Bob Bird: Alaska’s GOP must drop the dead weight — or ranked-choice voting and Democrats win

By BOB BIRD

The 2026 “open primary” is shaping up to be a very crowded field for Republicans. This will undoubtedly please the Left, who will run only one candidate. In the general election, which is when ranked-choice voting comes into play, a de facto canceling of RCV could happen — if the GOP survivors swallow their pride and Dahlstromize the general election.

This is a compliment to one of the actual candidates, Nancy Dahlstrom, who inspires about as much authentic enthusiasm as Mitt Romney eating boiled mutton, but she deserves credit for putting Nick Begich into Congress.

The Dahlstromization of the likely remaining three conservative candidates, whittled down to one, would guarantee that whatever pro-abortion, pro-NEA, pro-child mutilation, pro-communist Democrat is in the general election would be flattened like ribbon pasta in November. 

The candidates will all be talking about resource extraction, the Green Lobby, DC bureaucrats, how fish management should not be politicized, opening ANWR and the Naval Petro Reserve. They will tout Donald Trump as a good guy. 

Like the rest of us, every single conservative candidate has their flaws, but that’s OK. Yet every single one of them will miss the obvious and most important bull’s-eye, like a Thanksgiving turkey sitting atop a fence-post with a sign around its neck, saying “Shoot me!” Unless, of course, the conservative media and the voters keep up the full-court press.

The “people” are used as an abstract every election cycle. It is not much different than Marxist talk about “the masses”. Of course, it is impossible to believe that we all are on the same side. In the War for Independence 250 years ago, about a third of “the people” favored secession from the British, a third were loyalists and a third conveniently changed sides, depending on whose army was in their neighborhood.

After winning an election, the awarding of one faction’s preferred status is the usual outcome. Thus, someone is going to come out a loser: does the Left celebrate the drag-queen, Green, abortion lobby’s victory, or does the Right celebrate prolife resource extraction with school vouchers? And how about commercial, sport and subsistence fishermen? Trawlers, set-netters, drifters or dip-netters?

There is one solution to this, and it is just possible that we can force them to stop sweeping this filth under the rug, which is no longer hidden, but presents a bulge in the rug the size of elephant dung, with the accompanying stench.

What issue is it, then, that can actually unite “the people”?

It is not to promise any of the things listed above except our liberties. Freedom enhances all economic classes, and costs the beleaguered state budget absolutely nothing.

Tell me, what person does not want honest elections? What person does not give lip-service to the state or federal constitutions? What person does not want to empower the people and their instrument, the Grand Jury?

All sides brag endlessly about how free we are, even though it is increasingly obvious that it is not true. They talk about how our constitutions and Founding Fathers were so wise, but they have not read either the Federalist Papers, or the notes of Alaska’s constitutional convention. 

Now, we are going to argue over the meaning of the two constitutions, and here is where the teaching moment happens. It happens when ANWR, RCV, BLM, DEI, LGBTQ, NPR-4, etc, take a backseat to what really matters: constitutional talk. 

We cannot expect the citizenry to have read those documents, but those sworn to uphold them should, and they ought to understand them properly. Conservatives don’t even understand them, but most should have the integrity to begin doing so.

We do not have “three co-equal branches of government.” The legislature, as a body, is superior to the executive and judicial branches.

The constitution is not whatever the judiciary says it means. They can give advice. It may or may not be enforced. Take care of that, and the tyranny of the absurd judicial council will be emasculated, with or without a change in how we appoint judges.

It would immediately end RCV, abortion funding. And it would release home-schooling from the Judge Zeman tyranny.

Alaska’s statehood vote was flawed, and we — along with Hawaii — ought to unilaterally claim the four options that Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands and the Philippines still exercise. You do not ask permission for exercising what is rightfully yours.

Federal control of 65% of Alaska’s land is obviously unconstitutional. We ought to begin by exercising what Utah and Wyoming are initiating: claiming the Bureau of Land Management lands for the state. It would only be a start, but a good one.

Election integrity is vital to re-establish confidence in government. This will involve not only cleaning up voter rolls, but also discarding the vastly distrusted voting machines and mail-in ballots.

The mysterious and unworkable system of boroughs ought to be discarded, and turned into what the Census Bureau already calls them: counties. And with it, all the anglo-saxon common law rights that pertain to sheriffs, who will be more likely to protect us from rogue FBI and IRS raids, no matter what administration is in power in DC.

And all candidates for governor ought to advertise that they will unhesitatingly wield the unique power the state constitution grants them, found in Article 3, Section 16, to end statutory and constitutional abuses by either the judiciary or the bureaucracy.

This would not turn a hypothetical constitutional governor into a tyrant, but would rather return the power of the purse, the power to define privacy, the power to limit the jurisdiction of the court, the power of the line-item veto and the power (shared with the people) of amending the constitution where it belongs — to the legislature.

Citizens, regain the power the state constitution gives us, by demanding that all conservative candidates for governor not wait for some fictional, future ideal time to fix this broken state. Make them promise:

• To Dahlstromize the general election, by dropping out to the candidate that won the most votes in the jungle primary.
• To wield Article 3, Section 16 in regards to the many myriad ways the judiciary has overthrown the constitution.
• To restore election integrity with a lieutenant governor who will do so.

Yes, the mainstream media will squeal like pigs. Outside money will demonize all of you with insufferable ads and lies. It will be a good sign, because they know their stranglehold on our state would be threatened.

What’s wrong with that?

Bob Bird is former chair of the Alaskan Independence Party and the host of a talk show on KSRM radio, Kenai.

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