At the first meeting of the Alaska Redistricting Board, well-known Alaska businessman, civic leader, and occasional political leader John Binkley of Fairbanks was elected chair.
The redistricting board is in charge of redrawing the political boundaries for Alaska after the 2020 election. In the background over recent weeks since the board was appointed, the members have been jockeying to see who had the votes to become the chair. Two of the members of the board represent rural Alaska Democrat interests, while the other three represent Fairbanks, Southeast Alaska, and South-central.
Binkley was nominated by board member Bethany Marcum, a move that surprised Nome member Melanie Bahnke. She immediately counter-nominated the other rural representative, Nicole Borromeo. The vote went for Binkley, three to two.
With just two months away until the General Election, the Alaska election season just got a little more Yeezy. Someone has started putting Kanye West for President signs around Anchorage.
West, a rapper, producer, and fashion designer, is also the husband of Kim Kardashian. He has recently become a Christian and also said that he is bipolar.
In July, West wrote on Twitter that he was running for president under the BDY Party, which he calls the “Birth Day Party.”
In an interview with Forbes about his run, he said that America needs someone special to be president.
“You know? Obama’s special. Trump’s special. We say Kanye West is special. America needs special people that lead. Bill Clinton? Special. Joe Biden’s not special.”
Although many believe it is just a publicity stunt, on July 15 West filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission and he held his first rally on July 19.
West would have to be a write-in candidate because he is not running with a registered party in Alaska.
There are already numerous write-in candidates registered with the Division of Elections; Kanye West is not one of them. Most of them are from out of state, but have registered as write-ins in Alaska.
West is on the ballot in Minnesota and Tennessee.
Those presidential candidates who are registered with the Division of Elections include:
ROUSE, DEBORAH / CANNON, SHEILA NON-AFFILIATED, write in
WELLS, KASEY / WELLS, RACHEL M. NON-AFFILIATED, write in
HOWARD, SHAWN / HOWARD, ALYSSA NON-AFFILIATED, write in
BODDIE, PRESIDENT R. / STONEHAM, ERIC C. NON-AFFILIATED, write in
TITTLE, SHEILA “SAMM” / WAGNER, JOHN NON-AFFILIATED, write in
BALL, DENNIS ANDREW / SANDERS, RICHARD A. AOA-ANC , write in
CELLA, TODD / CELLA, TIM NON-AFFILIATED, write in
JORGENSEN, JO / COHEN, JEREMY “SPIKE” LIBERTARIAN NOMINEE
BIDEN, JOSEPH R. / HARRIS, KAMALA D. DEMOCRATIC NOMINEE
DE LA FUENTE, ROQUE “ROCKY” / RICHARDSON, DARCY G. ALLIANCE PARTY NOMINEE
BLANKENSHIP, DON / MOHR, WILLIAM CONSTITUTION PARTY NOMINEE
TRUMP, DONALD J. / PENCE, MICHAEL R. REPUBLICAN NOMINEE
JANOS, JAMES G. “JESSE VENTURA” / MCKINNEY, CYNTHIA GREEN PARTY NOMINEE
I have been watching the initiative process in Alaska for 44 years. Each and every one of them has been based on hate or greed.
Ballot Measure 1, on the ballot this coming Nov. 3, is based on both. This is the proposal to increase the tax burden on the major oil operators in Alaska. Alaska already has a high tax on produced oil, nearly the highest in the world.
Ballot Measure 1’s sponsors are from two camps: political operators who want the state to have more money to spend and do not believe the golden goose will be overly bothered (the greed side); and, enviro-climate activists who want to terminate the fossil fuel industry (the hate side.)
The reality that the long-term interests of either group conflict with the interests of the other doesn’t seem to bother these strange bedfellows. The greed side thinks that the industry will just suck it up and keep on going as before. This is not true.
This is far from the first time such a destructive tax change has been proposed. The previous attempt, another initiative-based tax increase, flamed out in the 2014 election but had its roots in an earlier oil tax increase that was actually passed into law in the 2007 session of the Alaska Legislature called ACES.
Who were the actors? Why none other than Gov. Sarah Palin in partnership with then-House Minority Leader Rep. Beth Kerttula. Both bragged about “working across the aisle” to get it done. (Strange bedfellows indeed!)
The result? Upon passage of ACES, not one more nickel of petroleum exploration money was approved by the industry on the North Slope. Exploration projects that were already funded and underway went ahead but nothing new was initiated.
The exploration effort was all but ended by the time Sean Parnell became governor upon Palin’s abdication in mid-2009. It took Parnell a couple of years to set things right with SB 21 and exploration resumed and continues to this day with lots of good results and new oil headed for TAPS.
We have to remember that Alaska competes with other oil-bearing regions of the world and oil companies have choices about where they invest. Alaska has some attractions that other places do not, but the most repellant aspects of our treatment of the industry has been tax instability and disrespect. Instability from the greedy and disrespect from the haters.
I am not saying that we have to do whatever the oil industry wants. There have been legitimate beefs with the industry – usually tax accounting disagreements – that had to be sorted out, sometimes in court. Occasional bad behavior on their part does not justify massive bad behavior on our part.
I am saying that Alaska has to be in a responsible partnership with oil. The two essential ingredients of such a partnership are stability and respect.
The sponsors of Ballot Measure 1 don’t want us to have partnership with the oil industry. They want us to be at war where greed and hate have made their nest.
I am also not saying that we as a society have to be committed to fossil-powered energy indefinitely. There is a good trend, nation-wide, to battery-based cars and now small trucks and also a trend to generating electricity by non-fossil means. The transition is happening. Going to war with the fossil energy industry will only slow it down and surely will not speed it up.
The most significant change in modern society – from an air pollution standpoint – was the transition to unleaded gasoline. It happened without riots, mass upheaval or demonstrations. Society agreed on the need and got it done. Climate change activists should take a lesson from that experience. There don’t have to be losers in order for there to be winners.
Please join me in voting no on Ballot Measure 1.
Walsh is self-employed and has been an observer/participant in Alaska politics and economics since 1976. He lives in Juneau.
The Green Party of Alaska is not going along with the national Green Party in its nomination of the party’s standard-bearer Howie Hawkins for president.
Instead, the Alaska Green Party has voted for Jesse “The Body” Ventura for president and Cynthia McKinney for Vice President. Their names will appear on the Nov. 3 General Election ballot.
In a highly unusual but calculated move, Ventura is actually being drafted by the Alaska Green Party. The former governor of Minnesota. who lives half of the year on the beach in Mexico in a house that is “off the grid,” has not thrown his name in the hat for consideration.
McKinney is a Green Party member from Georgia who served in Congress from 1993-2003 as a Democrat, and who was at the heart of several political controversies.
Robert Shields, who chairs the Green Party of Alaska, said part of the thinking was to give Alaska Republicans someone other than President Donald Trump to vote for. He thinks that Ventura’s name will shake things up this political season.
“[Ventura] was an easy choice for independent Alaskans and he is clearly the most competent candidate. Drafting is a proven way to make radical changes to the system.”
Shields said that President Eisenhower was drafted for Republicans in the 1950s and the Green Party of Alaska is using that model.
Richard Idriss, who is in leadership at the People for Jesse campaign, said, “The People for Jesse largely moved on from the Green Party after their national convention to work toward an independent write-in campaign for Governor Ventura, but we had always recognized an internal schism within the state Green parties as a possible outcome of their primary. Tension around presidential nominee selection has led to these sorts of issues within both the Green and Libertarian parties before.”
Shields said he thinks Ventura will drain votes from Trump but not so much from Joe Biden.
“It gives Republicans an out, a quiet way to say they can’t be part of this anymore,” he said.
In 2016, the Green Party ticket led by Jill Stein received over 4,000 votes in Alaska.
Ventura was a professional wrestler before running for governor of Minnesota as a “Reform Party” candidate in 1998.
According to the Freedom From Religion Foundation, he strongly backed gay rights, abortion rights, funding for higher education, mass transit, property tax reform, and opening trade relations with Cuba. He was flamboyant and unpredictable.
He was the recipient in 1999 of Freedom from Religion Foundation’s Emperor Has No Clothes Award for his “plain speaking” against religion and for refusing to proclaim a state “Day of Prayer.” He vetoed a bill that would have required students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools.
McKinney ran for president under the Green Party in 2008. When she was in the U.S. House as a Democrat, she filed articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. In 2006, she scuffled with Capitol Hill Police officer after they asked her to show her identification.
The Alaska Green Party polled its members and Ventura won 50 percent of the vote among several choices, which included Donald Trump and the national Green Party’s nominee Howie Hawkins:
Democrats persuaded primary winner Anita Thorne of Anchorage to drop out of her race for Senate Seat M, where Republican Sen. Josh Revak is running for reelection.
Thorne was strong enough to take on Revak, while a pretend independent candidate might have a shot in that moderate district.
Andy Holleman, of the Anchorage School Board, is that pseudo-nonpartisan who skipped the primary and went directly to the General Election ballot to give Revak a workout this fall. Appointed to the seat to fill in for the late Sen. Chris Birch, Revak must now convince his district to keep him.
In House District 28, South Anchorage Assembly member Suzanne LaFrance was subbed in for Democratic Primary winner Adam Lees, who was forced out. Although LaFrance never messed with the Primary, she’ll face James Kaufman in the General Election. Kaufman won the Republican primary against incumbent Jennifer Johnston. LaFrance is a member of the radical left majority running Anchorage.
District 14 Democrat primary winner Bruce Batten also quit today so that a pseudo-independent, Mike Risinger, has a chance to beat Republican Rep. Kelly Merrick.
Sen. Shelley Hughes in the Mat-Su District F seat won’t face Stephany Jeffers, who won the primary for the Democrats. Jeffers was swapped out by the party with Jim Cooper, the former mayor of Palmer. Hughes will be flanked on the right by Libertarian Gavin Christiansen.
L is for leftovers in the District L race, where Jeff Landfield pulled out so that Democrat Roselynn Cacy can take on Sen. Natasha von Imhof. Although Von Imhof has money and incumbency on her side, Cacy is an experienced candidate who ran for this seat in 2016.
Republicans did not sub in candidates as the Democrats and their camouflage “independents” did. It’s a technique used by the Left in Alaska to try to gain advantage in a state that typically votes with Republicans, but is also proudly independent.
After taking heavy criticism from some of the more well-connected people in the Anchorage community, Mayor Ethan Berkowitz has backed down on the Ben Boeke Arena.
Athletes, from hockey teams to figure skaters, will get their ice back from the mayor’s intended use of the arena for housing vagrants. The Sullivan Arena is still being used for temporary shelter, as it has been for several months per the mayor’s orders, and the ice skating community is down two rinks out of nine for the more than 4,000 kids who play hockey or figure skate in Anchorage.
Just last week, Assembly member Forrest Dunbar was putting the screws to the hockey community, inferring that they should actively back the controversial “Homeless Hotel” idea or they might not get their arena back for skating at all. The mayor has been holding it in reserve for use as an emergency shelter.
A protest at the Loussac Library one week ago brought out a hundred or so from the hockey community, and they made such a ruckus outside the locked building where the Anchorage Assembly was holding a semi-secret meeting that finally the Assembly had to take a 20-minute break. The horn-honking went on until long after dark.
BUT LIMITS ON GATHERINGS SUCH AS CHURCH ARE IN PLACE
Anchorage restaurants opened for 50 percent capacity sit-down dining on Monday, and not a moment too late — a massive storm from the Gulf of Alaska whipped through the region on Sunday night and into Monday, tearing some of the restaurants’ outdoor temporary tents to pieces, such as the IHOP restaurant tents shown above on Monday morning.
The weather conditions for outdoor dining deteriorated Monday, as wind was at 11 knots and over 1/2 an inch of rain fell. Mayor Ethan Berkowitz’ newest order strongly suggests restaurants continue serving people outdoors, but a quick survey of Anchorage establishments showed no one eating outdoors. “Outdoor service should be prioritized,” the mayor’s order says.
Gatherings indoors are, via the mayor’s edict, limited to 30 people in a single enclosure. All outdoor gatherings involving consumption of food or beverages are limited to 50 or fewer. If there is no food or beverages involved, the limit is 100.
No one may stand at a bar, and music and dancing are prohibited. Masks must be worn except when eating or drinking.
Day cafes, camps, and schools are exempt from the gathering limitation, but churches must limit their capacity to 50 percent and people must wear masks and stay six feet apart. The mayor also said places for political expression are also open to the public, with certain conditions. Some churches have chosen to ignore the mayor’s orders, which are seen as an infringement upon their First Amendment right to gather to worship.
Fine dining at South Restaurant during the Emergency Order 15 mandate to have no indoor dining in Anchorage.
Outdoors for Berkowitz’ restaurant on the south end of Anchorage meant a massive party tent with stout walls, which withstood the gale-force winds overnight. Anchorage residents wondered if his “South” restaurant off of Old Seward Highway received advance notice of his Aug. 3 Emergency Order 15, which mandated no indoor dining for he entire month. Did his partners get an inside track to rent the equivalent of a large canvas room, and get fast-tracked for permits to convert the parking lot to a dining room floor?
Others wondered to MRAK whether the tent South constructed for the restaurant provided any additional guard against the COVID-19 coronavirus than a regular sit-down restaurant. Others around Anchorage had similar wall tents, and some restaurants even constructed wooden walls for their outdoor courtyards.
Earlier today, the new Bear Paw restaurant on the corner of C Street and Tudor was hopping with business, but there were no takers for the outdoor seating area.
The latest order from Berkowitz orders people to stay home as much as possible: “Everyone in the Municipality of Anchorage (the “municipality”) shall limit outings and physical contact with those outside of their household and a small chosen group of other individuals. On the occasions when individuals leave home, they shall maintain physical distancing of at least six feet from any person outside their household/small group whenever possible. Individuals are required to wear a cloth face covering or mask in public, as detailed in Emergency Order 13.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has blown the cover off the “independent” label for Alyse Galvin, who is running for Congress against Rep. Don Young.
In a new ad on Twitter, Pelosi crows about Galvin, saying the candidate is now part of the House Speaker’s “Red to Blue” club.
Whether Pelosi had done any polling in Alaska to see if this was a wise move is a closely guarded campaign secret.
But most polling of the Pelosi name in Alaska has revealed she is among the least popular names in politics.
Galvin has presented herself as an independent but ran on the Democrat Primary ballot with the full support and endorsement of the Alaska Democratic Party.
Last time she ran, in 2018, Galvin purposefully distanced herself from Pelosi, telling reporters she “will not be supporting House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for speaker and instead wants ‘new leadership.'”
Must Read Alaska‘s story on the Anchorage man who is in federal custody after setting fire to the Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct while officers were being blocked inside by other rioters, brought a barrage of hateful mail from Black Lives Matter supporters. None of the comments were approved in the comment section, but we offer you a sampling of it here. The string of expletives is a little more raw than the usual hate mail that Must Read Alaska gets from the Left, and the grammar is much less on point than we usually see here at MRAK.
These comments are in response to the story and those who responded to the story, therefore you might see your name or your MRAK nom de plume. Due to the savage nature of these remarks, readers will understand why the editor here at MRAK remains “Somewhere in Alaska”:
bro stfu, his brother did not shoot at the cops there way other people in the fucking car like honestly don’t speak on something you don’t know s– about.
Nah but your mother’s pussy is. ITS FOREVER BLM TILL WE SEE SOME CHANGE
Fuck trumpet fuck erak lmfao ugly ass name damn no wonder you all are haters. BLM
Shut the fuck up who even areeee youuuu fucking Tim kind of fucking name is Tim bitch tf you don’t even know what you’re speaking on dummy so sit down and shut tf up dumb ass bitch #DESMONTION4L #FUCKTHEFEDS
#FUCKYOUU
So is your bitch ass FUCK YOU BERT the fuck is a Bert your mother must’ve been bored
So is your bitch ass
Fuck you Luke you need the death penalty for that comment.
Fuck you Fuck 12 it’s Desmonation forever Bitch.
Talking about “evil” when 12 is literally that eat a dick bitch.
Now you wonder why he has done this his brother was killed by the police for no reason and no justice no real story… this is America only some(yts)get justice
FUCK YALL and FUCK THE FEDS
It’s DESMONATION FOR LIFEEE and if any of y’all got a problem with y’all can SUCK MY DICK FROM THE BACK
Shut the hello up you should get the death penalty for looking like that.
