Tom McKay, running against incumbent Rep. Chuck Kopp in the Republican primary, has picked up an endorsement from former Mayor Dan Sullivan.
McKay, who was recruited by several business leaders to run for House District 24, had already won the District pre-primary endorsement from Republicans, and also the endorsement of the entire State Central Committee of the Alaska Republican Party.
The Anchorage Republican Women’s Club also endorsed McKay, a retired petroleum engineer, over incumbent Kopp, who had forged a leadership team with Democrats after the 2018 election. Kopp was appointed Rules chair and has blocked Republican-sponsored legislation ever since. McKay is a former chairman of the Alaska Republican Party.
Sullivan’s endorsement appears on a mailer that saturated the district today, sources said.
The race has split the endorsements among Republican leaders, with Kopp having the support of some of his South Anchorage colleagues, such as Rep. Jennifer Johnston and Sen. Natasha Von Imhof, as well as continued financial support from a number of important unions. Others, such as Rep. Laddie Shaw of District 26, and Rep. Lance Pruitt, House Minority Leader, have stayed on the sidelines, at least publicly.
Kopp won with 70 percent of the vote in the 2018 primary election, when Stephen Duplantis ran against him. But then he chose to caucus with the Democrats, which make this race less predictable for him.
Some places around the country, such as San Francisco, Seattle, and Los Angeles, are sanctuary cities for illegal aliens.
But the Kenai Peninsula Borough is now a sanctuary for gun owners. The Assembly on Tuesday approved an ordinance that restates what should be obvious: The right to bear arms is constitutionally protected and the borough opposes any legislation that restricts that right.
The ordinance explicitly declares the borough a Second Amendment Sanctuary — a belts-and-suspenders approach to individual gun rights.
The ordinance was proposed by Kenai Borough Mayor Charlie Pierce, along with Assembly members Kenn Carpenter, Jesse Bjorkman and Norm Blakeley. Although Assembly member Kelly Cooper tried to water it down by making it merely a resolution, it passed intact as an ordinance, with the force of law.
“The Second Amendment is essential to the people of this Borough, and it is important to me as well,” Pierce said. “As long as I am your mayor, I will protect your right to keep and bear arms. I believe in this so much that I put together an ordinance to engrain this right into our Borough.”
Alaska as a state has been considered a Second Amendment Sanctuary since Gov. Sean Parnell signed the Alaska Firearms Freedom Act into law on July 9, 2010. HB 186 declared that certain firearms and accessories are exempt from federal regulation in Alaska.
In 2013, Parnell signed HB 69 into law, which expanded rights made clear under HB 186.
But anti-gun lawmakers such as Rep. Geran Tarr of Anchorage have tried to create “red flag” laws that would allow the government to enact protective orders and take firearms away from people whom officials deem to be a threat.
Nationally, gun sales are at record levels, along with background checks. This may be in part because of the Black Lives Matter movement to defund police, and in part because of associated lawlessness in cities across America.
Last June, the gun-rights stronghold of Alabama saw 42,898 firearms sales, while this June the number was nearly 140,000.
Alaska firearm sales went from 5,557 in June of 2019 to over 9,060 in June of 2020, a 63 percent increase.
The images on our television screens showing Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests are difficult to watch. Listening to personal stories of people impacted by violence and destruction is painful.
BLM supporters are focused on recent occurrences of police violence captured on video, as well as other documented instances of unarmed suspects shot and killed by police. In 2019, police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks and 19 unarmed whites, according to a Washington Post national database.
Police supporters might be thinking about demonstrations that turned into hate-fests – the insults, bricks, bottles, and feces that were hurled at police trying to maintain order and protect lives and property. And the 135 policemen who were killed last year in the line of duty.
While we can argue about whether systemic racism pervades police departments across the country, there seems to be general acceptance of the notion that broad examination of policing methods, training and accountability is inevitable and warranted if the public’s trust in our police departments is to be maintained.
On the other hand, demonizing all policemen, implementing draconian anti-police measures, and gutting police department budgets will cause irreparable societal harm and guarantee that more lives will be lost unnecessarily.
Alaskans should be relieved that demonstrations here did not devolve into violence, vandalism, or looting as happened in many other states. BLM rallies have mostly remained respectful protests for change. Likewise with Blue Lives Matter demonstrations supporting our law enforcement professionals.
Virulent anti-police invective, however, is common on social media and within extremist organizations.
Nationally, the network cancellations of long-running cop shows reflecting good policing practices that cast the profession in a positive light is an unfortunate knee-jerk reaction.
Pretending there are no good cops is no better than pretending bad cops don’t exist.
We all want rogue cops held accountable. Americans have little tolerance for lawlessness. That applies to criminal policemen as well as riotous arsonists, vandals, and looters. Law and order is the foundation of our society, without which there can be no liberty or prosperity.
Allowing the illegal takeover of a police precinct and a freeway in downtown Seattle by activists, culminating in several fatalities, has proven that choosing to selectively enforce laws is a mistake. The resulting recent spike in violence, defacement and destruction of statues, and general lawlessness across the country should not be tolerated.
The vast majority of police officers are dedicated, compassionate, and fair. African-Americans, Native-Americans and other minorities are among the many professionals in law enforcement organizations across the country that have reduced crime to historic lows and continue to risk their lives to do so.
Last year, the Juneau Police Department handled 32,605 police response calls that generated 5,022 cases and 1,815 arrests. Force (more than a firm grip) was used by 54 officers against 38 people – less than 3% of arrests.
CBJ Mayor Beth Weldon and City Manager Rorie Watt, have openly praised Juneau’s police department for its diverse recruiting and training practices.
No doubt we are asking cops to do too much. We expect them to deal with everything from routine traffic stops to societal issues involving the homeless, drug addicts, and the mentally ill – in addition to locating and apprehending dangerous felons.
It’s possible to believe some police reform is necessary and, at the same time, empathize with and support the police.
The BLM movement claims that our justice system is deeply racist and targets minorities disproportionately. This is superficially and conveniently explained as a function of systemic racism, white supremacy, and white privilege. Today, sadly, it’s exceedingly tough to dispute this narrative because difficult and honest conversations about race are silenced by the threat of being labeled a racist.
Emotions are running high now. But implementation of reforms must be based on facts and root causes – not slogans. Juneau’s elected assembly was wise to pull back and delay consideration of an all-powerful and unelected “systemic racism” committee that would review every city ordinance or resolution prior to enactment.
Any reforms, whether in policing or elsewhere, can only be accomplished through public dialogue that remains measured, respectful, and open to all views.
Win Gruening retired as the senior vice president in charge of business banking for Key Bank in 2012. He was born and raised in Juneau and graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1970. He is active in community affairs as a 30-plus year member of Juneau Downtown Rotary Club and has been involved in various local and statewide organizations.
It was August 9, 2010 when a plane carrying U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens and eight other souls crashed into a mountainside in the wilderness of Western Alaska. The closest settlement was Aleknagik, population 200. The weather closed in and rescue crews struggled to reach the steep final resting place of the amphibious floatplane, which was enroute between two fishing lodges.
Five died on the mountainside that day, including Stevens, who by then had been retired from the U.S. Senate for 19 months after losing to Democrat Mark Begich in the General Election of 2008.
Stevens and Sen. Joe Biden had been friends and colleagues in Washington for many years. They served in the Senate together, although on opposite sides of the aisle. They had both lost their first wives to horrific accidents. In 1972, Biden’s wife Neilia and their 13-month-old daughter were killed in a car accident after a tractor-trailer t-boned the family’s car just before Christmas.
Ann Stevens died in a Lear Jet’s crash landing at the Anchorage airport just before Christmas in 1978.
Stevens lost his race for reelection in 2008, while Biden won his race with Barack Obama, and headed for the White House. But there was a bond between the men, and so when the former senator died on that fateful summer day, Vice President Joe Biden didn’t hesitate; he flew on Air Force II into Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson outside of Anchorage, and was brought by Secret Service to East Anchorage to deliver the eulogy on Aug. 18.
Introduced that day by Dr. Jerry Prevo, pastor of Anchorage Baptist Temple, the vice president rose before the large congregation of Alaskans and dignitaries who had gathered. Biden spoke warmly, easily, and gracefully about his friend Ted. At times he was solemn and comforting to the family, and then he would share a vignette, with a twinkle in his eyes, which generously crinkled, expressing love for the Alaskan known to his constituents as “Uncle Ted.”
There were smiles, laughter, some gentle ribbing about how the money that should have gone to Delaware and Maryland was all in Alaska because of Ted Stevens.
Biden was an audience charmer. He was good. He glanced at his notes, but relied on them little, for he was in his prime as a public speaker, and he knew his subject well. He soared on that occasion to move his audience and bring the honor and grandeur of the office of the vice presidency to the grieving Stevens family, sitting in the front row of the church that day, wiping tears and smiling through the pain. He was there to bring closure, and he did it well.
Today’s Joe Biden can barely read a script without stumbling. Even a brief pitch for campaign funds on social media had a couple of odd words thrown in that should have signaled to his campaign that they needed a do-over. Or maybe it was the best take they could get.
His speech is stilted, his face frozen with Botox, and his eyes no longer twinkle, but at times appear slightly vacant.
Biden’s campaign staff has the candidate all but sequestered, not exposing him to interviews even with the friendlies in the activist media. There is no allowing him to be “Biden in the wild” during this campaign season, because Biden can no longer be trusted to string together two sentences that make any sense to the world.
And this world, with an unforgiving political climate, will record and repurpose his every stumble.
Since he became the Democratic nominee, Biden has been a concept for Democrats: He’s not Trump. He’s also not Socialist-Bernie. The Biden team is just trying to figure out who Americans want Biden to be, and to market him thus.
But the decade has taken its toll on the old Washington warrior. At some point, he will have to come out of his basement and expose himself to the softball questions of what will be a fawning media.
They — the reporters — have already tried to frame Biden’s diminished capacity as a simple stutter, one that he has dealt with since his boyhood. That makes it easier to explain; it’s a disability, and we know that we cannot criticize someone for a disability.
None of that explains why he would say, to Charlamagne tha God, “Well I tell you what, if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”
A stutter does not explain why he would say, “Now we have over 120 million dead from COVID.”
Stuttering doesn’t lead someone to call a student a “lying dog-faced pony soldier,” or to refer to the Wuhan Province as the “Luhan Province.” His unscripted word-salad answers to TV questions are going to be his undoing.
A Zogby poll in June revealed that a majority of likely voters believe Biden is in the early stages of dementia. 55 percent think so, while 45 percent do not. Most Republicans think he is losing it, but 56 percent of independents also do, and one-third of Democrats have a concern. Women want to believe he is OK, yet only 50 percent of them believe he is all there.
In just over a month, Biden will not be able to avoid the live microphone and the live audience. He will walk across the stage in Milwaukee to accept the nomination at the Democratic National Convention. He’ll articulate a vision for the United States that must reassure his worried base.
But it will be 10 years, nearly to the day, since he spoke at Ted Stevens’ celebration of life, and it’s clear he is no longer the orator he once was.
By now, he is rehearsing his speech every day. The speechwriters are honing the message, and he is getting coached on how to land every phrase to instill confidence.
That will be just the beginning of the bruising campaign days ahead, when the the Republicans roll out all the damaging tape they’ve been compiling on Biden — the gaffes, the hair-sniffing, the mixing up of his wife and his sister, the hairy legs story about his experiences with black kids. The Trump campaign has much, much more to roll out. As they say, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
The former Vice President has had his moment in the sun, living one heartbeat away from the presidency for eight years. He had the capacity to shine brightly, communicate well, and give people the confidence that he could lead, should the need arise.
Now, he has episodes of confusion or vacancy, not unlike what some in the West Wing saw in President Ronald Reagan during his last two years in office, when he would lapse into a far-away place before snapping back to the present. By 1994, Reagan announced he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and he spent the remainder of his years out of the public’s eye. He had managed to last his entire eight years in office, thankfully, but it was starting to become obvious to almost everyone that he was no longer firing on all cylinders.
The heydays are in the rearview mirror for Biden. People age differently and while he may not have Alzheimer’s, he most certainly has “something” that is sapping his intellect, and the majority of voters sense it. That “something” is not going to go away for the 77-year-old candidate who hopes to become the leader of the free world.
For Democrats, this has to be a huge worry. They cannot afford to go into the fall without a contingency plan.
The news was not unexpected and the headline in the ADN no surprise: “One year in, the recall campaign against Gov. Mike Dunleavy has slowed.”
It seems the poorly conceived effort to recall Dunleavy, which got underway before the ink on his oath of office was dry, is losing steam because of coronavirus restrictions and other pressures.
It is no real surprise, we suppose. There are myriad reasons to oppose a recall – or simply losing interest in it – based on sins mostly imagined, but the one that does it for us? The campaign’s continued secrecy about its financial backers.
Alaskans are being asked to unseat a governor — reverse a legitimate democratic election — without being told who actually is asking, or who is paying for the effort.
Somebody is forking out wads of dough for signature-gathering, research and public relations firms, surveys, lawyers and who knows what else? Recall Dunleavy has had months of court fights all the way to the Alaska Supreme Court. Whose names are on all those checks?
Alaskans may never know. State law allows Recall Dunleavy to collect and spend truckloads of cash from anybody, except foreign interests, without revealing where it came from or went — at least until the recall question wins a spot on the ballot.
Only then, and only if any signature-gathering money is rolled over into a recall election campaign, would backers be forced to report every penny collected and spent since the effort’s beginning. If none of the signature-gathering money ends up in the election campaign, Alaskans might never know who paid the bills.
When it comes to removing a duly elected official from office, that simply is not good enough. You have to ask: Would Alaskans ever have signed the petitions if they knew who was underwriting the effort?
We do not have a clue, but perhaps Recall Dunleavy does not think so.
A surprise ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday gave its approval to the management plan for oil and gas drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, where ConocoPhillips is currently drilling and where it has plans for more wells.
The Bureau of Land Management’s environmental impact statement and management plan for the oil reserve had drawn a lawsuit from environmental groups. But a lower court ruling had upheld the BLM plans.
The Alaska Wilderness League, Defenders of Wildlife, Sierra Club, Northern Alaska Environmental Center, and Wilderness Society sought an injunction from the Ninth Circuit, saying BLM failed to analyze the environmental effects of a 2017 lease of 900 tracts that cover 10.3 million acres of reserve land.
ConocoPhillips’ oil find in the reserve is estimated to contain 130,000 barrels per day. The current flow in the Trans Alaska Pipeline System is under 500,000 barrels per day.
The Ninth Circuit, which usually sides with environmental groups, affirmed District Court Judge Sharon Gleason’s ruling that a 2012 environmental impact statement was adequate for the later oil and gas leases, and that the management plan isn’t something the government could just pull back once oil was found and the BLM had committed to the lease.
“We disagree with plaintiffs’ suggestion that a programmatic EIS prepared for a broad-scale land use plan categorically cannot provide the site-specific analysis required for irretrievable commitments of resources,” Judge Milan D. Smith wrote for the three-judge panel.
Blue Wave Political Partners, a large liberal Seattle company that has contracts with Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is also being paid by two Alaska candidates for federal office — Al Gross and Alyse Galvin.
Blue Wave hasn’t slowed down its billings one bit during the COVID-19 economic downturn, because it’s an election year, and they’re making bank on the federal campaigns.
Yet the company is also taking economic relief money from the U.S. Treasury, money that they’re using in one way or another to work against the reelection of Alaska Congressman Don Young and Sen. Dan Sullivan.
The political consultancy took hundreds of thousands of dollars through the federal Paycheck Protection Program — money intended to help small businesses, but which is helping Democrat consultancies like theirs around the country. The Florida Democratic Party, for example, received between $350,000 and $1 million from the Paycheck Protection Program.
Galvin of Anchorage is the Democrats’ endorsed candidate to unseat Congressman Don Young, and Gross, of Petersburg, is the Democrats’ choice to take on Sen. Dan Sullivan.
Galvin has given Blue Wave Political Partners $20,000 since last year, and Gross dished over $23,000 to the group. Both are raising substantial funds through the Democrat online fundraising machine called ActBlue, which helps them raise dollars from all over the country.
Blue Wave is doing federal compliance work for their campaigns, and some fundraising, it appears from FEC records.
The two Alaskan candidates are not Blue Wave’s largest clients, but neither are they the smallest. Galvin and Gross are midsize targets for Blue Wave, whose marquee candidate in this cycle has been Bernie Sanders. The Sanders campaign paid the company over $368,000 before Sanders folded.
Blue Wave also worked for Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, the Democrat who has been presiding over the Summer of Love in the CHAZ/CHOP district of Seattle, where murder and riots reigned for weeks.
Blue Wave describes itself as representing “Democratic campaigns and other organizations at the federal, state, and local level.” The company does campaign compliance work for groups such as Planned Parenthood and the Bernie Sanders’ group “Our Revolution.”
FEC records show that Blue Wave’s campaign income went from $1.4 million the last cycle to $2.6 million in 2020.
The company’s chief fundraiser, Kevin Geiger, is the Northwest fundraiser for Joe Biden for President.
For their Washington clients alone, they’ve booked over $150,000 in receipts local races since the beginning of the year, with no sign of any slowdown due to COVID-19, as shown in this public document:
Norm Blakely, an Assembly member in the Kenai Peninsula Borough, wants voters on the peninsula to decide whether the borough should move to a mail-in election.
It’s not right that just six people on the Assembly have decided to take local elections in a new direction, he says.
Blakely’s petition for a referendum on mail-in voting comes after the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly voted 6-3 Tuesday to override Mayor Charlie Pierce’s veto of the vote-by-mail ordinance. He needs 1,362 signatures to get it onto the October ballot.
The Assembly had passed by the vote-by-mail ordinance on June 3 and again on reconsideration on June 16.
Pierce’s veto, had it stood, would have axed the creation of a hybrid in-person and by-mail election for the borough. The hybrid system means every registered voter in the borough will receive a mail-in ballot, starting in 2021.
The ordinance also changed rules pertaining to runoff elections, giving the borough election office more time between a regular election and a runoff election to get ballots in the mail.
In Mayor Pierce’s veto note, he said that the public deserves the opportunity to vote on such a wholesale change to the election system. He said that the security of ballots and the opportunity for fraud would also increase if ballots were mailed out to people who had not requested them.
Only Norm Blakely, Kenn Carpenter and Jesse Bjorkman voted to uphold the veto. But the other six Assembly members were enough to override it.
Voter fraud took place recently with absentee ballots in District 15 Anchorage, when numerous ballots were submitted by voters who were dead or not living in the district during the legislative race in 2018. Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux won that election but is now facing felony and misdemeanor charges for her role in the voting scam.
Mayor Pierce said that having just six people in the borough change the entire election system erodes trust.
“I vetoed this, as I think it was the right thing to do. People should be allowed to vote on their fate of going to vote by mail or not. The Assembly overrode my veto last night. Assemblyman Norm Blakely is leading the effort to gather 1300 signatures to get this back on the ballot so that the people of this Borough, not just six assembly folks, can decide the fate of Borough-wide Vote By Mail,” Pierce said.
The mask mandate by Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz has been in effect since 8 am June 29. By now, the community should be seeing a trend.
Yet in the past 10 days, the number of COVID-19 cases in the municipality have steadily continued, climbing in fact, with an average of 16 cases a day.
The incubation period for COVID-19, is on average 5-6 days, according to the Centers for Disease Control. It can be up until 14 days.
By now, if Anchorage residents are being vigilant about wearing masks in public, and if the masks actually work against infection, there should be a noticeable drop in cases in the Anchorage municipality.
Anecdotally, Anchorage residents appear to be following the mask mandate in stores, work stations, and other public places. They don’t always wear their masks properly, or handle them like the toxic items they may be, but they appear to making an effort.
MRAK looked at the current health literature and found little credible published data on whether the masks mandates are effective.
In Washington state, where the mask mandate went into effect on June 26, the number of cases remains on the increase, at least in Seattle, where 535 cases were diagnosed on July 7:
In an academic study conducted over a number of U.S. jurisdictions where masks were mandated, the daily case rate declines by 0.9, 1.1, 1.4, 1.7, and 2.0 percentage-points within days 1–5, 6–10, 11–15, and 16–20, and 21+ days after signing of the mandates. The declines were labeled statistically significant, and contrasted with the pre-mandate growth in COVID-19 cases.
That study contradicts the experience of Seattle, and also Anchorage, with its mask mandate and relatively consistent cases. Anchorage is halfway through the experiment; the Berkowitz mask mandate ends on July 31 in Anchorage, unless extended by the mayor.
Anchorage has 344 active cases of COVID-19, and 245 people in Anchorage have recovered from the illness. Nearly 20 percent of the current active cases were diagnosed since July 4. That’s 11 percent of all the Anchorage cases diagnosed (598 as of this writing) being detected in the past five days.
It’s probably too early to tell if the Berkowitz mask mandate is working for the general, non-hospital population, which is not trained medically on how to use masks. But at this point, there’s no evidence that it is working.
