Alaskans for Posterity, a shadow group meant to trick voters with a name similar to Americans for Prosperity Alaska, has broken campaign laws by spending money to oppose candidates, while not disclosing its top three donors.
Read: Shadow group emerges as political player, mimicking Americans for Prosperity Alaska
The group has spent advertising dollars to do a radio air-bombing of Gov. Mike Dunleavy, and has published a flier in the past month attacking Eagle River Assemblywoman Jamie Allard. Both are declared candidates.
Who is paying for the ads? That’s the secret that Alaskans for Posterity doesn’t want to reveal.
Must Read Alaska has linked the Ship Creek Group to the Alaskans for Posterity, and it’s clear that principals and satellites of Ship Creek Group are involved.
But the radio ads targeting Dunleavy were placed by Gonzalez Marketing in Anchorage. Gonzalez Marketing shares the same building as Lottsfeldt Strategies. Lottsfeldt Strategies has a close business alliance with Ship Creek Group, whose managing partner John Henry Heckendorn came to Alaska to work for Jim Lottsfeldt and run the Rep. Andy Josephson campaign.
Lottsfeldt, who mainly lives in Portland these days and travels the world extensively, comes from a longtime Alaska political family and works primarily for Big Labor, Democrat candidates, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
The radio ad targeting Dunleavy ran from Oct. 11 through Oct. 15. It appears that when Alaskans for Posterity was notified by APOC that the ad was illegal, the group pulled it down, rather than run it through Oct. 24, as planned, with their top three donors revealed.
The Alaskans for Posterity group’s flyer also claimed, without evidence, that Assemblywoman Allard is responsible for the Covid crisis.
Allard has begun the process of filing a complaint with APOC about the group for not revealing its top three donors. The typical fine is minor — it’s $50 a day for every day the people who bankrolled the attack ads are not revealed. But it’s obvious the group doesn’t want its financial backers known as evidenced by the work it has done anonymously — so far.
Americans for Prosperity, the group of conservative activists, told Must Read Alaska that there’s little it can do to legally to block Alaskans for Posterity from copy-catting its name. State Director Bernadette Wilson said other state chapters around the country have faced similar challenges with fake name-similar groups trying to confuse voters.
