WAS INCIDENT PROMPTED BY CLAIRE RICHARDSON’S FACEBOOK POST?
A member of the Republican Women of Juneau was verbally accosted in a grocery story on Monday by a woman wearing a Jesse Kiehl (for Senate) button.
The Jesse Kiehl supporter called the surprised woman out as a Republican and a “racist bitch.” She also took her photo without her permission.
The incident of intimidation occurred after the Lt. Gov.’s Chief of Staff Claire Richardson had named the Republican woman specifically on Facebook. In a small town like Juneau, this type of thing gets around fast, and Richardson is one of the most influential liberals in the Capital City.
The woman who was verbally attacked is a member of a racial minority. She’s never been attacked like that in Juneau before, and the attack put her in fear for her job. She is not a board member of the Juneau Republican Women’s Club, as Richardson alleges in her Facebook post.
Richardson, in other Facebook posts, also encouraged Juneauites to contact Sens. Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski to lodge complaints about a specific member of their staff who happens to be a Republican from Juneau.
This is the Sen. Maxine Waters playbook: Harass people in public and intimidate them.
The Republican women in Juneau have hunkered down, after being accused by Richardson for being anti-semitic, and now knowing that the Leftists are going to harass them in public.
While they are determined to remain above the fray, because their mailer was a fair commentary on taxes, they have altered their behavior because some of them fear for their safety after a senior member of the Walker-Davidson Administration has dog-whistled that it’s OK to attack them.
The mailer in question arrived in voters’ mailboxes over the weekend showing a politician stuffing money into his suit jacket. That image, Richardson says, is a slur on Jewish people. Candidate Jesse Kiehl is Jewish. The intent of the mailer was to talk about the danger of electing a tax-and-spend liberal.
A CALL FOR HER DISMISSAL
Claire Richardson is a senior member of the the government and has a key oversight role in today’s election. Her role is especially important because former Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott resigned in disgrace last month and the new Lt. Gov. Valerie Davidson is probably not up to speed on election matters. She was the commissioner of Health and Social Services.
Must Read Alaska is calling for the Lt. Gov. Davidson to place Richardson on immediate administrative leave, because Richardson has compromised her role as a neutral arbitrator in this election over which she has so much influence.
Richardson has, through her actions, meddled in the election in a way far more egregious than mere Russian propaganda on Twitter. Richardson, using her bully pulpit, has created a climate of fear among conservatives in the Capital City on the eve of an election.
KTOO DOES THE STORY
The public broadcasting station in Juneau decided the mailer was worth a story, and interviewed Richardson, who said she was merely acting in her capacity as a private citizen.
However, Richardson is a political appointee in the office overseeing elections. She has now made public statements against the activities of a political party, and she has done so on the day before the elections.
KTOO illustrated its story with a doctored photo of the mailer in question, turning the hands blood red. On the left is the KTOO version posted yesterday, while on the right is what the mailer actually looked like as it was received in mailboxes:
Later Monday evening, the KTOO image redness disappeared and the image posted now is closer to the original on the mailer. Must Read Alaska has asked the KTOO newsroom for an explanation of what happened with that image over the course of several hours on Monday. We’ll post the response.
Scott Kendall, the governor’s chief of staff, was featured in the Washington Post today also criticizing the Republicans for the image of using cash to represent taxes. He sees it as a representation of stereotyping.
“I was revolted,” Kendall told the Washington Post, adding that the ad was blatantly anti-Semitic. “Jesse is proudly and prominently a member of Juneau’s Jewish community. . . . It is tough for me to process through that and not see an ill intent.”
Kendall, in a text exchange with Must Read Alaska, said he did not believe that the Republicans who approved the ad were anti-semitic, but that was an entirely different opinion than the one he gave to the Washington Post.
