The Democrats in Alaska are rattling their chains to take out Gov. Mike Dunleavy.
On the eve of the inauguration of Joe Biden as president, the Recall Dunleavy Committee relaunched its campaign to get rid of Dunleavy. They called it a reboot.
The press event was a done via virtual press conference, and was picked up by the usual media outlets.
“There is no legal barrier remaining to the recall. There is no legal recourse to stop it,” said Scott Kendall, the group’s lead attorney and advocate.
Recall Dunleavy Committee has hired signature gatherers to finish off the 22,000 signatures needed on the petition to get recall of the governor to a special election in July.
Coincidentally, at the same time a group of Democrat women in Alaska signed a letter opposing Dunleavy’s pick for Attorney General. Ed Sniffen, the AG-elect. It’s a do-damage operation, since Sniffen was assistant Attorney General under the now-resigned Kevin Clarkson, who got involved in a texting relationship with a state employee.
The letter-writers included people like Beth Adams, who recently told Must Read Alaska‘s editor … well, in her own words …
Other women who signed the letter condemning Ed Sniffen included former Sen. Berta Gardner, AFL-CIO’s Joelle Hall, and Anchorage political operative Amber Lee, most recently with the Liz Snyder for House campaign.
But wait, there’s more. At the same time, Kendall, the lawyer and mastermind behind the Recall Dunleavy Committee, has hired two lobbying firms for his other project, the dark-money operation called Alaskans for Better Elections. Those lobbyists are Kris Knauss and Jerry Mackie-Mike Pawlowski.
It’s looking like Kendall is creating a wrap-around recall operation, and that Alaskans for Better Elections is morphing into a new mission. Its original mission was to get Ballot Measure 2 passed, but that’s now done.
What the lobbyists will do for Alaskans for Better Elections is unclear, but but with Kendall as the force behind it, the group will be doing what ABE can do to help recall the governor.
There is no firewall between Alaskans for Better Elections and Recall Dunleavy, because both go back to Kendall and his $7 million Outside-money funds for ABE (the budget he has had for the Recall Dunleavy Committee is his closely guarded secret). If Kendall were two people, rather than one, this would be blatantly illegal coordination.
Kendall has not shown the fund source for the lobbyists’ ABE contract but will able to hide the dark money — both incoming and outgoing — for months.
MRAK pulled the lobbying contracts to get a better idea of the money being spent by Kendall on lobbyists.
ABE, having drained at least $6.2 million from its account to get Ballot Measure 2 passed, has a lot of money left over, and committed $150,000 to Confluence Strategies and Strategy North Group work on “Matters relating to Elections in Alaska.”
How is Must Read Alaska sure that ABE is operating with Outside dark money? Of its $7 million budget, total contributions from actual Alaskans for ABE was only $40,000.
Now that Trump is gone, Outside interests see Alaska as an easy pick-up, to get rid of a Republican governor and prepare to do battle in the next election cycle, which culminates with the midterm election in 2022.
Jerry Mackie at Strategy North says his company’s contract has nothing to do with recalling Dunleavy and is only focused on any election issues that come before the Legislature.
He said that if there was an effort to overturn Ballot Measure 2, his client ABE would certainly have interest in that.
Kris Knauss said, “Last thing me and my clients are going to do is work to recall Governor Dunleavy. He’s doing a good job, and I support him. My shop is hired to work on Prop 2, which already passed.”
Dunleavy opposed Ballot Measure 2, and likely opposes his own recall as well.
