While we’re all waiting for the Division of Elections to tally the vote, a reader brought to my attention what appeared to be a very odd vote tally, which we now know is a mistake, from the village of Chefornak. Chefornak, with a population of about 400, is about 100 miles southwest of Bethel and 490 miles southwest of Anchorage. The error-ridden vote count from the village has made at least one election-watcher nervous, and will now likely make many others nervous as well.

According to precinct results from the Division of Elections, results which are now reportedly in error said DOE head Gail Fenumiai, the village bucked all the statewide trends and the 199 people who voted in the village on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly for third-party candidates. The village calculated the votes incorrectly, and new totals coming from the DOE tonight will have the correct vote count, Fenumiai said. However, since last Wednesday ,the public, if they were curious enough to look, would have seen that in Chefornak,  Independent Senate candidate Ted Gianoutsosk received 174 votes. Statewide, he only got 1.99 percent of the total vote. Dan Sullivan and Mark Begich combined received only 14 votes in Chefornak. In the governor’s race, the Alaska Constitution Party did pretty well in Chefornak. The Myers/Rensel ticket got 129 votes from Chefornak. Statewide, they received 2.47 percent of the vote tabulated so far. Combined, Parnell and Walker got 32 votes. Here’s a screen grab of the DOE’s results from the village:

• Division of Elections will begin counting its estimated 50K absentee and questioned ballots today. The division expects to get through less than half of the votes. It will update the tallies at the end of the day. As of right now, Dan Sullivan leads Sen. Mark Begich by about 8,100 votes and Bill Walker leads Gov. Sean Parnell by about 3,000 votes. The Fairbanks News Miner has a more detailed breakdown of they types of ballots and the collective assumptions of the ballot results.

• The HuffingtonPost took at look at Latino voters and Nov. 4 election. Immigration was the main issue on their minds as they headed to the polls and while Democrats won the majority of those ballots being cast, President Obama’s empty immigration talk meant Republicans picked up a sizeable chunk because it is now abundantly clear this voting block is no longer happy with overtures-results are required for voter loyalty.

• The Alaska Journal of Commerce announced that the BOEM has updated the Chukchi lease sale, though regulations still need to be met before drilling can occur making exploration in 2015 unlikely. That might have something to do with six environmental groups filing a lawsuit with the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. to protect walruses from oil drilling off Alaska’s coast.

• Red-state Democrats are finding themselves in a new position of power heading into 2015 as bipartisan leaders for Sen. Mitch McConnell or Sen. Harry Reid according to Politico.

Continue reading →

Although Gov. Sean Parnell is down 3,000 votes, it’s possible, but unlikely that the 41,000 or so votes left to be counted will swing any other than they did on election night. We’ll know soon enough, but Republican turned Independent Bill Walker is likely to be the state’s next governor and his running mate, Democrat Byron Mallott is likely to be the lieutenant governor.

It’s an odd pairing, only made possible because of the National Guard scandal and the fact that Gov. Sean Parnell seemed to be caught flat-footed after the so-called “Unity Ticket” was announced on Labor Day. Prior, Parnell only had a shell of a campaign structure, which seemed to turn into a real organization only about two weeks before the election. By that time, most of the air-time was already bought and the National Guard issue dominated the media’s attention.

What wasn’t focused on much was the hallmark of Bill Walker’s candidacy: the fate of both of the natural gas pipelines, the smaller ‘bullet line” and the large diameter pipeline. Continue reading →

No matter who wins the upcoming Senate race in Alaska, the Republicans will be in majority, and this session, they’ll likely begin to dismantle some of the more easily dismantlable parts of ObamaCare.

One of the first to go will likely be repealing the medical device tax that was passed to help pay for the Affordable Care Act. The 2.3 percent sales tax on medical devices– surgical gloves, x-ray machines, defibrillators, even bandages– expected to bring in $30 billion dollars over the next ten years. The tax is low-hanging fruit. Some Democrats have been trying to get rid of it, mostly because of the large concentration of medical device companies in Massachusetts, New York and California, and because of the army of lobbyists the industry has hired. Continue reading →

• The Heat is On the Division of Elections to count those votes and for the campaigns in limbo to make a declaration of victory/defeat. The Fairbanks News Miner, the Daily Caller and many more are chomping at the bit to know the winners.

• Alaska is making the news, but not in so much as in a ‘Yay Alaska!’ way, but more in an [insert colorful explicative of choice] Alaska! The Christian Science Monitor, amongst many, has a piece by Becky Bohrer regarding Typhoon Nuri and its ripple effect of frigid weather for Outside.  How this winter vortex is going to affect our economic sector, that’s anybody’s guess.

• Teflon Don has coasted into another victorious Congressional term and that has caused KTUU’s Grace Jang to ask some of his previous opponents what they view as his strengths behind his roaring successes at the poll?

• The Hill has a glossy overview of some of the worst candidates of 2014.

• Chieftain Metals Corp. of Canada has provided scarce details regarding its desire to simply barge the ore coming out if its Canadian located Tulsequah Chief mine across Alaskan waters, instead of dealing with the difficulty of building a road to connect its Canadian mine to Canada’s current road system. Details here at the Dispatch.  Expecting more than a little ire from Alaskans when word of this starts to gain traction.

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On Wednesday, the Alaska state Senate Majority announced its leadership line-up. Yesterday, the House Majority announced its organization. And today, both the Senate Minority and the House Minority announced its leaders for key positions. (See both press releases below)

In the House, leadership positions were reserved for Anchorage Legislators. Rep. Chris Tuck will continue to be Minority Leader, Max Gruenberg will again be House Whip, and Geran Tarr will serve as the House Democratic Floor Leader.

However, two of the three House Finance Committee members–Reps. David Guttenberg and Scott Kawasaki–went to Fairbanks lawmakers. Rep. Les Gara from Anchorage will also sit on the committee.

In the five-person Senate Minority caucus, Anchorage Sen. Berta Gardner will be Minority Leader.

Here’s the Senate Minority press release: Continue reading →

• The brains behind the success of a Republican U.S. Senate told CNN that he wanted to thank Democrats for “sidelining their best messenger [President Obama].” Because the Democratic strategy focused on independents, the base was forgotten, left behind and in turn the Democratic candidates were left behind.  The Washington Post details losses with a spiffy color-coded chart (Alaska has been added to the chart with Dan Sullivan named, though it was acknowledged that the race hasn’t officially been called). To add further salt to the Democratic leadership’s wounds, the New York Times reports that the states that most benefited from ACA elected Republicans.

• The Begich campaign received some much needed support to hold off on a concession speech from the First Alaskans Institute. The group issued a release yesterday urging a wait until all the votes are counted. While this election is pretty well determined, nobody wants to anger the Native establishment since the wounds from the Murkowski write-in debacle are still fresh.

• House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi delivered her grim election post-mortem in a phone call yesterday. The Hill’ s anonymous source was on the 75 minute call. The message: it was a “terrible year” due to low voter participation, but that next year was going to be focused on expanding the party’s membership.

• The cats have been herded, power plays fought and lost. Alaska: meet the old boss, same as the new boss in the new state House Leadership ,with a few new faces.

• The Democratic Party didn’t just lose control of the U.S. Senate and even more seats in Congress; they lost virtually every rising star for future offices across the country. Politico explains what this “lost generation” means to the Democratic Party’s future.

• Jack Wenner of Haines fame has an op/ed in today’s Juneau Empire defending not only “The Road,” but also explaining why Haines supports the road to be built on the west side of Lynn Canal over the east side selected by then Gov. Tony Knowles in 2000.

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Unless something really weird happens, it appears that GOP Senate candidate Dan Sullivan’s lead will hold  (See this dandy chart from Alexandra Gutierrez.) However, nobody has yet called the race, as they might in another place where the major networks use statisticians, which typically call races based on probably results. Because we don’t have those in Alaska, typically candidates do it themselves when a win is all but sure on Election Night. Sullivan didn’t do that. It’s unclear why, but it’s led to some interesting charges.  One thing’s clear, if and when the race is called in his favor, it’s not an auspicious way to start a term.  See below:

More D.C. staff and consultants urge halt to #Alaska vote count. What’s the beef with counting all the votes? #aksen

— Alaska Democrats (@AlaskaDemocrats) November 7, 2014

Continue reading →

Bethel Democratic state Sen. Lyman Hoffman joined the Republican Senate Majority and will have a seat on the Finance Committee. Eminently practical, Hoffman, who’s been in the Senate since 1990, has served in nearly every kind of majority configuration imaginable. It’s also probably worth noting that Hoffman endorsed GOP Senate candidate Dzn Sullivan in the last weeks of the campaign. From the release:

“Senator Hoffman’s rural representation and depth of experience working on budget and rural energy issues make him a very valuable addition to our group,” said incoming Senate President Kevin Meyer (R-Anchorage). Continue reading →

• Yesterday U.S. Senator Mark Begich’s campaign manager issued a written statement that explained Sen. Begich was waiting for all of the ballots to be counted before making a definitive statement about the race. Dan Sullivan’s campaign manager told the Fairbanks News Miner, “The math doesn’t look great for Mark Begich.” For Begich to become Alaska’s Comeback Kid, he would need a substantial percentage of the uncounted votes, bucking the trend so far seen.

• Alexandra Gutierrez has an ingenious spreadsheet that shows AK Senate race projections. Here is also another spreadsheet that explains how the votes by precinct have come in as of Nov. 5 at 5:30 pm.

• Politico Magazine does not hold back on naming the worst predictors of the 2014-midterm elections. Don’t worry; this is not some boring piece with spreadsheets and graphs (though graphs are fun and shouldn’t be poo-pooed).  They have known political players named, what they said, when and to whom.  Favorite quote of the piece is DNC Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz on This Week: “I think we’re going to hold the Senate and the reason that we’re going to hold the Senate…is because we have a ground game that, I know [RNC Chairman] Reince [Priebus] would take ours over theirs any day of the week. …Rick Scott is going to go down to defeat on Tuesday.” One thing I’ve learned in the last months: candidates and parties who have top-line ground games don’t brag about them.

• E & E News has a piece about that fate of the natural gasline in a Bill Walker administration. Rep. Mike Hawker is quoted, pessimistically saying that Walker might set the progress back five to 10 years. “Everything we’ve accomplished on gas pipeline development is at stake,” he said. Larry Persily takes a longer view and says that the companies aren’t going to walk away from the project.

Continue reading →

There are still as many as 50,000 uncounted ballots floating out there, but the trend isn’t looking good for Sen. Mark Begich. However, so far the Washington Examiner is the only media outlet that I know of that has called the race for Sullivan. It would be more reassuring, however, if it backed up the call with some hard numbers. Never fear, the ADN’s Nat Herz, is on the case:

#AKsen outstanding vote projections, showing Sullivan picking up 1,100 more. https://t.co/ZQZTZlVyez h/t @alexgutierrez for ingenious design

— Nat Herz (@Nat_Herz) November 6, 2014

The pressure to call the race is mounting: Continue reading →

Amidst all the other political news coming out on Wednesday, the 14-person Senate Majority announced its leadership lineup. Here’s what we know:

Leadership:

• Senate President: Kevin Meyer from Anchorage.
• Majority Leader: John Coghill from North Pole.
• Rules: Charlie Huggins from the Mat-Su.
• Finance Co-Chairs: Anna Fairclough from Eagle River and Pete Kelly from Fairbanks.

Chairs: Continue reading →

With 97 percent of Alaska’s precincts counted, it appears that GOP Dan Sullivan beat Sen. Mark Begich in the most expensive race Alaska has seen and one of the most expensive ones in the country. As of 1:30 a.m., Sullivan had a 9,151-count lead. There are still 30,000 absentee ballots out. However, only about 18 percent of those are from registered Democrats, 32 percent are from Republicans and the rest from Independents, making a path for victory for Begich virtually impossible.

The governor’s race is more difficult to call. Independent candidate Bill Walker has a 2,935 vote count lead. However, given the partisan makeup of the votes still out, Parnell could still squeak out a win, though it’s going to be tough.

Two other House races are still too close to call and will also depend on ballots still out. Democrat Matt Claman, who I predicted would win the House race in West Anchorage against Republican Anand Dubey, is only 35 votes ahead. In Ketchikan Independent candidate Dan Ortiz is wining by a mere 19 votes against Republican Chere Klein.

If you’re interested in other races across the state, you can find updated results from the Division of Elections here. Or, you can just go to my predictions here.

I probably own my readers some color, but I’m too tired.  For now, suffice it to say that the winners were happy and the losers weren’t. More tomorrow.

The GOP Senate is now a reality.  And Sen. Lisa Murkowski will now chair the Energy Committee. How much of a majority will soon be mostly decided.  Until then, here is what political pundits are having to say about decided races and what the future may have in store:

In Colorado and North Dakota, voters have rejected their state’s ballot measures to categorize fetuses as “human” and “child” in their criminal codes.  Here is what Jennifer Dalven, Director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project told the Huffington Post about  Colorado’s fetal personhood measure:

“For the third time, Colorado voters have said loud and clear: We don’t want extremists interfering in our personal and private decisions, and we won’t stand for attempts to ban abortion.  This isn’t surprising: Voters in Mississippi, South Dakota, Florida and other states defeated attempts to curb access to safe, legal abortion. Time and time again, Americans have shown that they support a woman’s right to make the best decision for herself and her family.”

Confused about Louisiana’s “jungle primary system”?  You’re not the only one. Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia: Continue reading →