Politics

With ‘Friends of Maria’ who needs enemies?

November 27, 2017

BEGICH, BERKOWITZ, LOTTSFELDT HOSTED

Sen. Maria Cantwell came to Alaska in August, 2017 and took a tidy sum of contributions to her political action committee, “Friends of Maria.”

She was feted at a fundraiser by Mayor Ethan Berkowitz and former Sen. Mark Begich, and received tens of thousands of dollars in donations in the day she spent in Anchorage.

Cohosts of one fundraiser were regular Democrats and the event was at the home of Liz Perry and Lane Tucker.

A second event was held at Jen’s Restaurant and was hosted by labor lobbyist and Democratic campaign consultant Jim Lottsfeldt, Schawna Thoma, and Rachel Barinbaum.

Thoma and Barinbaum work for Mark Begich at his Northern Compass Group.

Now, Cantwell is flush with cash from her Alaska events, as well as others around the country that featured Democratic reliables like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and she is leading the opposition to opening the 1002 Area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

A Seattle Times story last week about the conflict that is festering between Cantwell and the Alaska delegation says that she is “burnishing her green credentials,” just as she did back in 2005, when she was able to beat the late-Sen. Ted Stevens on this very issue:

“In 2005, a first-term Democratic senator from Washington came out on top in a bristling confrontation with Alaska’s senior Republican senator, then at the peak of his power and determined to fulfill his quest to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil development.

“It was a signature victory for Sen. Maria Cantwell, burnishing her green credentials, as she corralled enough votes to defeat efforts by the late Ted Stevens to attach a refuge oil-development measure to a military-spending measure.”

Some of the Alaska donors who gave Cantwell more than $1,000 in August, knowing of her long history opposing Alaska’s push to open the coastal plain of ANWR, include: