In Al Gross’ latest radio ad, he says that in spite of what he has said on the record, he’s not really a liberal, but an Alaskan.
He is walking back his previous statements, in which he clearly said he will join the Democrats, which would put Sen. Chuck Schumer in charge of the Senate.
But then he gets confused about what it takes to be an effective senator. Gross says he’s a man who has “the cojones” to do the job of U.S. Senator. It’s an odd statement for someone as liberal as Gross, who stands with Planned Parenthood in favor of late-term abortion. Especially ballsy as a Juneau boy taking on a U.S. Marine who has served in Afghanistan.
“Cojones” is the Spanish word for testicles. Without thinking, Dr. Gross is saying that female candidate Alyse Galvin doesn’t have the biological equipment to do the job of a U.S. Representative, and even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi might be under equipped.
Kamala Harris? Wrong reproductive equipment.
But Chuck Schumer, he’s the man. He, too, has the testicles to say anything to get elected.
Al Gross has played the gender card, sideswiping women who might have considered voting for him.
Awkward.
From the Sullivan campaign, a “meet the real Al Gross” website was recently launched,showing the real record of the Democrat-backed candidate for Senate.
The recount is over and Kathy Henslee, who ran against Connie Dougherty in the Republican Primary, is the winner — by 5 votes — in District 23, Anchorage.
That’s one more vote than Henslee had before the recount was requested by Dougherty. The final count is 633 to 628.
“If you ever needed any more evidence that every vote counts, look no further than this race. Just over 19% of District 23 registered voters participated in the election,” said Kris Warren, district chairman for D-23 Republicans. “Shameful.”
Henslee will go forward to challenge Rep. Chris Tuck in the General Election. Tuck is the Democrat incumbent who serves a district that is majority Republican, with 2,696 registered GOP to 2,100 registered Democrats.
Dougherty’s political career is not over. Several are talking about getting her to run for the Anchorage Assembly, as she has had two races that have built her name recognition in the Campbell Creek-Taku area of Anchorage.
A group of litigants has lost in court in their effort to force the Division of Elections to mail absentee ballot applications to every Alaska voter.
The lawsuit brought by Anchorage attorney Scott Kendall on behalf of an outside group called Equal Citizens, was filed this summer after the Division of Elections and the lieutenant governor decided to mail absentee ballot applications to Alaskan voters over the age of 65, because they are at greater risk for serious complications from the COVID-19 coronavirus and may choose to vote from home, rather than in person.
No good deed goes unpunished, as the saying goes, and by helping out senior citizens, Lt. Gov. Kevin Meyer attracted a lawsuit from Kendall, who also heads up the effort to recall Gov. Mike Dunleavy and who also represents Ballot Measure 2, an effort to dismantle the Republican Party’s primary ballot and enact a “jungle primary.”
The lawsuit represented individuals under the age of sixty-five that Kendall said also face high-risk complications from the virus or who may not have access to medical treatment. The lawsuit alleges that by only mailing absentee ballot applications to those 65 years or older, the state is discriminating.
In Alaska, any voter may request an absentee ballot for any reason; the Division of Elections took a belt-and-suspenders safety approach to senior citizens, which are a high risk group. The state also launched an online application to increase access to absentee ballots.
Joining the lawsuit as “amici parties” (friends of the court) were Alaska Community Action on Toxics, The Alaska Center (for the Environment) Education Fund, and Planned Parenthood Votes Northwest and Hawaii.
They suggested that Alaska Natives are a high-risk population, too. And so are blacks and Pacific Islanders. Mostly, it appeared that the lawsuit was trying to increase the turnout of Democrat ballots, judging from the description they provided.
But Judge Joshua Kindred said that he was not going to second-guess the lieutenant governor on the decision to mail absentee ballot applications to senior citizens. Lt. Gov. Kevin Meyer had earlier said that group typically has a more difficult time with digital technology and might not be able to fill out an online application for an absentee ballot.
The judge acknowledged that Kendall had some good points, but not enough of them to sway the judge to get involved in forcing the State to conduct elections according to the Kendall prescription.
“Importantly, Plaintiffs minimize the reality that the State already has provided a path to mail-in voting to all Alaskans, and that remains true regardless of whether this Court were to grant a preliminary injunction,” Kindred wrote.
Referring to the attorney’s argument, the judge said it was not only “wanting, but appears to this Court to be fatally flawed.”
He continued: “First, it views the balance of hardships in a selective and convenient vacuum, conducting the balancing exercise without due consideration of Defendants’ perspective. Furthermore, Plaintiffs missed an opportunity to remedy this deficiency in their reply, instead reducing Defendants’ articulation of hardship as speculative. Second, and perhaps more damning, Plaintiffs misstate the purported harm. Every voter does have the right to an absentee ballot. Nothing about Defendants’ actions that give rise to this litigation alters the ability for all Alaskans to vote by mail. Nor do Defendants’ actions alter the fact that all Alaskans must apply to exercise their right to vote by mail. “
The ACLU of Alaska and associated groups are threatening to sue the Lt. Governor and the Division of Elections because the groups say people should not have to have their absentee ballot signatures witnessed.
If Lt. Gov. Kevin Meyer actually waived the witnessing requirement, he would be breaking Alaska Statute.
But the groups are peeved because Democrats made a big effort to get out the absentee Democrat vote, and more than 10 percent of the extra votes they can rightfully take credit for — some 1,200 votes — were thrown out because the voters didn’t follow directions and have their ballots witnessed.
“The ACLU of Alaska, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the Native American Rights Fund call upon Alaska’s Lt. Governor, Kevin Meyer, to remove an unnecessary voting barrier facing Alaskans in the November General Election,” the group wrote to the lieutenant governor on Monday. The groups say the law “disenfranchises many voters who would have to choose between their health and their vote if the rule continues to be upheld.”
Alaska is one of 11 states that requires a witness to verify that the person signing the ballot is really the voter. It’s a loose requirement that provides a modicum of election security. Alaska is a “no excuse” voting state already, with some of the most liberal absentee ballot rules around — any registered voter can vote one, even if they are not technically absent from their district. It’s Alaska’s functional mail-in ballot, but it has that one requirement: Did someone else see you sign that ballot?
Lt. Gov. Kevin Meyer wrote a letter back to the consortium: “I am sure you would agree that election integrity begins with following the law. If an election is not conducted legally by following the statutes duly passed by the legislature, there can be no basis to believe in the election’s integrity. Making exceptions to the statutes, even on a piecemeal basis, would erode the foundation upon which Alaskans have built their faith in the election process.”
Meyer went on to say the Office of Lt. Governor lacks the power to unilaterally waive the statutory witness requirement.
“The witness requirement is central to the absentee ballot statutory scheme and is not a mere procedural requirement. AS 15.20.081(d) sets forth the witness requirement, and AS 15.20.203(b)(2) mandates that an absentee ballot be rejected and not counted if it is not properly witnessed.
“If my office were to ignore this clear statutory language and count ballots that were not properly witnessed, those absentee ballots could later be invalidated in a court challenge. It would be irresponsible for me to tell voters not to follow the witness requirement and risk their votes not counting.
“Like you, I care deeply about every Alaskan’s safety during this pandemic, and we have learned a lot over these past several months about how to best prevent spreading the virus. Just like going to the grocery store or receiving deliveries at your home, maintaining a social distance of six feet and wearing masks goes a long way and both of these can be accomplished for witnessing a ballot. Witnessing could also take place through a window if necessary. Although not ideal, we are all having to change the way we do things, and I would encourage voters to think creatively about how to fulfill this requirement in a safe manner.”
The group had demanded a response from the lieutenant governor by Friday, and received the response in the afternoon that day.
“We are prepared to use every tool in our arsenal to beat back unnecessary barriers to absentee voting faced by voters in Alaska, including restrictive witness requirements,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
Although it’s not up to him, Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Charlie Pierce says the Assembly meetings should be open to the public.
Not everyone has access to the internet, he said in a social media post on Friday, “and therefore not everyone has equal access to the Assembly video meetings. I want to encourage the Assembly to open up the assembly doors and truly be open to the public again.”
Assembly member Kelly Cooper, who is also running for House District 31 against Rep. Sarah Vance, said the meetings will remain closed until the borough’s Assembly chambers get renovated, by using the CARES Act money.
She admitted in the last assembly meeting that this could take months.
The matter came to the fore when a member of the public, in the middle of a Zoom meeting public comment period, said he could go to Walmart, churches, and other public places, so there is no reason that the Assembly cannot meet in public.
For Pierce, months of Zoom meetings is not good enough: “This should not wait for another week or months as was stated in the last Assembly meeting. This should happen now. I do not oversee the assembly or clerks’ office, so this is just a friendly encouragement. We can do all this while still obeying the CDC guidelines. For those who do not feel comfortable to be in person, you can watch from home. It’s a win/win.”
The Assembly and the Borough school board have received push back against the closed meetings, but the school board has moved its meeting to a high school gymnasium in the borough.
It sounds so good. The lights were out at the Igiugig airport, and a medical plane needed to land to pick up an ailing little girl and take her to the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage. It was dark.
The villagers rallied. They called around, got in their trucks and ATVs and lined the runway with their lights facing in. The plane was able to land safely and take the little girl to the doctor.
Heroics! Someone needs to lock up the screenplay on that one. Humanity is shown to be basically good.
The view from the pilot’s seat as Igiugig came into view, lined with vehicles.
As told by the Alaska Public Media reporter: Late Friday night a child in Igiugig needed to be medevaced to Anchorage.
The small, remote Southwest Alaska village is right at the mouth of the Kvichak River on the south end of Iliamna Lake. LifeMed sent a King Air flight over from Kodiak. That usually takes about 30 minutes.
But this year, the village’s state-owned airport has had some problems with the runway lights. And when residents went to turn them on to guide the flight in, nothing happened.
Normally, this would stop a plane from landing.
Nowhere in the story is the real issue The lights were out because, as they so often are in rural villages, the kids from the village of 54 Alaska Natives (16 households, 13 families) drove on the runway in their ATVs and smacked them with bats or batons.
The village vandalized the lights, to the tune of about $40,000. The village has no responsibility. It just waits for them to be fixed by the government.
Who will repair the lights at Igiugig? The State Department of Transportation runs this airport and and will have to add the lights to its maintenance list. The job will need to be done in the next few weeks, before the cold sets in, but other villages have airports and vandalized lights too.
Alternately, the DOT could provide the village with LED lights in suitcases that they can operate on batteries and bring out when they are expecting a plane.
But the original fairytale made it all the way from Alaska Public Media, which never explained the vandalism, to the New York Times, whose reporter did uncover the problem, but buried it deep in the fairytale.
It’s a tale that enchanted the big-city reader because it had that ring of “truthiness.” This was “real Alaska.”
Such is the spirit of Alaskans, they said on Twitter, because rural Alaska is where people help each other, like they did in the #oldendays. Wouldn’t it be nice if #orangeman was this nice, they said on Twitter. Then we’d all get along.
Without the full telling of what happened to the runway lights in Igiugig, readers are left to surmise that the State just wasn’t on the ball, forcing villagers to fend for themselves.
But in rural Alaska, bored teenagers are whacking out the lights of runways so often that the Department of Transportation has an ongoing education program, pleading with villagers to keep the kids off the runways.
According to the New York Times, the sound of the plane alerted villagers to the fact that a plane was approaching. Suddenly, the villagers discovered the lights were out on the runway.
“Ms. [Ida] Nelson, 36, said she was taking a steam bath at her sister’s house near the airport when she heard the sound of the Beechcraft King Air plane.
“We ran out of the steam bath and saw the lights of the bottom of the aircraft,” Ms. Nelson said.
But when Ms. Nelson and her sister looked toward the airport, she said, it was dark. There are few landmarks to guide pilots at night, said Ms. Nelson, noting that the village school has lights, but that’s about it.
The Igiugig lights had been damaged earlier this summer by a contractor. They were repaired, and then the kids bludgeoned them last week. The village residents knew the lights were out. It’s kind of a regular occurrence in village Alaska.
But the New York Times went with the fairytale headline: “The Runway Lights Failed, So Villagers Used Their Headlights To Aid An Airlift.”
In another telling it would be, “Igiugig teen hooligans could have cost a young girl her life.”
With a backlog of maintenance at airports around the state, the Department of Transportation is likely to have to send in the battery powered lights, which can be brought out as needed. They can be locked in a storage locker when not needed, and maybe they’ll be safe from the light-whacking teenagers.
It’s not the romantic ending to the tale, but it’s a patch until the repair order for vandalized runway lights at Igiugig can get in the queue.
One of the hotels that Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz is buying for his “Homeless Hotel” plan is within spitting distance of the Long House, a hostel type dormitory for young people from rural Alaska who are in Anchorage to take part in job training programs in coordination with the Anchorage School District.
The Long House is at 4335 Wisconsin St, right behind America’s Best Value Inn & Suites, a sprawling hotel that faces Spenard Road. The hotel-like building is used by the Kusilvak Career Academy, which serves students in the Lower Yukon School District, whose hub community is Mountain Village.
Students take a 9-week course and earn credits from the Anchorage School District that can be applied toward graduation in the Lower Yukon School District.
America’s Best is one of the hotels that Berkowitz plans to buy through a shell game with various pools of money. Ultimately his plan uses CARES Act funds to purchase the heart-of-Spenard hotel for an unknown sum. Appraisers have been working on establishing a fair market value for the building. America Best would then be converted into transitional housing.
America’s Best Value Inn backs up to a hostel that houses youth from rural Alaska.
The omnibus plan to house vagrants plan includes the purchase of Best Western Golden Lion Inn in Midtown, which will become an alcohol treatment and transitional housing program.
That hotel is also close to a school operated by the Jewish community in midtown Anchorage.
Most of the opposition to the plan has centered around the Golden Lion, as well as the former Alaska Club building on Tudor Road, which is another part of the $22 million purchase. How these buildings will be operated and afforded by taxpayers has not been transparent and the Anchorage Assembly has faced heated resistance by hundreds of Anchorage residents.
But the matter of putting vagrants next to village youth has not been talked about much; Must Read Alaska was notified about the concern by a Spenard resident.
Yet another problem with the mayor’s plan, in addition to putting underage youth next to a homeless shelter, is that vagrants will have ready access to Lake Hood, where dozens of aircraft sit unguarded and could be vandalized or stripped.
Pilots contacted Must Read Alaska this week concerned that the aircraft using that aerodrome lake will no longer be safe from criminals and mischief makers who will be just one block away, housed with taxpayer funds in hotel rooms formerly used by tourists.
An application for a petition to repeal the ordinance that authorizes the plan awaits a decision by the Municipal Clerk and City Attorney, which is due around Sept. 16. A group of citizens opposing the plan has also raised funds for attorneys to get a temporary injunction.
Alaskans for Dan Sullivan released its newest ad, titled “Fool You.” The ad features Al Gross admitting in his own words that his “values are to the left” and that his “independent” label is nothing more than an effort to deceive Alaskans.
“Al Gross has proven time and time again that he’s willing to do or say anything to get elected,” said Sullivan Campaign Manager Matt Shuckerow.Â
“Clearly his strategy is to deceive Alaskans by saying he’s an independent, while privately admitting to national donors that he’s all in to empower the left and their radical proposals like the Green New Deal, a government takeover of healthcare and efforts to slash funding for our military. Alaskans shouldn’t be fooled by this spin doctor.”
After a legal opinion by Anchorage’s municipal attorney, the city clerk – who, by the way, serves at the Assembly’s pleasure – dumped a recall application WHEN calling for removal of Assemblywoman Meg Zaletel.
The group pushing for her recall accuses her of:
“Removable misconduct by violating the Alaska Public Meetings Statutes at the Anchorage Assembly meeting July 28th, engagingly in willful, flagrant, and obvious collision to limit public testimony inside the assembly chambers. Zaletel conducted municipality business following the barring of public presence within the chambers except those approved by the assembly in a manner not disclosed to the public prior to the meeting.”
What she did, as vice chairwoman, was run an Assembly meeting after Mayor Ethan Berkowitz ordered such meetings closed to the public, and she allowed only one person to testify in the chamber while the public was locked out. Former Municipal Manager Mike Abbot, who runs the Alaska Mental Health Trust, was brought in to discuss land availability issues.
The city’s legal opinion on the recall application, authored by Municipal Attorney Kathryn Vogel and Assistant Municipal Attorney Jessica Willoughby, says, among other things, the “recall application is factually sufficient; it is sufficiently particular to allow the reader to understand the allegations, and to permit Assembly Member Zaletel to respond in 200 words.”
But there is always a but.
“Determining the legal sufficiency of the application is more complex, and requires analysis of the governing law on open meetings in Alaska as well as factual context of the allegations in the application.”
You might think because the application was “factually sufficient” and “sufficiently particular,” Zaletel’s recall would be a matter to put before voters. You would be wrong. The municipal attorneys found there was no violation of the Open Meetings Act and denied the recall petition application.
With the Zaletel recall effort at least temporarily stymied, you have to wonder how a shadowy group – we still do not know who is paying its bills – could manage to win Supreme Court approval to attempt a recall of Gov. Mike Dunleavy on little more than a whim. Where, we wonder, was all the complex analysis on the legal sufficiency of the blah-blah-blah factual context and governing law?
There are, apparently, different standards. The recall standard in Anchorage seems to be: Did you murder somebody? At the state level, at least for Dunleavy, it is,“We don’t like you.”
Recall Dunleavy is lucky it did not have to undergo scrutiny by Anchorage’s city lawyers. It is unfortunate the Zaletel recall effort did.
