After a meeting in his D.C. offices today, U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan says he will support Judge Brett Kavanaugh to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.
His endorsement was made following an hour-long chat between Sullivan and Kavanaugh, which highlighted a number of national and Alaska-focused legal issues. Here’s what Sullivan said about the meeting:
“Today, I met with Judge Kavanaugh to discuss at length and great depth his nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court and his viewpoint on a variety of national and Alaska-focused legal issues. The meeting was extremely constructive and an important opportunity for Judge Kavanaugh to reaffirm what I’ve known about him for some time. He is someone who will interpret the law and Constitution as written, he holds a healthy skepticism regarding the expansive power of federal agencies, he is a strong protector of the Second Amendment, and he has the values, temperament and humility I believe Alaskans will value on the Supreme Court. I also took the opportunity to familiarize Judge Kavanaugh on a number of critical Alaska-focused federal laws, such as ANILCA, ANCSA and the new ANWR law. I think Judge Kavanaugh meets the qualifications we should be looking for and I plan on supporting him as the next Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.”
Congressman Don Young also issued a statement today. He will not be part of the confirmation process, as that is a Senate function, but urged a speedy process:
“While I am a Member of the U.S. House and Constitutionally do not have the authority to vote on Supreme Court Justices, the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy presents our judicial system with a critical vacancy. An empty seat on the Supreme Court needs to be filled expediently particularly as the Court will be considering important cases, like that of Alaskan John Sturgeon.”
State Medicaid officials might have gotten suspicious when the Tundra Suites in Bethel went from billing Medicaid $4,000 a month in 2016 for the Medicaid patients coming into town, to billing $56,604 a month in December of 2017.
But evidently they didn’t. The tens of thousands of dollars being billed to the State by a 13-room hotel each month wasn’t what tipped the State Department of Health and Social Services off to the fraud. The State just kept paying the exponentially increasing bills, no questions asked.
What got the State’s attention was that other hotels in Bethel complained they were not being paid by the State of Alaska for housing patients. Their bills to the State were being refused.
As it turns out, they were being refused because the Medicaid housing vouchers they were submitting had already been paid to Chin Kim, the 100 percent owner of the Tundra Suites, a 13-room hotel that is a registered Medicaid provider, and which has a sketchy past, including being involved in some illegal whiskey sales a couple of years ago.
Medicaid dollars don’t only pay for doctors and hospital services. They also pay for transportation and other costs to and from medical hubs like Bethel and Anchorage. The State has aggressively enrolled people in villages, already covered by Indian Health Services, into the Medicaid program under the Medicaid expansion that came with Obamacare.
The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) Medicaid expansion increased revenues to IHS and tribe-owned facilities. Before the expansion, IHS and tribe facilities depended on congressional appropriation. In FY 2017, Congress appropriated $4.8 billion for IHS. Third party payers include Medicaid, and with Medicaid expansion, many more costs are covered, without a congressional appropriation. There is no spending limit — i.e., no budgets capping expenditures — which makes it an attractive line of business.
Bethel is a hub community for 48 predominantly Native villages from Akiachak to Upper Kalskag. Patients from those villages have been signed up for the state’s Medicaid program under the Obamacare Medicaid expansion and the Walker Administration, which signed onto expansion in August of 2015.
Patients in the Bethel region frequently visit the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation, the biggest health provider in the region. With uncapped dollars from Medicaid, this means a lot more trips to town, more hotels, taxis and restaurants that are eligible to receive the patient vouchers.
It was only a matter of time before those vouchers became a form of fungible currency in the community.
IT UNFOLDED IN JANUARY
In January 2018, the Alaska Department of Law’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit was tipped off by the Department of Health and Social Service which said Tundra Suites was billing for housing Medicaid recipients who were not actually staying at Tundra Suites. They were staying at other hotels in the area, staying with relatives, or weren’t even in Bethel at all.
The vouchers, which come in paper packets, contain an original and three copies for a total of four Medicaid vouchers per packet. Each packet has the same authorization number, which appears on all four vouchers for flights, taxis, meals, and hotels with pre-approved “Medicaid providers.” The providers (hotels, taxi companies, etc.) then submit the vouchers to the State of Alaska for reimbursement.
Tundra Suites was one of those Medicaid providers.
Once the investigation started, other irregularities emerged. Tundra Suites was housing people together in rooms, when the guests were clearly not related to each other. Normally, vouchers would cover the cost of an escort for a family member, but in this case, investigators found that people were sharing rooms when they were from different communities altogether, with no known connection.
In one example from Dec. 18, 2017, Tundra Suites submitted a voucher stating that a 69-year old man stayed in Room 5 on that night, and submitted another voucher stating that a 20-year old female recipient from a different community stayed in the same room on the same night. Tundra Suites billed Medicaid for each recipient separately.
When investigators looked into it, the escort that was supposed to stay in that room was in Anchorage, not Bethel, during the medical travel.
Kim was also billing Medicaid recipients more than he charged other travelers. If two recipients and each of their escorts were put in the same room, he’d charge $356 a night for that room, when normally he’d charge $320.
Medicaid recipients do not have to pay any of the room charge, so there is no financial incentive for recipients to share a hotel room, and there was also no shortage of rooms in Bethel, investigators said, so there was no reason to pile people up in rooms.
There were other ways the hotel was scamming the State, including nights when Tundra Suites billed Medicaid for more recipients than the hotel even has rooms to house people, and instances where more than four vouchers were submitted by the various providers with the same voucher number. In other words, someone was altering the voucher numbers.
While investigating the Tundra Suites, investigators found that Mi Ae Young, who had previously scammed Medicaid when she operated a Bethel taxi company, was now assisting Tundra Suites and doing billing to Medicaid for the hotel. She lost her Medicaid provider status as a cab owner, and was thus prohibited from participating in any activity related to Medicaid. The work she was doing was apparently under the table.
The plot thickened.
According to the State’s case against Kim and Young:
“During the investigators’ recorded interview with Young in March 2018, she made several phone calls in Korean while in the presence of the investigators. During one of the calls, she spoke to an individual later discovered to be Yeong Jin, an enrolled Medicaid taxi cab provider. The audio recording of Young’s side of these phone calls was later translated and transcribed. The translation revealed that while the investigators were with Young, she made a call to Jin and instructed him to contact Tundra Suites and tell them that investigators were with her and would be going to Tundra Suites. Young told Jin to pass on the message that Tundra Suites should get the papers ready for the investigators, except for the ones that they had altered; Young told Jin that they should hide those forged vouchers. Unbeknownst to Young, other investigators were already at Tundra Suites collecting documents at the time of this phone call.”
As it turns out, Mi Ae Young was also submitting claims for cab driver Jin.
Kim testified under oath that in April or May of 2017, a person from “the government agency” told him to stop billing separately for recipients an escorts that shared the same room.
But those practices continued and it doesn’t appear any sanctions were likely to be imposed until other hotels complained and the entire billing scheme blew up in January, 2018.
Sen. Dan Sullivan is among the first people who will have a private sit-down meeting with Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump announced Kavanaugh’s appointment on Monday night.
Yesterday, Sen. Lisa Murkowski told the media it might be “several weeks” before Kavanaugh would meet with the Alaska delegation, and it’s not until then would she have the opportunity ask him questions. Murkowski said she has not yet met him but had already started to go through his record as a jurist.
But Sullivan has a previous relationship with Kavanaugh. The two of them served in the administration of George W. Bush.
Kavanaugh, 53, served as a judge on the the D.C. Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals since 2006. Before that he spent five years working for the Bush administration. He taught at Yale Law School, Harvard and Georgetown. Kavanaugh graduated from Yale University and Yale Law School. Sullivan is a graduate of Harvard University and Georgetown Law School.
Sullivan’s meeting with Kavanaugh is expected to be on Thursday.
Earlier this week the two senators from Alaska sent initial statements to the media about the Kavanaugh appointment. Those are linked in the story below.
THE PRESSURE IS BUILDING FOR BEGICH OR WALKER TO DROP
In an interview with KTOO-FM,the head of Alaska’s AFL-CIO says that Gov. Bill Walker deserves another term.
By their own poll, the AFL-CIO said this week that Walker and former Sen. Mark Begich are tied at 28 percent in the contest for governor.
But union President Vince Beltrami stopped short of endorsing Walker, because he wants one of the men to drop. He said a three-way race just won’t work for the goals of the union. He also has to wait for his membership to vote.
Beltrami said the governor deserves re-election but the AFL-CIO will make its official endorsement on Aug. 24 – if two-thirds of its unions can agree.
“If I had to make a bet, I would say that, if we can get an endorsement, if we can get two-thirds, that it would be more for Gov. Walker at this point, because folks believe that he’s earned re-election in our eyes,” Beltrami told the public broadcasting station.
In 2014, Beltrami told Walker and Byron Mallott that the union would sit on its hands — and its campaign money — until the two came up with a combination ticket, which they did by ditching their respective running mates.
With the agreement of the Alaska Democratic Party, they put former Republican (now undeclared) Walker at the top of their ticket, and the man whom Democrats had elected as their nominee, Democrat Byron Mallott, as lieutenant governor.
That combination won against sitting Gov. Sean Parnell, but they had to disenfranchise their primary voters to do so, reorganizing a more powerful ticket and ignoring what the primary voters had decided. The running mates who were ditched to make it possible? Craig Fleener and Hollis French. They received plum jobs from Walker, byt the way.
Beltrami is hoping to pull the same kind of power play again to reduce the likelihood of handing a victory to Republican Mike Dunleavy, the current Republican frontrunner.
The polling numbers that Beltrami released Monday tell him that either Walker or Begich has to yield the field.
Harstad Strategic Research, which conducted the poll, is a Colorado company that works for Democrats, most notably with Barack Obama. Harstad worked on behalf of the former president since 2002 and takes credit for a much of his electoral success. The company has also helped the fortunes of former Sens. Ken Salazar of Colorado, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Mark Udall of Colorado, and Gov. Tom Vilsack of Ohio. Here’s the company’s analysis of the Alaska governor’s race, based on its polling:
Under Walker’s administration, and under the union presidency of Beltrami, the AFL-CIO has lost much of its private sector workforce, while the state workforce remains mostly intact. State workers are now Beltrami’s base.
But with the recent Janus decision, which Gov. Walker decried publicly, the union no longer can take money from government workers’ and retirees’ pockets without their permission.
Whether Beltrami has the political testosterone he had in 2014 remains to be seen in this post-Janus era.
Yet others are now involved in the full-court press to advance just one gubernatorial team from the Left.
Rep. Les Gara penned an appeal in the Anchorage Daily News to turn up the heat, and columnist Charles Wohlforth has opined that a three-way race hands the governorship to the Republicans, and that either Begich or Walker need to step off.
Walker said he’s sure the campaigns are talking to each other: “I anticipate there will be communications to a certain degree going forward and I think that’s probably a necessary piece to somewhat simplify the race to a two-way rather than a three-way,” he told KTOO.
That is far less than a resounding “No way am I dropping,” from Walker. But he already yielded the Democrats’ primary ballot to Begich, knowing he wasn’t strong enough to beat him in a two-way. Walker decided to go the petition route to the General Election, rather than face Begich in the primary.
It’s unheard of for a sitting governor to simply yield. Even Gov. Frank Murkowski stayed in the race, ending up with 18 percent of the primary vote against Sarah Palin and John Binkley. His prospects were poor, but he didn’t walk away. Governors (with the exception of a nationally-focused Sarah Palin) don’t just walk away.
But neither do Begiches, especially former sitting U.S. Sen. Begich, who is relatively young and intends to have a long political career.
Would either of these men take the back seat to the other?
The pressure is on, and although Republicans have a leading candidate for governor in Mike Dunleavy (with all polls showing him at the front of the pack), a lot of election shenanigans can happen between now and Sept. 2, when Democrats and Walker could craft another combo ticket to present to the voters.
BUT MARK BEGICH STICKS HIS CAMPAIGN SIGN ON THE FED’S PROPERTY
The Anchorage neon palm tree that pit an Anchorage businesswoman against the federal government has been auctioned — except no bidder met the required minimum bid by the U.S. Marshal’s Office.
Now what?
The Marshal’s Office set a price of $4,500 for the iconic 22-foot palm tree that stood in front of the disreputable Paradise Inn for years.
Now, what stands in its place is a “Mark Begich for Governor” sign, illegally placed on what has become federal property. The scene around it looks like a set from a dystopian movie, but it’s downtown Spenard.
The motel had been seized by the federal government last year due to illegal drug activity. The trash needed to be taken out so the property could go up for auction. Trash, the marshal said, included the palm tree sign.
Bernadette Wilson, owner of Denali Disposal, told the marshal in charge that the sign seemed like something more than garbage. It was a bit of a landmark for Anchorage. Could she keep it?
Bernadette Wilson spent thousands to preserve the sign, after the Feds told her it was trash and to take it to the landfill. Then they took the sign from her.
The marshal told her to keep it — the government had no sentimental attachment to the sign and considered it trash. So she brought in a flatbed truck and carefully hauled it away with the full support of the federal marshal. It would find a home somewhere, she thought, perhaps back in Spenard, where it had lived for 50 years. Somewhere near the Koot’s windmill, perhaps, where everyone could marvel at its kitchy endurance.
In April, Wilson forked over the palm tree to the Feds, but only after a judge told her she must.
Now, without meeting the minimum bid, what will the federal government do now? Accept the $2,700 that Anchorage resident Jay Stange raised on a GoFundMe page?
Wilson said, “Coming up with the money to purchase it is one thing. Then you have to have the money to restore it. Even if someone can come up with the minimum bid, who will foot the bill to make it operational?”
Wilson spent several thousands of dollars preserving the sign, only to have it taken from her once the federal government determined that if she wanted to save it, it must have some kind of value after all.
“So are they going to give it back?” asked Wilson, somewhat rhetorically. “I spent way more money than their minimum bid taking it down and preserving it.”
The national Women’s March organization accidentally showed its hand by releasing a statement with a “fill-in-the-blank” spot for whomever President Donald Trump nominated to the Supreme Court.
They may not have known who the pick would be, but they are definitely opposed, according to the Women’s March Twitter feed, which got too far over its skies yesterday. Some intern just got demoted for the mistake:
Meanwhile, the radical left was ready in Anchorage to oppose any nominee, with a pre-planned protest in front of Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s offices in downtown. They were rallying before the announcement was made because, according to Shoshanah Stone of Indivisible Anchorage, “all the nominees SUCKED.”
Sen. Dan Sullivan also has offices in that building, but the Left is continually targeting Murkowski, who is seen as more likely to be swayed by their efforts.
Indivisible Anchorage held signs that were professionally printed in advance, announcing, “WOMEN WILL DIE,” and their social media post was telling when it said they rallied “to Reject Trump’s Extremist Supreme Court ##SCOTUSpick Roe, Healthcare, and more are #WhatsAtStake We can’t let up Alaska! Call Murkowski to stop the #KavanaughSCOTUS 202-224-6665.”
All that may backfire on them, as Murkowski was quoted by the Anchorage Daily News saying, “I’m a little annoyed that some of my colleagues, even before the president laid down Judge Kavanaugh’s name, had already determined that they were going to vote against whomever.”
But the protestors were undaunted in social media. The group was using a pre-designed propaganda piece that it released the moment Brett Kavanaugh’s name was announced:
GOVERNOR’S CONDUCT SERIOUSLY ERODED A GOOD PROCESS
BY JEFFREY ROBINSON
ALASKA ASSOCIATION OF CRIMINAL DEFENSE LAWYERS
The Alaska Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers is a statewide nonprofit organization whose goal is “to represent the association before the legislative, executive, and judicial bodies which determine policy for the state and federal governments in a manner that promotes the mission of the association and its objectives and purposes. To preserve, protect, and defend the adversary system of justice and the Alaska and U.S. Constitutions.”
AKACDL wishes to call attention to Gov. Bill Walker’s recent action rescinding a judicial appointment made to a highly qualified attorney on the basis of her advocacy in a single criminal case.
After attorney Julie Willoughby was recommended to the governor to serve as a Juneau Superior Court Judge by the Alaska Judicial Council, Gov. Walker called her and told her he had selected her.
Ms. Willoughby’s application for the Juneau Superior Court judgeship went through Alaska’s widely praised constitutional and merit-based process for the selection of judges. She was rated by her peers as the most qualified person applying for the job; the Alaska Judicial Council, which is made up of the Chief Justice of the Alaska Supreme Court, three attorney members and three public members, one of whom is a retired law enforcement officer, recommended Ms. Willoughby and one other applicant to the governor. Gov. Walker interviewed both applicants and then offered Ms. Willoughby the job.
But then, according to a July 2 article published in the Juneau Empire, an unnamed staff member provided Gov. Walker a brief Ms. Willoughby wrote while defending a client in a sex abuse of a minor case. According to Scott Kendall, the governor’s chief of staff, Ms. Willoughby’s brief, filed in the summer of 2015, shocked the governor’s conscience. Mr. Kendall further accused Ms. Willoughby of “attacking a child victim and misstating statutory rape laws.” Gov. Walker then rescinded the appointment of Ms. Willoughby and selected another candidate.
The brief Mr. Kendall referred to is a 44-page memorandum in support of a motion to dismiss for constitutional violations and prosecutorial failure to follow guidelines. Far from attacking the child victim or misstating the law, Ms. Willoughby raised a number of complex constitutional challenges to Alaska’s criminal sentencing statutes as they existed at the time.
Ms. Willoughby argued that her client, who was 18 at the time the crimes were allegedly committed in 2013, would likely die in jail should he be convicted of all counts. That outcome, and the manner in which Ms. Willoughby believed the case was being prosecuted, raised due process, cruel and unusual punishment, and equal protection concerns.
The fourth, fifth, sixth and eighth amendments of the U.S. Constitution, whose protections are applied to state governments through the Fourteenth Amendment, protect the rights of criminal defendants, including the rights of the clients Ms. Willoughby has well and ably served. And that is what Ms. Willoughby argued in the memo that the governor took offense to.
Alaska lawyers, including Ms. Willoughby, are bound by the Rules of Professional Conduct. The rules explain that as an advocate, “a lawyer zealously asserts the client’s position under the rules of the adversary system.” According to Alaska Rule of Professional Conduct 1.2(b), “(a) lawyer’s representation of a client, including representation by appointment, does not constitute an endorsement of the client’s political, economic, social, or moral views or activities.”
Read in full and in context, it is challenging to comprehend how Gov. Walker (or his staff) conflated Ms. Willoughby’s advocacy of her client’s constitutional rights with an endorsement of child sexual abuse. The governor’s decision to punish her for this advocacy is contrary to our system for judicial selection.
Gov. Walker’s action reveals a lack of recognition for the important role of the defense lawyer in our criminal justice system. More broadly, such action sends a chilling message to any lawyer who might aspire to the bench — be meek in your advocacy and avoid the hard cases or unpopular issues. This cuts to the core of what it should mean to be a lawyer.
Throughout our history, it has been the bravery of lawyers who have taken the hard or unpopular cases that has protected and expanded liberty in this country and especially in Alaska. Lawyers have always been at the forefront of civil rights movements, of curbing governmental excess, and of assuring that the promises of our constitution to due process and equal rights under the law are fulfilled.
In Alaska, lawyers have been at the forefront of protecting our rights of privacy against government intrusion. Lawyers are frequently tasked with representing the “undesirable.” If the only judges the governor will appoint are those who have avoided controversy or watered down their ethical obligations, he will have created a weakened judiciary.
It is the role of the lawyer in such cases to make what may be unpopular arguments. To punish a lawyer for doing so is wrong and denotes a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the defense lawyer. If lawyers are vilified for accepting unpopular clients, the entire system is damaged. Those who are viewed as unpopular clients are the most likely to face bias and suffer injustice in our imperfect legal system. And it is the honorable role of defense counsel to protect the rights of the unpopular.
Under Gov. Walker’s short-sighted and ill-informed conduct here, if Atticus Finch, the brave lawyer who represented a black man charged with a sex crime in the book “To Kill A Mockingbird” applied for a judgeship, he would be rejected not based upon his qualifications, but because he had taken on the difficult case.
Our judicial selection process was deliberately created by the founders of the Alaska Constitution to promote a process for selecting judges that avoids political favoritism by requiring the input of the judicial council and its recommendation process.
Gov. Walker’s conduct here, rejecting the most qualified applicant based upon selected excerpts from a single memorandum she wrote on behalf of an unpopular client, has seriously eroded that process and threatens to affect the quality of our judiciary.
Jeffrey W. Robinson is a lawyer in private practice in Anchorage. He has an active civil litigation, government contracts, trial and criminal defense practice. He is president of AKACDL, and this column is submitted on behalf of the organization.
Oregon ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond, convicted in 2012 of intentionally setting fires on public lands, were pardoned today by President Donald Trump.
Trump signed Executive Grants of Clemency, full pardons for the cattle ranchers whose fire encroached on a small portion of neighboring public grazing land. These fires were “backburns” that the family was using to protect their land from a wildfire started by lightning near their Burns, Oregon ranch. Backburns are a known practice for halting the forward progress of a wildfire and is a common range management practice.
The White House said the evidence at the trial was conflicting and that the jury had acquitted the Hammonds of most charges.
At the time of the sentencing, even the judge had noted the Hammonds were respected in their community and that the five-year sentence would “shock the conscience” and be “grossly disproportionate to the severity” of their conduct. The judge imposed a significantly shorter sentence for the two, but the Obama Administration filed what the Trump Administration calls “an overzealous appeal that resulted in the Hammonds being sentenced to five years in prison. This was unjust.”
Dwight Hammond, now 76, has served three years in prison, and his son Steven, 49, has served four years. They also paid $400,000 to the federal government in restitution.
“The Hammonds are devoted family men, respected contributors to their local community, and have widespread support from their neighbors, local law enforcement, and farmers and ranchers across the West. Justice is overdue for Dwight and Steven Hammond, both of whom are entirely deserving of these Grants of Executive Clemency,” the White House announced today.
Alaska’s U.S. senators weighed in on President Donald Trump’s choice for the U.S. Supreme Court. Both Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan are lawyers.
Candidates for governor also issued comments on Monday evening. Even Mark Begich, the Democrat, made comments focused on his interest in protecting a woman’s right to an abortion.
But Gov. Bill Walker was dead silent about Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination by President Trump.
Here are the statements culled from the various leaders around the state:
Sen. Lisa Murkowski: “This evening the President nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh to serve as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. While I have not met Judge Kavanaugh, I look forward to sitting down for a personal meeting with him. I intend to review Judge Kavanaugh’s decisions on the bench and writings off the bench, and pay careful attention to his responses to questions posed by my colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee. The American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on the Judiciary will also review Judge Kavanaugh’s qualifications prior to these hearings and issue a rating. I intend to carefully consider that rating, the information obtained through personal meetings, my own review of Judge Kavanaugh’s qualifications and record, and the views of Alaskans in determining whether or not to support him. My standard for reviewing Supreme Court nominees remains rigorous and exacting.”
Sen. Dan Sullivan: “I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Judge Brett Kavanaugh for some time – dating back to when we worked together in the Bush administration. He is very well regarded as a judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals – the second most important court in the country. In that role he is known for applying the law and Constitution as written, upholding our Second Amendment rights, and having a healthy skepticism concerning the powers of federal administrative agencies.
“In the coming weeks, I look forward to reviewing in further depth Judge Kavanaugh’s extensive record as a D.C. Circuit judge, and discussing these and other important issues with him. I expect the upcoming Senate confirmation process to be both rigorous and fair, one deserving of a Supreme Court nominee.”
Both leading Republican candidates for governor also weighed in:
Mike Dunleavy: “This is one of the most important things a president can do, and I know that for many Americans and Alaskans, the ability to create a more even-handed, constitutionally attuned Supreme Court was at the heart of their vote for Donald Trump for president.
“Mr. Kavanaugh has an outstanding career and has a long record of decisions to review in his upcoming confirmation process. Alaskans will want to know where he stands on core principles in the Constitution, such as our Second Amendment rights and federal overreach. I look forward to our senators giving him a full and respectful vetting as he moves through the advice and consent of the Senate. I’m very optimistic about his prospects for being confirmed.”
Mead Treadwell: “This nomination shows President Trump has kept his promise to nominate individuals to the Court who have impeccable credentials, and those who support the Constitution, and understand the Rule of Law and Judicial restraint. Kavanaugh may have the ability to vote on Sturgeon vs Frost, the Alaska hovercraft case that goes before the Court this fall, and could very well be the pivotal vote to ensure Alaskans have the ability to enjoy the public lands and waters we have, against federal overreach.”
Tuckerman Babcock, chairman of the Alaska Republican Party: “We are grateful to President Trump for keeping his campaign promises once again!Judge Kavanaugh is an excellent choice, totally committed to defending our Constitution, as written, approved and amended by the people of the United States.”
The leading Democratic candidate for governor weighed in:
Mark Begich: “President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee is yet another reminder that elections matter. I know there has been a lot of concern over the future of civil rights and liberties. Understandably, there has been particular concern about women’s rights and the future of Roe v. Wade. Let me be clear. Governors will become the last line of defense to protect women against these extremist attacks. I will always protect a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions. Here in Alaska, we value our personal privacy and do not want the government intervening in our personal decisions – including health care. That is why Alaska legalized a woman’s right to choose in 1970 – three years before Roe v. Wade became the law of the land. As Governor, I will fight every day – as I always have – to uphold civil rights and liberties for all Alaskans including a woman’s fundamental right to make her own health care decisions.”
Gov. Bill Walker: No statement was issued on Monday by his office or campaign. (Earlier this month, Walker appointed a Juneau lawyer to a Juneau Superior Court seat, and then rescinded his offer and gave the job to someone else. Many in the legal community were aghast at his judgment, which may have kept him from commenting on Kavanaugh at this time).
