candidates running for governor? Continue reading →

Here’s a nominally edited comment from a reader who gives some background on a previous National Guard investigation, which I looked into some. I couldn’t come up with much except for this story, and this Administrative Order, signed by Gov. Tony Knowles. Anybody else know about this? (Note:  After I published this, someone sent me this article from the Seattle Times about the investigation. It’s an interesting read.)

I am a former Alaska Guard Member who left the Guard in disgust after an extensive investigation that had been conducted in 1994 came to light in 1995. This was called the Hightower investigation and it produced more than 100 allegations of racial bias, official misconduct, theft of government property and misuse of government property. All of the allegations were highly credible and well substantiated.

When the report from this investigation became public, Gov. Tony Knowles established the Alaska National Guard Board of Inquiry with Administrative order 151 and then amended the board’s scope and duties with Administrative order 153. The Board was to investigate the allegations and develop a course of action and report their findings and recommendations to the Adjutant General (Jake Lestinkof) the Governor (Tony Knowles) and the leadership of both houses of the Legislature: House Speaker Ramona Barnes and President of the Senate Lyman Hoffman.

I at first thought Continue reading →

Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan wrote a strongly worded letter to U.S. Sen. Mark Begich on Friday, admonishing him for putting union negotiations at risk by entering a closed door meeting with Municipality of Anchorage negotiators and IBEW mechanics at the IBEW union hall Wednesday, Oct. 15. (The letter says that it was Oct. 18. In an interview on Friday night, Sullivan said that it was a typo.) Sullivan, it should be noted, is the candidate running for lieutenant governor on the Republican ticket, not the Dan Sullivan who’s running for Senate.

Begich’s campaign said that he hadn’t yet received the letter, and declined comment. They did confirm that Begich visited the union hall this week.

Although Sullivan wasn’t in the room, he heard from muni negotiators that Begich only stayed briefly. However, Begich’s very presence in the room, “put the negotiations at risk,” all the more so because Begich made “disparaging remarks about the current administration,” Sullivan wrote. He also wrote that Begich “attempted to discredit and intimidate the Municipal bargaining team.” Continue reading →

Here’s a Q & A with Lt. Col. Candis Olmstead, public affairs director for the Alaska National Guard, following David Holthouse’s story in the Anchorage Press about three National Guard recruiters who, according to internal documents, committed “sexual assaults and numerous cases of sexual harassment targeting fellow soldiers, new recruits, and civilian women, including high school JROTC cadets,” perpetrated by the three between 2007 to 2011. Holthouse’s story is based on the results of an internal investigation, called a 15-6, that were leaked to him. The questions are in bold.

Are they (the three recruiters) still members of the guard?

Without identifying or confirming specific names, I can tell you that recruiters who have been investigated are all still members of the Alaska National Guard until their boards are final, any appeals processes have been finalized, and administrative paperwork is completed.

When did the in investigations start, end, and who ordered it?

The first allegation of an improper relationship was reported to the organization in mid-Dec 2012; the accusation came into the organization at BG Bridges’ level and he dealt with it immediately.  A commander’s inquiry was started within 72 hours to see if the information necessitated a 15-6 Investigation.  When the veracity of the information was confirmed, a 15-6 was directed and an investigator was designated as the 15-6 investigating officer. The investigation revealed additional misconduct by other personnel, so concurrent investigations were directed and initiated within 60 days of the allegations coming into the organization. The investigator performed them all due to the interrelated nature of the circumstances.  As the investigation progressed, personnel changes occurred with Recruiting and Retention Battalion staff pending administrative actions and final determinations. All investigations were complete by February 2014. Continue reading →

Earlier this week, I posted an ad featuring labor leader Joey Merrick pitching voters to join him in voting for Mark Begich for the U.S. Senate. Evidently, not everyone with a union background feels likewise.

Former Alaska Teamster Local 959 head Jerry Hood, who is also Rep. Don Young’s long-time campaign manager, appears in this ad sponsored by the pro-Dan Sullivan super-PAC, Alaska’s Energy/America’s Values. The ad begins airing in Fairbanks today and later in Anchorage.

• 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.”

Continue reading →

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 →