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.

Continue reading →

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 →

• The Koch brothers launched a Super PAC last summer that allows them to directly attack candidates, but also requires them to file  donors with the FEC.  Politico has the overview and history of the Koch brothers original super PAC and their newest entity.

• The Fairbanks News Miner’s adjective to describe yesterday’s Fairbanks gubernatorial debate is “animated.”

• Rasmussen Reports unveiled a new poll of 700 likely Alaskan voters that has Dan Sullivan in the lead with 48% and U.S. Senator Mark Begich with 45% with an error rate of 4%.

• If Ballot Measure 2 passes on November 4, then it looks like Alaska might already have found its new Pot Czar. The Juneau Empire has an article about Cynthia Franklin, and her potentially new role as the person in charge of writing the Alaska regulations regarding legalized marijuana.

Continue reading →

Here’s Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan, who, it should be noted, gets some of the best, tax-payer funded healthcare available, talking to KCAW, Sitka’s public radio station, about Medicaid expansion:

Sullivan said he opposes expanding a program that will inevitably add to the federal debt.

Sullivan: Doesn’t make sense for me to say we should borrow more money from China to expand a government program.

KCAW: Does that mean that you wouldn’t accept federal funds for anything in Alaska? Or specifically Medicaid?

Sullivan: “Well, take it issue by issue. If somebody said, you know, federal highway dollars for example can help build a road that could lead to good jobs and economic development, then you can see an end game there that’s positive…”

Medicaid, he said, doesn’t meet that bar.

“As far as expanding Medicaid, again, I’m not sure where it was ever determined that it’s the government’s role to provide Medicaid to x number of people…It was supposed to be a safety net. And it’s expanded to where the levels that are qualified I think go beyond a safety net and really just become I think another government entitlement program that’s unsustainable.”

If Andrew Halcro runs for mayor, which it looks like he might, the Uber situation will surely be one of his big issues. And it’s likely to be a winning one among voters, who will have a hard time understanding why, in Anchorage, Alaska of all places, they can’t decide what company they want to use to give them a ride to the airport.

Here are some tweets, thanks mostly to  the News-Miner’s Matt Buxton, from the governor’s debate in Fairbanks between Gov. Sean Parnell and Bill Walker. The impression, based on these at least, is that Bill Walker, who hasn’t excelled at debates, got plenty of jabs in.

With a few exceptions, the tweets are in reverse chronological order:

Governor candidates Sean Parnell and Bill Walker at today’s debate in Fairbanks. #akelect pic.twitter.com/NPX43yhhy1

— Rod Boyce (@FDNMeditor) October 14, 2014

Continue reading →

Here’s uber diviner Larry Sabato’s latest Senate race map as of Oct. 13. Unlike Stu Rothenberg, Sabato hasn’t moved Alaska’s Senate race to”tilt Republican,” leaving Alaska as one of three toss-up states.

• Politico’s Morning Score got the scoop on the latest and greatest of the ads coming to a TV near you. The DSCC has released a new ad called “The Pledge” focusing on Sullivan’s pledge to give employer’s control over birth control coverage while leading the camera down a scenic road in Alaska and winding around a medical office’s corridors and finally ending in a doctor’s office. Meanwhile American Crossroads has released their ad attacking Sen. Mark Begich on Anchorage’s fiscal situation when he became senator.  Cheryl Frasca makes an appearance wearing a stunning purple blouse.

• Lt. governor candidate Byron Mallot surprised many when he agreed that SB21 was working.

• Sean Parnell’s decision to appeal the federal court ruling allowing for gay marriage within Alaska has not gone unnoticed by Towelroad. While the issue of gay marriage might not add voters to Parnell’s column on November 4, could his decision add angry voters to Walkers’ side of the ballot results? Perhaps, if Walker spoke out forcefully against the appeal, that is, which he hasn’t.

• The Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman is opening its wedding and engagement page to same-sex couples. From the editorial: “While the state of Alaska says it will appeal this ruling, so long as same-sex weddings are legal in Alaska, their announcements are welcome in the Frontiersman — because we are for everyone….This is about treating everyone with dignity and respect. It’s about treating other people as we want to be treated ourselves.

• The Wall Street Journal has an article about how Native Americans could become the key to ensuring Democratic control of the U.S. Senate with turnout drive in both South Dakota and Alaska.

Continue reading →

Senate District N comprises portions of East Anchorage, the South Anchorage Hillside and stretches down through Turnagain Arm to Girdwood. Small pockets of the district, particularly in Girdwood, or Girdweird, as some call it, are Chomsky-style lefty. Others, particularly those who live in the mega-mansions on the hillside, are Reagan-righties. And its home to what will undoubtedly be one of the most expensive and hard fought legislative races in this election cycle. The Senate race in this district—pitting former legislator Harry Crawford against Republican incumbent Cathy Giessel, is a particularly hot race. The House races, which put incumbent Republicans Lance Pruitt and Mike Hawker versus challengers Matt Moore and Sam Combs, are less hot, but also competitive.

Here’s a little about the two candidates running for state Senate and the candidates running for the two House seats in the district, and my take on the current status of these races, for what it’s worth. Continue reading →

Gov. Sean Parnell’s campaign has had it rough lately. Today, however, it got at least a little boost when lieutenant governor candidate Byron Mallott admitted during a lieutenant governor’s forum that although he voted to repeal the oil tax bill, “SB 21 is working.”

Here’s the audio of that that’s zipping through the tubes:

The Parnell campaign said it was “pleased.”

Also along those lines, Tim Bradner has a piece about the $20 per barrel drop in oil prices since July and that the state is better protected against such drops under SB 21 than it would be under ACES. “We are much better protected under MAPA than we would have been at these oil prices,” Commissioner of Department of Revenue Angela Rodell is quoted as saying.

Bradner explains:

MAPA has a fixed tax rate of 35 percent while the tax rate under ACES fluctuated with changes in oil values and as oil prices drop the ACES tax rate would have dropped quickly. At $90 per barrel, ACES would bring in about $3.08 billion. Under MAPA, revenues would be $3.22 billion, according to an analysis by the Revenue Department.