By ALEX GIMARC
I filed a campaign finance reporting complaint against Mayor LaFrance a couple weeks ago. It was accepted and served against the Mayor on Sept 24. Complaint 25-18-CD is not yet available on APOC’s web site. Her reports for all campaigns are available there, however. The complaint finds the mayor did incomplete campaign expenditure reporting in her 2024 run for Mayor. APOC is asked to investigate and if necessary, fine LaFrance for multiple violations of state law.
Mayor LaFrance is not a stranger to this particular rodeo, having run in local elections three times, 2017 and 2020 for Anchorage Assembly and 2024 for Mayor. Her initial set of reports in 2017 did have some problems, there were three incomplete disclosures during that campaign. Two of them were out of state expenditures for advertising or digital advertising. Purchase of radio media on multiple frequencies was lumped into a single payment. The local voter has no insight into the allocation of funds amongst the six stations her ads ran on. Sadly, the events of her 2017 campaign are outside the APOC Statute of Limitations.
But LaFrance is a learning machine and filed an excellent set of reports for her 2020 reelection campaign for Anchorage Assembly. Her radio time buy on Feb 18, 2020, disclosed funds distributed to five radio frequencies. Another disclosed a vendor engaged in two tasks and the purchase of radio time in Anchorage with funds allocated for three different purposes. By 2020, LaFrance was clearly aware of state law and had no problem reporting expenditures to comply with that law.
Sadly, during her run for Mayor, that compliance disappeared, with over 80 failures to report which vendor was spending which campaign dollar on which ad on which station, something she had no problem doing four years earlier.
While I make no excuses for either state law or LaFrance, I simply point out that this is state law, applicable to candidates on both sides of the political divide. If I was snarky, I would note that media for the 2024 LaFrance campaign was done by three out of state media companies, DS Political, Hamburger Creative and Sage Media Planning and Placement, all based in Washington DC. Locally, her media buys were done by Amber Lee Strategies, Gonzalez Media, LLC and Alpha Media Group.
I do not expect the National democrat-connected companies to know or care about Alaska state law. I do expect her multiple deputy treasurers with more than passing connections to the Ship Creek Group to both care about Alaska state law and act accordingly. That they are singularly uninterested in compliance should tell us a lot about LaFrance, her backers and their willingness to comply with state and local law while governing.
In our analysis of LaFrance financial reporting, we find that she did not comply with Alaska state law on 89 items. Most of these took place before May 1, 2024, some 500 days ago. Failure to correctly report an expenditure puts a campaign at risk of a fine of at least $50.day. If APOC agrees following its investigation, the LaFrance campaign is on the hook for fines on the order of $2.2 million.
One of the mantras we heard endlessly from the political left and their cheerleaders in the media during anti-Trump lawfare 2021 – 2024 was that nobody is above the law. We are about to find out if Mayor LaFrance and her campaign are above the law or required to comply just like every other single candidate running for office here in Alaska. And we are going to find out how well APOC enforces violations of state law. While I hope for the best, I am ready for anything.
Alex Gimarc lives in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disabilities policies. His weekly column “Interesting Items” is a summary of news stories with substantive Alaska-themed topics. He was a small business owner and Information Technology professional.