- Citizens all across the state will be heading to the polls today to vote on local candidates and issues. Here’s a summary from the Juneau Empire of what voters will be voting on in Juneau. KTOO has a wealth of info on Southeast. Here’s one from Fairbanks. Here’s a primer from the Home News of the mayoral races in Homer. Here’s a nice piece with local color from the Arctic Sounder about the elections in Kotzebue. Here’s one from the Frontiersman on the races in the Valley. And on this site, I profile three mayoral races across the state, and for no good reason, try to predict the winners.
- Dillingham, Alaska is the proud recipient of being named by the Washington Post as the town that could determine the fate of the U.S. Senate in November, which is kind of ironic because I wrote that Wasilla is the town that could determine the fate of the U.S. Senate. Someone else will no doubt soon write that it’s Fairbanks. Apparently we all keep forgetting that the majority of voters live right here in Anchorage. But that doesn’t work quite as well as a narrative device.
- APRN’s Alexandra Gutierrez has a great overview of the Alaska National Guard scandal and Gov. Sean Parnell’s reaction to it.
- Unlike the Anchorage Assembly, the Anchorage School Board chose to stay out of the Ballot Measure 2 issue by simply reaffirming the ASD’s commitment to promoting drug-free schools in a resolution that passed 7-0 last night.
- The Denver Post quotes John Hickenlooper who called Colorado’s decision to legalize pot “reckless” while speaking at an economics forum. According to the Post, Hickenlooper, who’s up for reelection, believed Coloradans “lacked enough data about health effects in voting for retail pot, and suggested other states should take heed.”
- Democracy Corps and Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund joined together to conduct a poll of 1,000 likely voters across 12 major Senate battleground states. The pollster, GQRR, told RollCall that women, particularly unmarried women, may hold Democratic candidates’ victories in their hands this November, hence all the ads catering to us. All of this basically confirms what many of us unmarried women already know: they love us until they leave us.
- Molly Dischner with the Juneau Empire reports that tribal organizations in
SoutheastSouthcentral and Southwest Alaska are asking the Board of Fisheries and Board of Game within the Alaska Department of Fish and Game for a larger role in wildlife management.
- To much anticipation, and with promises of a big announcement, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro was in Anchorage yesterday, touring Mountain View with Sen. Mark Begich before the two headed off for a chamber talk and a fundraiser. The big announcement? Housing grants that had been announced by the whole delegation on Sept. 30. Republicans smelled politics at play!
- Politico has a piece about the emotional ties political community members have with polling results.
- The New York Times is reporting that Democratic campaigns are running better than Republican campaigns overall. The outlier? Alaska’s U.S. Senate race.
- Liz Ruskin with APRN has a profile on Rep. Don Young’s strong personality and how it has added color to Young’s legislative history. Democratic challenger Forrest Dunbar is quoted as saying, “He was effective once. Now, not only is he not powerful, but he’s also counterproductive.” However, Young can point to a record of passing more bills that any other congressman but for one this past session. The propeller beanie hat and the Archie Bunker shtick might be absurd, but it seems to work.
- Yesterday was a huge one for gay rights across the country when the Supreme Court decided decision to not hear gay marriage. Experts say that the decision signaled that gay marriage would soon be law across the land, including in Alaska. However, there was a lack of outrage from Republican candidates on the very issue that was once their party’s rallying cry. In fact, The Hill reports that here in Alaska, both U.S. Senator Mark Begich and his opponent Dan Sullivan were mum on the issue.
- Wish there was a Match.com for small political donors and their ideological matching candidate? Now there is. The Huffington Post has an article about how CrowdPAC is providing just this service for people who want to back “their kind” of candidate- district boundaries be damned. Who is your political mate?
Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com
L48 Dan is up in Fort Yukon, asking folks how does Don Young get away with listing his residency address there? Rumor has it, no one will talk about Don Young and the only question L48 Dan gets is “hows the weather in Maryland?”…
L48 Dan has also decided to float the Yukon, on a raft, just like Mark Twain did on the Mississippi (childhood dreams realized with the help of family campaign money). But honestly, his campaign staff is hoping he’ll wear that spankin new carheart coat and dirty it up. But his campaign staff, in a moment of clarity, realized Twain didn’t wear a coat, so L48 Dan probably won’t either.
Latest info is that Put Alaska First, the PAC that is 99% funded by Harry Reid’s PAC, has spent $6.8 million supporting Begich.
https://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/detail.php?cmte=C00544346&cycle=2014
Small World Dept: APRN’s Alex G’s former boyfriend is ex-WaPo, ex-Slate, now Bloomberg political writer Dave Weigel. They drifted apart after she took a job in Dutch Harbor.
Where oh where is Dan S. Sullivan? Where oh where can he be?
It looks like he stumbled his way through the fisheries debate, and then was yanked into hiding by his handlers. He isn’t campaigning, he is hiding from everyone in this state, and hiding behind the outside money that props him up.
Marky Mark has a funky bunch of outside money propping him up too, but he is actually out, reaching out to the people and taking the risks a candidate should take. Sullivan seems to display absolute disdain for the political process here. If he doesn’t wise up to the need for public involvement, for the need to expose himself to criticism and respond in a dignified, diplomatic manner- he’s at best a 1 term senator and quite possibly a 0 term senator.
I really appreciate and like your morning news wrap-up. In its short time of existence, I have really come to depend on it as my primary news source to stay on top of politics.
My only constructive criticism is to keep away from articles that come from irresponsible biased reporters like Liz Ruzkin. She might as well be on Begich’s payroll. Who knows, maybe she is. Thanks.