Months ago, U.S. Sen. Mark Begich declined to sign an agreement which was proposed by Republican challenger Dan Sullivan which would have gone a long way to snuff out super-PAC and other independent expenditure money in the Senate race. The agreement would have required both candidates to publicly tell third-party spending groups, including super-PACS, to cease all television and radio ads which “clearly identifies either of us and supports or attacks our campaigns.”

If the groups didn’t obey, Sullivan wanted Begich to agree to donate 50 percent of an individual ad buy to the charity of the opposing candidate’s choice. A similar agreement worked to stem the flow of campaign spending from outside groups elsewhere.

Begich’s campaign called it a “political machination.”

Now, 26 days before the election, Begich is calling on Sullivan to sign an agreement that would require a similar allotment to charity if a group that doesn’t disclose its donors runs ads supporting or opposing candidates. Continue reading →

Here’s a comment from a reader—nominally edited–on the piece I wrote on Senate candidate Dan Sullivan’s seeming lack of knowledge of healthcare. I found it particularly interesting because the writer, like me, is insured under ObamaCare. And although this person has realized the benefits of the program, he/she still remains opposed:

I appreciate your analysis and personal touch in this article. I somewhat ironically remain opposed to the ACA despite being on the exchange for the better part of a year. I can appreciate the benefits the ACA brings to the under-served and marginalized portions of the population–especially in terms of the relativity cost effective Medicaid expansion and emphasis on preventative care. My experience on the exchange was not terrible. It was difficult to navigate, but I didn’t really experience any of the horrible glitches. Going on the exchange allowed me to work as a private contractor and cut my hours from 45 a week to 38 and I appreciated having that flexibly.

My problems with the ACA stem less from the practical merits Continue reading →

• FiveThirtyEight came out with their own Senate Forecast on Alaska’s U.S. Senate race resulting in Dan Sullivan having a 76% chance of winning in November. Harry Enten wrote a supplemental article to explain the details of the poll’s results.

• The Washington Times has a review about the new book on the prosecution of Ted Stevens, written by Rob Cary, a lawyer on the Stevens defense team. Full disclosure: the review is written by my father, who, if you read it, you can tell is a big fan of mine.

• In the coming years, politicians will determine the finer points of how ObamaCare affects our medical care. U.S. Senate candidate, Dan Sullivan has shown fundamental lack of understanding regarding this very important issue. His lack of healthcare knowledge has also been highlighted by the Dispatch and now by the HuffingtonPost.

• FactCheck.org has found that two of Senator Mark Begich’s ads are bogus regarding his claim that he “voted against Obama’s trillion-dollar tax increase.” In actuality, Sen. Begich voted against a resolution as part of fiscal year 2013’s spending levels. The particular ads in question are his campaign’s “Two Views” (otherwise known as Cheap Chic) and “Reprise”.

Continue reading →

Full disclosure: I’ve been a longtime supporter of ObamaCare, if nothing else because of my own personal experience with trying to get healthcare as a self-employed female with a pre-existing condition. Until the healthcare law was passed, I was one of millions of Americans who were caught in the outlandishly expensive and capricious mess of high risk health insurance pools, ones whose monthly premiums were twice my mortgage, and didn’t cover anything anyway.

In other words, I’m a little biased. But then again, so might be roughly 15,000 Alaskans, many of whom have affordable health insurance for the first time in their lives under the Affordable Care Act.

Senate candidate Dan Sullivan has run a pretty decent campaign so far. His philosophy has, by and large, gelled nicely with a large hunk of the electorate. And he has lived a life, apparently, that’s been able to hold up to scrutiny. Mostly, he hasn’t made a huge gaffe, which is pretty impressive considering that this is his first time running for office, ever. Continue reading →

For those of you who still have an interest in the infamous Palin family brawl, you can click here to read the witness statements released by the Anchorage Police Department. Some of the details are contradictory, but basically the outline of the story is consistent with what was initially reported: There were two big fights. Alcohol was involved, Track was shirtless and was bloodied. Todd entered the fray. Bristol punched the host repeatedly in the face. But what REALLY seemed to really tick everyone off was that people were calling each other names. All that’s missing is Sarah yelling at fighting crowd, “Do you know who I am?” But then again, that’s not something you’d think to tell the cops.

• CNN/ORC International has just released a new poll on Alaska’s Senate and governor’s race. According to the poll, Dan Sullivan is ahead by 6 percentage points, and Bill Walker leads with 51 percent of the vote. Needless to say, the internet is going gangbusters: Read Politico, Bloomberg, 12NewsNow, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal for more.

• Not to be outdone, Fox News has come out with their own poll on U.S. Senate races including Alaska’s. According their results, Dan Sullivan has a 4 percentage point lead over Sen. Mark Begich. The Hill has an article about both the Fox News and the CNN/ORC International polling results.

• Anchorage Mayoral candidate, Dan Coffey is mad at Lt. Governor Mead Treadwell for misrepresenting his stance on AO37.

• Is pot wining by 18 points or is it down by 10? Two different  local pollsters have two different numbers. I report, you decide.

• The AFL-CIO has an article that gives 4 KEY reasons why U.S. Senate Dan Sullivan is the worst candidate for workers.

Continue reading →

The Dispatch and APRN have joined forces to sue Gov. Sean Parnell’s administration to get public records relating to the National Guard scandal. The Dispatch and APRN claim:

…the governor’s office has been wrongly denying public records requests that could help voters verify whether Parnell acted swiftly in dealing with numerous allegations about mishandled sexual assaults, harassment, fraud, favoritism and other misconduct, including abuse of power, within the guard over the past several years. The two media outlets made the decision to sue after public records requests by their reporters were met with long delays and ultimately rejected by Randal Ruaro, the policy director and special counsel in the governor’s office, in broad-sweeping denial letters.

It took the state four months to deny APRN’s records request, and more than three months to deny Alaska Dispatch News’ request.

They’re also asking the court to order the Parnell administration to turn over emails related to the scandal that Parnell’s chief of staff, Mike Nizich, received on his personal account.

As I’ve said before, Parnell couldn’t have handled this in a worse way.

In response to Ivan Moore’s poll showing that the ballot measure to legalize pot was up by an eye-popping 18 percentage points, Dittman Research, whose firm has historically been accurate in its polling, released its own poll that showed that the measure was losing by 10 percentage points, 43 percent to 53 percent. Moore’s question was paid for by the group that is working to legalize pot in Alaska. Dittman is working for the group fighting against legalization.

Dittman’s poll was conducted Sept. 30 through October 3. Six hundred likely registered voters were surveyed. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percent. Dittman’s sample, as was Moore’s, was representative of the general election voter population in Alaska in age and party affiliation. Thirty one percent of Dittman’s sample were contacted via cell phones.

Moore’s poll was touted by the pro-legalization group as the only public poll released so far that reflects the language that is going to be on the ballot, and the only poll that had a true representative sample of “cell phones only” users, which Moore said is “highly significant.”

However, in his poll, Moore’s question includes the phrase “constitutional protections,” which isn’t in the ballot initiative language. (See the exact initiative text below.) Moore’s poll also asks if they “favor” or “oppose” the initiative, as opposed to whether or not they planned to vote “yes” or “no.”

Here’s the Dittman poll question, Continue reading →

David Holthouse, editor of the Anchorage Press, broke yet another highly damning story about the Alaska National Guard. Holthouse somehow got a hold of a confidential military report that focused on Lt. Col. Joseph R. Lawendowski, who is the guard’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Training. The March 3 report says that he was recommended for “other than honorable” discharge, for, among other things, allowing “recruiters to sexually assault and harass female soldiers, recruits and civilians,” while he was commander of the Alaska Army National Guard Recruiting and Retention Battalion (RRB).

And there’s more, including the fact that Lawendowski was the owner of a pornography company and co-founder of an “’end times’ fundamentalist group. Read the must-read here.

According to a question on a poll conducted by local pollster Ivan Moore, Ballot Measure 2, which would tax and regulate marijuana like alcohol, is winning in the state by about 18 percentage points, 57.2 percent to 38.7 percent The question about the measure was paid for by the group working to legalize pot in Alaska, and was asked as part of a larger poll that Moore was conducting. The sample size was 568 likely voters, and was conducted Sept. 26-30. The margin of error is 4.1 percent. (I’m waiting for the complete demographics.)

Taylor Bickford, who’s running the legalization campaign, said that the numbers seem a little optimistic to him. Older internal polls showed the campaign winning, but by a slimmer margin, he said. However, the poll is significant in that it’s the first public poll that asks the question exactly as it will appear on the ballot. A highly touted August PPP poll which showed the measure losing messed up the wording in the question. Further, the PPP poll didn’t call cell phones, which are a key demographic in this race.

Here was how the question was phrased:

There is an initiative on the General election ballot that would tax and regulate the production, sale, and use of marijuana in Alaska. Criminal penalties would be removed for adults over the age of 21 who possess up to an ounce of marijuana, and constitutional protections allowing home cultivation would be preserved.

Here’s the results:

• Favor: 57.2%
• Oppose: 38.7%
• Neutral/Undecided: 4.2%

• Katie John’s son, Fred John Jr., has a moving compass piece in the Dispatch about his mother’s legacy to preserve Alaskan Native rights and the role Dan Sullivan played by suing her and taking the state’s case to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

• Scott Kawasaki and David Guttenberg were the two Interior legislators that said at the Greater Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce that they were backing Ballot Measure 2, the initiative to legalize recreational use of marijuana. The Fairbanks News Miner has the lowdown on where the other Fairbanks area candidates stand on 2, and on the other ballot measures.

• LA Times columnist Doyle McManus calls Mark Begich’s Jerry Active ad “the worst Democratic attack ad of the Senate race.” And TIME calls it one of the five most dishonest political ads of the year.

Continue reading →

Senate District C’s delegation is likely to return to Juneau with at least one, if not two new faces representing the district. The district combines parts of Fairbanks with rural Interior Alaska. It’s a cold and unruly place, with an incredibly involved and unpredictable populace. Talk to them one minute and you think you’re among ruby-red Republicans. Another and you’d swear that everyone’s a Karl Marx disciple. And let’s not forget the villages, which offer their own unique flavor of politics. It’s my idea of heaven, for one day anyway, in July, armed with bug dope.

Here’s an overview of the Senate race and the two House seats in the district, and my take on the state of the races, for what it’s worth: Continue reading →