Newspaper reporters and editors wonder why people don’t trust the media. In Alaska, it’s fairly easy to see the reason for the mistrust.
Exhibit A: The former Anchorage Daily News editor Pat Dougherty wants you to join him and “fight the fascists” running for Assembly. He invites you to an event in support of his candidates — the sitting Anchorage Assembly incumbents who brought the city to an economic standstill over the past three years, with their allegiance to former Mayors Ethan Berkowitz and Austin Quinn-Davidson.
The “Fight the Fascists” event is at Cuddy Park in support of incumbent Assembly members Forrest Dunbar, Meg Zaletel, Kameron Perez-Verdia, and John Weddleton, all who will be making an appearance at the Fight the Fascists event.
According to Dougherty, Save Anchorage is a fascist organization and is also an “insurrectionist” group. Save Anchorage is a Facebook page for centrists in Anchorage who object to the city being taken over by leftists on the Assembly and School Board.
In Dougherty’s thinking, opponents of the current Assembly members are fascists to be fought.
A look at Dougherty’s “fascists”
Democrat Forrest Dunbar, representing East Anchorage, is challenged by Stephanie Taylor, an African-American mother and volunteer who came to Alaska as a child, when her father transferred in the military. She is a traditional, conservative, church-going and community-volunteering resident of East Anchorage who has taught many classes in youth leadership. Dougherty would classify this as “fascism” that needs to be fought.
Democrat Meg Zaletel, in midtown-south, is being challenged by Kathy Henslee, a mother and grandmother who works as a real estate agent and tries to not be the first in the room to whip out photos of her grandchildren. “As I have watched the public servants in my beloved city ignore the citizen’s needs and make everyday life more and more difficult with restrictive regulations, out of control spending, and harmful social ideas I felt the need to act,” Henslee says on her campaign site. Her core principles are “Respect very person, Protection for our personal freedom, Humbly serving my neighbors, Upholding the rule of law for every citizen, the same way, every time, and A smaller government that encourages its citizens to pursue life, however, they want to live it, and then purposefully tries to stay out of the way,” she says on her campaign site.
In Pat Dougherty’s mind, this represents “fascism.”
Democrat Kameron Perez-Verdia, who serves on the Assembly for West Anchorage, has a challenger in Liz Vazquez, who served in the Alaska House of Representatives. Vazquez was born in poverty in Puerto Rico, and pulled herself up by her bootstraps, graduated from law school.
Vazquez says, “I am an American of Puerto Rican heritage and an example of the American dream. I started school in Puerto Rico and learned English as a second language. My parents never finished high school and I was the first in my family to graduate from college. After eating a lot of macaroni and cheese, I obtained my law degree and later, my two master’s degrees.”
She is a former assistant attorney general for the State of Alaska, and a former criminal prosecutor, administrative law judge, who served four years on the Anchorage Equal Rights Commission.
In Pat Dougherty’s mind, this represents “fascism.”
“The road hasn’t always been easy, but it has been worth it, and it has taught me to see challenges as opportunities. The great reward has been serving Alaskans,” Vazquez said.
Democrat-associated John Weddleton, the Assemblyman for South Anchorage who is running for reelection, is being challenged by Randy Sulte.
He moved to Anchorage in 2004 with his wife and children. An Eagle Scout, Sulte attended the Colorado School of Mines and Seattle University Albers School of Business, where he earned a MBA. He is an engineer and a pilot. He is also chief operating officer of Kakivik Asset Management and CCI Industrial. Sulte has served for 16 years on the board of Youth Exploring Adventure (Hill Top Ski Area), where the board brought back ski racing, made significant site improvements, and in 2021 opened a new lift served bike park.
In Pat Dougherty’s mind, this represents “fascism.”
Dougherty, who boasts a Pulitzer Prize during his long career at the Anchorage Daily News, is still a now-and-then contributor to the newspaper’s opinion pages and spends his days holed up in his south Anchorage home, retweeting savage messages from the Anchorage Press, the Blue Alaskan blog, Anchorage Action, and Dermot Cole, all extremists propaganda machines of the Left that are out of step with everyday Anchorage residents who voted for a conservative mayor who will fight the hard-leftists on the Assembly.
Dougherty hid his extreme views well when he was the editor of the Anchorage Daily News, but in retirement has let loose his true nature, liberally pouring on the “fascism” label as the next next municipal election approaches.
Dougherty may be doing more to undermine journalism in Alaska than the leftist crowd that currently runs the ADN.
A Gallup poll released in October found that just 36% have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of faith in what they see and hear in the news media. Pew Research also released results last summer, showing that conservatives don’t trust the media, while liberals do:
“Nearly eight-in-ten Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (78%) say they have “a lot” or “some” trust in the information that comes from national news organizations – 43 percentage points higher than Republicans and Republican leaners (35%) – according to a new Pew Research Center survey conducted June 14-27, 2021. This partisan gap is the largest of any time that this question has been asked since 2016. And it grows even wider – to 53 points – between liberal Democrats (83%) and conservative Republicans (30%).”
Anyone who calls an Eagle Scout a “fascist” deserves to be ignored and shunned from polite society.
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The man is obviously deranged, as evidenced by his behavior.
What a terrible life Pat Dougherty has chosen to now lead . It must be awful to face each day covered with such hate and mistrust of everyone only to see the folks waking up to the pit falls in his messages over the years as he used the ADN to try whipping Alaskans into following his misguided messages. Anchorage is awakening and his forces of evil are about to lose a big battle in another few weeks and greater losses in November as well…
One of the tenets of the LEFT is to blame the opposition of doing what the LEFT is already doing. They use this “smoke and mirrors” tactic to obscure the evidence of who the true fascists are.
I agree. Fight the Assembly and the school board at every possible turn.
It’s decision time Anchorage. Self governance or fascism. My money s you’ll go fascist, but I’d love to be wrong.
I remember living in Anchorage in the 80s. Best place in America, easy. My time there in the 2010s was so disgusting I moved to Juneau.
It’s cold. its wet. And I hope they all own cleats unless its a drive-in event to watch the theater from your car. They should take Don Young advice, be nice. You don’t want to kick off your campaigns being negative. This tactic doesn’t work when the community is hurting in their wallets and in their families.
Not only is this community deeply hurting, they are lonely. Most People are more receptive these days to peoples whose communication isn’t so devisive and harsh like fascist. Now there is going to be a movie showing at e street theater at 7pm, they will be showing ‘uncle tom.’ its a history film about conservatives.
Democrats- the reason why we can’t have nice things.
Perhaps they should be show Doctor Zhivago instead. A love story with the back drop of “change”, broken promises, and fear of a rising authoritarian state.
Those guys ARE the fascists!!
“Fight the fascists.” Wow. How profound, how dramatic, how righteous… and how keenly intolerant. We witnessed how the ADN had drifted from Liberal to Left many decades ago, and now its old editor has seen fit to reveal his dark view of many or most citizens of Anchorage – scores of thousands of us are FASCISTS. There it is; MSM newsman Dougherty has tossed that terrible word right out on the table. Dougherty’s accusation reveals more about the state of his soul than about the viewpoints of his political adversaries, so it behooves us to pray for him, and to vote – for the Save Anchorage candidates.
We all knew Pat was a left wing extremist in all those years he was the “editor” at the ADN.
Regardless of how strongly you feel about political beliefs – to call good people “fascists” is a super lowbrow tactic. I am always stunned when I see people like Halcro and Dougherty broadly spew these insults.
The Left is proving more each day the axiom: “Whatever they accuse you of – you can be sure they are already doing it to you!”
Dougherty and Dermot Cole represent the extreme Left wacko writers who entertain a fantasy that readers are hypnotized by them. They think they are the pied pipers of daily opinion editorials. These little —- with ink cartridges and feminine hands purvey their radical messages through contrived paragraphs of insanity and hate. Petulant children who have not grown up, thinking that they have made a useful impact in their world. Their fantasies of mind control through their poison pens have made mad mouses of them. As they scurry away after each editorial, afraid that someone will find them and confront them physically for spreading lies and panic. They live in fear that they will be found, like a criminal who strikes and goes directly into hiding. They have their poetry to protect them.
Isn’t one of them pushing up daisies now?
I grow fatigued when I hear “facist”, or “nazi” to describe republicans/conservatives. It diminishes what the holocaust was, what the Nazis did. It also demonstrates that left can’t win with their policies or ideas. The ad-hominem attack, and cheating, is all they’ve got. Jefferson had a great point to Dunbar the other day “if your woke step aside for the minority woman”. The people that are the target of the hate rally are the people they claim to defend. This assembly is a disgrace. The non-transparent, iron-fisted, take away rights from people that have a Bill of Rights resembles the Nazis more than Republicans. But since logic and ideas aren’t the focal point of politics anymore, I’ll try my hand at this: From the president down to our assembly and even school-board, democrats have become the thing they claim to fight against.
How sad. But I must add, as a former co-worker and fishing buddy of Pat’s with no interest whatsoever in joining online shit slinging as to MOA politics, it is startling to see a retired, anti-labor executive like Pat calling other people Fascists. It is harder still to forget that day long ago when he returned to a fish camp along the Situk River to find a pair of Anchorage Daily News reporters discussing the pros and cons of a newsroom union. A long diatribe followed on what a stupid idea that was and what idiots they were. That sadly was the end of a bunch of fishing friends making steelhead pilgrimage to the Situk – Pat having made it clear there are two classes of people in the world: bosses and workers, and the latter should just STFU. His belief then as to how everyone was blessed to work for The McClatchy Company, and how unions are inherently evil, does make one wonder about the sincerity of the beliefs he now sometimes professes. In the history of trade unions and Fascists – ‘https://neu.org.uk/media/3056/view’ – he would clearly have been on the Fascist side. Is it possible he is now simply trading on his reputation as a former ADN editor in order to get paid to spew socially divisive, partisan, Trumpesquean vitriol others believe will help get them elected? Since midlife, maybe sooner, Pat has been more about money – or at least money for Pat – than about journalism. It’s a shame how his over-the-top behavior now reflects on a business struggling mightily with credibility problems. It would be nice to see him show a little more restraint, but that appears a hopeless wish.
So this will be a Fight Club event?
Will it be on pay-per-view?
Sexist and Racist in one fell swoop!
Gotta hear it for Little Paddy!
It usually takes at least two performances to achieve both.
And that’s just with one comedic performance!
That is going to be a large, fat “No, thank you”.
Liberal leftists are always angry and really dislike happy conservatives. They live their life in hate and try to get everyone else to join them in their hate. They have no understanding of individualism, freedom and what our country was founded under. Freedom necessitates individuality, which they can’t stand, because the smart liberals want to control and the dumb ones want to be controlled whether they realize it or not.
“Attempting to redefine reality is delusional and serves only as a defense against emotional discomfort.”
M. McDonald MD
I’m still waiting for Forrest Gump Dunbar to refrain from exercising his racist, misogynistic, and patriarchal white privilege, and summarily surrender his seat to his black female opponent. Because ‘equity’ and ‘justice’ and ‘toxic masculinity’ demand it!
Someone from the far Leftwing ADN wants us to help fight the fascists??
I admit that it takes me by surprise that anyone from the ADN wants us to help fight Democrats……
“It is obvious what the fraudulent issue of fascism versus communism accomplishes: it sets up, as opposites, two variants of the same political system; it eliminates the possibility of considering capitalism; it switches the choice of “Freedom or dictatorship?” into “Which kind of dictatorship?”– thus establishing dictatorship as an inevitable fact and offering only a choice of rulers. The choice–according to the proponents of that fraud–is: a dictatorship of the rich (fascism) or a dictatorship of the poor (communism).
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That fraud collapsed in the 1940’s, in the aftermath of World War II. [[yet here it is AGAIN]] It is too obvious, too easily demonstrable that fascism and communism are not two opposites, but two rival gangs fighting over the same territory–that both are variants of statism, based on the collectivist principle that man is the rightless slave of the state–that both are socialistic, in theory, in practice, and in the explicit statements of their leaders–that under both systems, the poor are enslaved and the rich are expropriated in favor of a ruling clique–that fascism is not the product of the political “right,” but of the “left”–that the basic issue is not “rich versus poor,” but man versus the state, or: individual rights versus totalitarian government–which means: capitalism versus socialism.
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[” ‘Extremism,’ or The Art of Smearing,” Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, (1966) 180.] Ayn Rand
[[ ]] mine.
Face Off
Incumbents seek to keep control
Whilst keeping their team at their role
But the ‘Facists’ fight back
The latest ‘Marxist’ attack
Interesting to see how they’ll poll
With all these labels’ bombard
Reputations becoming more marred
Getting harder to tell
Who’ll spark the groundswell
No room left on my woke bingo card
How ’bout we stop with the naming
We’ve become aware of your gaming
Throw out a label; hope it sticks
We’ve become wise to your tricks
Enough already with the shaming
It’s the issues we need to hear
Messages said much more clear
So stop with the trashing
And he said/she said bashing
Let’s hear issues instead of the smear
The facsist are on the assembly, too bad the people of Anchorage seem not to notice.
That would be a REALLY stupid thing to do!!!!
Ha ha ha. He’s a joke. Could we say he’s a hardcore antifascist? That’s a mouthful. Let’s shorten that, he’s Antifa. Yea Anchorage needs that, I mean look how good it worked out for Portland.
The antics clowns did so well against that biker gang Gypsy Jokers
Here’s a thought… let’s get all the homeless and mentally deficient and alcoholic and drug and pornography addicted community members the Left insists on sheltering in the Loussac, and invite them over to the Fight the Fascism rally!
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Will there be coffee and donuts? All the better! Maybe we can get 200 or 300 homeless people to show up, I’m sure the compassionate left will love to embrace their fellow travelers.
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Let’s watch how the Left truly “cares” for these people, in person, in realtime.
Fascists? Maybe one day these guys will realize they’ve been living in a house of mirrors.
Did anyone even show up??? Guess there’s a news blackout on this
Drove by at 11am – two cars, Pat sitting in one of them. Lots of ducks!
Would have been a great time to start asking them about the Covid mandates they imposed, where did all the Covid funds go and why exactly were some of them and friends and families businesses flourishing while 70 plus other Anchorage businesses close their doors for ever. Inquiring voters would like to know
Shhhhh, Denali, don’t you know that you are NEVER supposed to ask such questions of your betters in government?
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You need to get with the program — blindly obey, and trust THE SCIENCE!
Who’s counting the ballots ( programming the Dominion machines ) ?
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