Begich ad goes after Treadwell and Sullivan for extreme pro-life stances

Below is an ad from U.S. Sen. Mark Begich’s campaign highlighting GOP candidates Mead Treadwell’s and Dan Sullivan’s extreme pro-life stances. If nothing else, the ad should put to rest the question about where the majority of Alaskans stand on the choice issue. Begich is a lot of things. Out of touch he isn’t. There’s been speculation that Begich is airing the following pre-GOP primary ad in order to boost Mead Treadwell’s support among the most ardent conservatives, who make up a relatively large chunk of the primary vote, and who have been suspicious of Treadwell’s commitment to the cause. It worked in Missouri when Democrat Sen. Claire McCaskill ran pre-primary ads calling GOP primary candidate Todd Akin “too conservative for Missouri.”

It’s unclear if that’s Begich’s motive, or if he’s including Treadwell in the ads because he thinks Treadwell has a chance of winning. Indeed, polls are tightening and it’s likely to be a close race. What is clear is that prior to running for office in 2010, Treadwell was known as a moderate, good government Republican, more interested in Arctic treaties than in firebrand conservatism.

Also interesting is that there’s no mention of Joe Miller, the most conservative of all of them. However, Miller is getting some help from the Nevada-based conservative super-PAC, Our Voice, which began running ads on Fox, tying Sullivan and Teadwell to Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Not much is known about the group, and an FEC isn’t listed for the Alaska-spend. According to the latest FEC filing, the group only had $2,040 cash on hand.

Here’s Begich’s ad:

Keithley to spend big targeting big-spending lawmakers

Until now, with a few exceptions, most of this fall’s state legislative races have seemed pretty predictable. The Democrats might pick up a few seats, but the House will stay in Republican hands, and though there might be one or two new faces in the Senate, it’s been assumed that there wouldn’t be huge upsets or surprises.

Brad Keithley spending up to $200,000 on some races could shake things up.

Keithley a lawyer until recently with Perkins Coie and now a consultant, has tried, and to some extent succeeded, in elbowing his way into Alaska’s political class by preaching fiscal responsibility. Last winter, he was toying with a self-financed run for governor. His model was Ross Perot’s self-financed independent presidential run. Keithley opted out of the governors race, however. Continue reading →

Loose Lips: Parnell hits the Crossbar. Messy Mead-mail. Absolute power breeds complacency?

Donald Bullock Jr. is retiring from state service. Most recently, he was a lawyer for Legislative Legal. Like many good state workers who are actually doing their jobs, you might not have heard much about him. Yet he was a key to making the Legislature work. He basically wrote the legislative changes to the most recent oil tax and gas pipeline bills. Here’s wishing him a relaxing retirement.

KFQD talk show host Bernadette Wilson spoke into the mic with breathy excitement on Tuesday, claiming that at long last, she finally had the piece of information that was going to bring down Dan Sullivan. Cue a personal email that her guy, Mead Treadwell, received in 2009 from Sullivan when Sullivan was in D.C. eyeing the job for Alaska’s attorney general, where Sullivan talks about having “Outsider” status, who is “not part of the current Alaska political system:”

sullivan email treadwell

The real lesson? Don’t send Mead Treadwell a personal email in good faith Continue reading →

New polls show tightening in GOP Senate primary

A new PPP poll shows that GOP Senate candidate Dan Sullivan has a six percentage point lead against Mead Treadwell in the Republican primary and a 15 percent lead over the other lead candidate, Joe Miller. However, 14 percent of voters in that poll are still undecided.

The poll interviewed 337 Alaskans July 31 through Aug. 3 who said they were going to vote in the Republican primary. PPP, which normally works for Democrats and Democratic causes, uses robocalls, which is a suspicious polling method. Too, PPP is not above using its polls to swing particular issues. That said, the numbers are consistent with a newly released poll done by Oregon-based Moore Information which showed Sullivan up eight points, with 22 percent of voters still undecided. Continue reading →

Katie Hurley stars in lt. gov. candidate Bob Williams’ new ad

Here’s Democratic lieutenant governor candidate Bob Williams’ latest ad featuring 93-year-old Katie Hurley. It’s a big get for Williams. Hurley is a Democratic icon in Alaska. She was a clerk to Alaska’s Constitutional Convention, a former legislator, and the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor in 1978. Williams, a Wasilla high school teacher, is running in the Democratic primary against Alaska state Sen. Hollis French for the seat. It’s his first time running for statewide office.

New poll shows No on 1 up 6 points, 14 percent still undecided

Oregon-based Moore Information conducted a poll of 500 Alaska likely voters on July 29-31. The poll was not conducted for any political candidate, political party, SuperPAC, or any group supporting or opposing the repeal of the oil tax bill SB 21. But it did poll on the issue.

Here is the question and the results:

In August, there will be a ballot measure that would repeal Senate Bill 21, a bill which grants tax breaks to oil companies. Based on what you know and have heard about SB21 and this ballot measure, would you vote yes to repeal tax breaks for oil companies, or no to oppose repealing tax breaks for oil companies?

The breakdown was:

Total Vote Yes – 40%
Total Vote No – 46%

Fourteen percent were still undecided, which seems like a lot two weeks before the election. The margin of error on a poll of 500 is typically plus or minus 4.5 percent. Moore also polls for Senate candidate Dan Sullivan, and has polled for Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Ted Stevens.

Vote Yes spokesperson T.J. Presley said that he wasn’t surprised by the results, considering the millions that have gone into the No on 1 campaign.

“We were always the underdogs,” he said. “We’ll just continue doing what we’re doing.”

Will NRSC endorse in Alaska GOP primary? Murkowski to stay neutral.

According to the D.C.-based publication The Hill, the National Republican Senatorial Committee is leaving open the option to endorse in Alaska’s GOP Senate primary, which, if it happens, would be a move that would break with protocol. So far, the NRSC has remained neutral, but according to Executive Director Rob Collins “we reserve the right to endorse.”

Here’s Collins:

I’ve also said early on in my tenure at NRSC that if the Democrats attempt to choose our nominees we will plot a course that Republicans are responding. This isn’t particularly directed at Alaska but just generally we have not sat idly as we’ve watched Harry Reid’s efforts to choose whom the Republicans nominate.

The pro-Begich super-PAC, Put Alaska First, has spent more than $3.7 million attacking GOP candidate Dan Sullivan. So far, the PAC has left the other candidates, Mead Treadwell and Joe Miller, out of the race.

In a phone interview on Thursday, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski shared Collins’ frustration Continue reading →

Leading up to GOP primary, Put Alaska First puts its money into going after Sullivan

Here’s the latest attack ad against U.S. Sen. candidate Dan Sullivan by the pro-Mark Begich super-PAC Put Alaska First, entitled “Decisions.” The ad is part of a new $439,000 media buy, which runs from August 1-10. This one, like the previous Put Alaska First ads, focuses on Sullivan’s role in HB77, a highly controversial bill that died in the Legislature last session amid public outcry. The bill would have cut through the permitting process to develop Alaska’s lands, and would have cut some Alaskans out of the process.

The ad is a compilation of the others that have gone before it. The kicker is when former Democratic lawmaker Sam Cotten says, “This idea was absolutely cooked up from someone who wasn’t from here,” which continues the theme of Sullivan not being from the state. It should be noted, however, that although Sullivan had a hand in drafting the bill, many Alaskan Republican lawmakers, as well as Gov. Sean Parnell, and many in the Department of Natural Resources including the current commissioner, supported the bill.

Put Alaska First has spent at least $3.5 million going after Sullivan, with some success, according to polls, which show Sullivan having higher negatives than would be normal for someone who has never held elected office. So far, the PAC has left the other candidates, Mead Treadwell and Joe Miller largely alone. Expect more ads against Sullivan leading up to the primary.

Anchorage-based political consultant Marc Hellenthal said that you can tell who Begich and his supporters are most threatened by based on those ads. They’d love to see Miller win, he said. But that’s likely too much of a long-shot. So they’ve settled on Treadwell.

“Begich wants Treadwell to win, or he’d be attacking him,” Hellenthal said. “They don’t want to run against Sullivan.”

Loose Lips: Here comes the kitchen sink. Streur and Bishop aren’t clicking. Kodiak detests decorum.

Rumor has it that local businessman and political activist Barney Gottstein gave the Yes on #1 committee a hefty six-figure contribution. However, a few strings were attached. Word is that the money came with the condition that former political consultant Joe Rothstein be involved in the campaign. Some with long memories might remember that Rothstein was the Daily News’ executive editor under Kay Fanning. Rothstein, Gottstein, fellow grocery store magnate Larry Carr and former U.S. Sen. Mike Gravel were all good friends back in the day. In her biography, Fanning unapologetically credits Rothstein for using his role as editor to get Mike Gravel elected to the U.S. Senate in 1968. “Having Carr and Gottstein behind him with Joe Rothstein writing pro-Gravel columns in the Daily News, gave Gravel a lot of momentum as the primary election neared,” she wrote. Some might remember that the town’s other newspaper, the Anchorage Times, always claimed that there was some sort of Democratic cabal going on at the Daily News, all of which brings to mind the adage about paranoia. Shortly after Gravel won the primary, Rothstein left the Daily News to run Gravel’s general election campaign.

Rep. Bill Stoltze celebrated his 54th birthday with a picnic at the Mat-Su River Park in Palmer, Continue reading →

Video: Young twists congressional staffer’s arm, literally

A recent video, first tweeted by NBC News, of Rep. Don Young has surfaced, showing Young apparently violently twisting the arm of a congressional staffer who was blocking him from entering a GOP meeting on the border situation. Watch the video here:

In a statement to the ADN, Young admits that he was wrong and said that “I should have never placed my hands on the young man.”

It’s the latest in a string of negative incidents involving Young, including making faces on the House floor while a veteran who died in Iraq was being discussed, a recent run-in with the the Capitol Hill police for barging through a barricade.

Loose Lips: The screaming, ballsy, Republican Party picnic edition

All in all, the Alaska Republican Party picnic on Tuesday night was probably the most benign picnic I’ve been to, and I’ve been making a point of going for about seven years, because you never know what can happen. The most dramatic one was in 2006, when Republican Party lawyer Bill Large got whacked with a Sarah Palin “Take a Stand” sign. The whacker was a 70-plus year old Sarah Palin supporter. Large left the state shortly thereafter.

But that was then, and this is now. And if you didn’t know any better, you would have thought that the dozens of candidates, staffers, and political operatives actually liked each other.

It was all mostly mellow, except when young libertarian leaning Jeff Landfield and the outspoken head of the Anchorage Women’s Republican Club Judy Eledge began to argue heatedly over immigration. The gist: Landfield just can’t understand how she, a pro-life, save-the-children Christian, can want the country to turn its back on the children who are showing up on the border. Continue reading →

GOP U.S. Senate candidate Sullivan’s new heart-wrenching ad

Here’s GOP U.S. Senate candidate Dan Sullivan’s new heart-wrenching 60 second ad. It features Wayne Woods of Palmer, whose son Shane died in Iraq in 2006 while serving in the Army. In a release, Sullivan’s campaign said that Woods approached Sullivan about making the ad “because I know he is the right man for the job, and this is the time when we need him most,” Woods is quoted in the release as saying.

Woods and Sullivan met shortly after Sullivan announced his candidacy and Woods has been a big supporter since. He attended a Veterans rally for Sullivan in March and told me then that he supported Sullivan because Sullivan shares his son’s values. It’s a line that he also uses in the ad.

Updated: Maryland-based pollster has Sullivan beating Begich by 5 points

Updated: A new poll by the Maryland-based firm Basswood Research shows that if the election were held today, U.S. Senate candidate Dan Sullivan would beat Sen. Mark Begich by 5 points, 45-40 percent with 14.6 percent undecided. The poll interviewed 500 likely Alaska voters June 29-30. The margin of error is plus or minus 4.4 percent.

The question was asked by Basswood as part of a larger poll for another candidate, who is not running for the U.S. Senate seat, and the topline numbers were released to me on the condition that I not name the paying candidate. It was a general election poll, and neither Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell nor Joe Miller were included.

Another word of caution: I don’t have the crosstabs and the makeup of the poll. So take from it what you will. Basswood, a Republican polling firm, has polled on Alaska races in the past. Recently, it’s polled for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and is one of the lead pollsters for the Club For Growth.

Update: A few of you have wanted to know how the question was worded. This is what was sent to me.

Question: Looking ahead, if the election for the United States Senate was held today and the candidates were (randomize), for whom would you vote?

Dan Sullivan 45.4%

Mark Begich 40.0%

Undecided 14.6%