Newest Joe Miller mailer, dated Nov. 5, has a ballpoint pen edit to the legal disclaimer. The mailer is from leftover, discarded material from the 2010 elections. The return address on the opposite side is the old Republican headquarters address on Fireweed Lane, which has been razed.
The Alaska Republican Party received notice today that the Federal Elections Commission has accepted its complaint against Libertarian candidate Joe Miller for his unauthorized use of old election postcards that somehow got into the possession of the Miller campaign.
The postcards were left over from the 2010 election, when Miller received the primary Republican nomination, but was beat in the November general election by Lisa Murkowski’s campaign. Murkowski ran as a write-in Republican.
“In accepting the complaint, the FEC Office of General Counsel acknowledges there is a potential violation within the jurisdiction of the FEC and the complaint was proper,” said Stacey Stone, Alaska Republican Party legal counsel.
Tuckerman Babcock, Alaska Republican Party chairman, said he plans on amending the complaint to include additional offenses related to other mailers that have since surfaced.
“Unfortunately, Joe Miller’s campaign continued to break the law even when he knew that complaint was filed. The decision to use old Republican party mailers from 2010 to manipulate and mislead Alaskan voters, was not authorized by the party and we believe is a clear violation of election law,” he said.
The Miller campaign must file a formal response to the GOP complaint within 15 days.
In a separate complaint, District 18 Republicans from midtown and Spenard in Anchorage, lost their lawsuit against the State of Alaska’s strict campaign contribution limits.
U.S. District Judge Timothy Burgess wrote in his decision that limits on campaign contributions do not infringe on free speech or equal protection rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
Judy Eledge files a complaint over the candidacy of AFL-CIO Boss Vince Beltrami, who was certified for the ballot although he did not turn in enough signatures to qualify.
A citizen living in District N has filed a complaint with the Division of Elections over the candidacy of AFL-CIO Union boss Vince Beltrami, who filed as an independent candidate for Senate, challenging incumbent Sen. Cathy Giessel.
As reported in Must Read Alaska last week, Beltrami only submitted 70 signatures of the 188 required to be certified for the ballot. (On Friday, Must Read reported he needed 170; see below for a rationale of the adjusted total needed.) And yet the Division of Elections waved him through as a candidate.
Judy Eledge, a Republican activist, filed the complaint this morning after learning of the wrongful certification of Beltrami in Must Read last week.
Eledge said she realizes that the election is on Tuesday and there is little she can do at this point, and yet she wants the complaint on the record. Here’s a copy of her complaint:
Support documentation by Ray Kreig, which shows how 188 signatures are needed to qualify as an independent candidate in District N:
The line to vote early at the Gambell Street Division of Elections office in Anchorage is 50 voters deep and a 20-minute wait to get in the door, where the line continues. But the mood was upbeat at 2 pm Monday.
Early voting also robust in Wasilla at 11 am. h/t Ryan McKee.
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT WILL BE WATCHING: The U.S. Department of Justice will have 500 observers on the ground in 28 states, including a few in Alaska to ensure that ballots are available in Native languages: Bethel Census Area, Dillingham Census Area, Kusilvak Census Area, Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area. But will they be able to ensure voter fraud doesn’t occur as it did in the primary? Meh.
POLL WATCHERS NEEDED: We can’t count on the federal observers to protect our elections. If you see anything amiss on election day at your precinct, contact Suzanne Downing.
ELECTION WORKERS UNPAID? Overheard at the Lakefront Hotel were disgruntled temporary election workers who still haven’t been paid for working the August Primary Election. The pay is low, but for people in rural Alaska, it’s significant. Given the heavy politicization of the Division of Elections of late, maybe they are only paying out when the precinct results meet with the Walker Adminstration’s approval. We’re joking, of course. Sort of.
ALASKA’S FACEBOOK ELECTION: While you are busy unfriending all your Hillary supporter “friends”, and they are busy unfriending you, what on earth will your Facebook feed look like on Nov. 9? Will it go from nonstop politics back to rescued puppies and guacamole recipes? We hope so.
From the political consultants we hear this election cycle in Alaska has seen the most robust use of social media in Alaska political history. It’s unprecedented. The cost of social media is a fraction of radio and television for a state House or Senate race. The ability to target people in their exact locations is the new gold standard.
MARGARET STOCK, MARK BEGICH, PAY TO PLAY: As seen in this snip from the latest FEC report, Margaret Stock has paid tens of thousands to Mark Begich’s consulting firm. And over the weekend he recorded a robo-call for her. Does that look like a paid endorsement? Would that even be legal? Not so much…
(Editor’s note: A note today from Mark Begich tells us to “get your facts straight.” His company is Nothern Compass Group, he writes. But we also found this:
We break with tradition and offer the following endorsements:
PRESIDENT: DONALD TRUMP. The man has the ability to learn and grow. We’re giving him a chance. The alternative is unsupportable.
U.S. SENATE: LISA MURKOWSKI. We have a strong team in Washington — the strongest in years. Let’s keep them going.
U.S. CONGRESS:DON YOUNG. Because we don’t do politically correct either (and because he has more energy for the job in his little finger than his limp Democratic challenger.)
BALLOT MEASURE ONE: Vote NO.Read our view here. If we want people to act as citizens and take the responsibility attached to citizenship, why do we keep lowering the bar? Read this from Anchorage Daily Planet. Read what the Frontiersman has to say. And realize that the New Venture Fund dark money group just dumped another $210,000 to convince you to vote for it.
BALLOT MEASURE TWO: Vote YES. It allows state debt for the purpose of postsecondary student loans. It’s not a big problem.
JUDGES: Vote NO on retaining Justices Joel Bolger and Peter Maassen because of a decision they made to invalidate a law requiring doctors – with some exceptions – to notify the parents of minor children getting abortions.
FOLLOW THE NEWS: GOPAC will keep you up to date with election results from critical races around the country. Follow the GOPAC Twitter feed here.
Vince Beltrami shows off his July 21 letter qualifying him for the Nov. 8 ballot, as signed by Josie Bahnke, Director of the Division of Elections. Photo from his campaign web site.
BELTRAMI DIDN’T TURN IN HALF THE SIGNATURES REQUIRED
When Vince Beltrami filed signatures to run as an independent candidate, he came up short. He had 70 verified signatures. He needed 170.
But the Division of Elections certified Beltrami anyway, ignoring state law:
AS 15.25.170. Required Number of Signatures For District-Wide Office.
“Petitions for the nomination of candidates for the office of state senator or state representative shall be signed by qualified voters of the house or senate district in which the proposed nominee desires to be a candidate (equal in number to at least one percent of the number of voters who cast ballots in the proposed nominee’s respective house or senate district in the preceding general election.) A nominating petition may not contain less than 50 signatures for any district.”
The 2014 election for Senate District N had approximately 17,000 votes cast. The 1 percent needed is 170 qualified signatures, not 70 and certainly not 50.
Beltrami is running against Sen. Cathy Giessel, who was deep in her work as a lawmaker when Beltrami filed for office. She may not have noticed that her challenger came up with too few signatures, and because the Legislature was in session, she couldn’t work on campaign matters. She cannot check his filings nor have her staff check them while in session.
No one else thought to look into the matter until David Nees, a retired math teacher who is an parttime aide to Rep. Liz Vazquez, started poking around.
The Division of Elections has had a bad year for performance. It had to have one of the legislative races, District 40, decided by the Alaska Supreme Court, and numerous election irregularities have cast doubt on the Division’s competency or commitment to fairness.
Division of Elections will not release a copy of the signatures on Beltrami’s petition, but the photo above shows that the division sent Beltrami a letter on July 21 confirming his spot on the General Election ballot.
Bob Sivertsen just blew through the door, covered in rain.
And by “blew,” the writer means there were 60-mile-knot winds behind him, and rain battering sideways in waves. Ketchikan style.
It’s a classic November gale in Southern Southeast Alaska, but that didn’t stop Sivertsen and a band of merry volunteers from going out and waving signs on a street corner.
They also waved at an Alaska Airlines jet passing over — a jet that simply couldn’t land in the weather.
“I love these November storms. I like to sleep with the rain pounding on the roof,” Sivertsen said.
Born in Territorial days in Ketchikan, Sivertsen was raised in what was a strong timber and fishing economy. That’s why when he got out of high school he went to work in a spruce mill, sawing up timber. His mom was half Aleut, having been relocated from the Aleutian chain down to Southeast during World War II. She attended the Wrangell Institute. His dad’s side of the family came over from Norway.
And like his father, Sivertsen spent 38 years working for the City of Ketchikan. He started riding on the back of a garbage truck. In those days, the garbage truck crew had keys to nearly every gate in town, as there was no real curbside service.
As Solid Waste Supervisor, Bob Sivertsen was featured in a “Tougher in Alaska” series on the History Channel.
“We’d even go up into the homes of the elderly and get the garbage cans from under their sinks,” he recalled. “We’d also carry groceries up the stairs for people.”
That job led to a 38-year career with the city that included the Street Department.
Sivertsen remembers driving a flatbed through town on snow and ice days and shoveling sand onto the roadways, stopping for snowball fights with the neighborhood kids, or pushing cars that were stuck in a berm.
The sidewalks were shoveled by hand by city workers like him back when it was common for Ketchikan to have two to three feet of snow for weeks at a time.
Bob met his wife Terry while she was working at a pizza restaurant. Married for 43 years, they have three children and eight grandchildren. Family has always been important, so much so that when the building of the Trans Alaska Pipeline came along in the 1970s, Bob chose to stay in Ketchikan.
“I just couldn’t see being away from my family, even for a high-paying job,” he said.
Instead, he coached his children through soccer and basketball, relishing the role of father and husband. He would not change a thing.
After 38 years, he retired from the city, and filled a vacant spot on the Ketchikan City Council, where he currently serves as vice mayor.
Through all of it, what he has enjoyed most is meeting people all over Southeast Alaska. Sivertsen is a quiet extrovert: He love people, but he’s not out to be the center of attention in any room.
That’s Bob Sivertsen driving the forklift as he moves a totem pole to a new location, circa 1970s.
“Over the years I’ve met a lot of wonderful people, and whether they are supporting me or not, Southeast Alaska is just a very resilient region, with strong people. We’ve been able to work through downturns in the economy and fishing slumps. This is a great community,”
Only four days remain before voters make up their minds for Republican Bob Sivertsen or Democrat-Independent, Rep. Daniel Ortiz. Will Ketchikan return to conservative values or stay with Ortiz, who recently was given a D grade by the NRA?
The race for House District 36 is on, and Sivertsen is heading back out into the gale to knock on doors and ask people to put their confidence in a guy who has made commitment to family and community the hallmarks of his life.
Open to Debate: How William F. Buckley Put Liberal America on the Firing Line, by Heather Hendershot
There has been no conservative in modern times more erudite than William F. Buckley.
When he began his decades-long talk television show, Firing Line, the anti-war sentiment was growing quickly and the Left was stealing an entire generation. It was 1966, and the Vietnam War was losing the hearts and minds of America’s youth.
Buckley was the voice of the loyal opposition to the Left, and remains unparalleled in American political discourse today. The founder of National Review, he showed America that conservatism could be intellectual and principled.
Open to Debate is a behind-the-set portrait of Buckley that reveals him as the champion of conservative ideas, the finger in the dike against the liberal media. He took on the smartest people on the Left, but with respect.
Buckley is revered by thinking conservatives even today. He was no Andrew Brietbart or Rush Limbaugh. He is the gold standard of what it means to be an ideological warrior, and has lessons to teach the shouters and verbal bomb-throwers of today’s media.
As we head into the gift-giving season, this is book worthy of the thinking conservative in your life.
Alaska Senate candidate Kevin Kastner says if elected to office, he’ll introduce a bill to ban all elected state officials from participating or forming political action committees or independent expenditure groups.
Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux formed Gabby’s Tuesday PAC, which she uses to support her chosen candidates. She took large donations from a dozen well-known Juneau lobbyists, including Ashley Reed, John Harris, Jim Lottsfeldt (MidnightSunAk blog), Ray Gillespie, Kris Knauss, Paul Fuhs, Kim Hutchinson, Frank Bickford, and more, with a sum totaling $17,000 by Oct. 30.
Kastner says this is a pay-to-play scheme that is unhealthy for a democracy.
“Like many Alaskans, I am frustrated with career politicians and special interest lobbyists who seek to manipulate the system in their own favor at the expense of everyday citizens. The recent findings by the Alaska Public Offices Commission demonstrates the need to clarify the intent of the law to keep lobbyists out of Alaska elections,” Kastner said in a press release.
A complaint was filed in August over the Gabby’s Tuesday PAC, but the Alaska Public Offices Commission said the law permits it.
Enough is enough, Kastner said: “We must put a stop to this breach in Alaska’s campaign finance laws or risk a lifelong reign of politicians who use lobbyist loopholes to broker power and position. I’ve spoken with several other legislators and candidates who share my belief that those running for election shouldn’t be engaged in managing PAC activities. Just because it may be technically legal, doesn’t mean it’s ethical.”
Lobbyists who spoke to MustReadAlaska.com say they are concerned that every lawmaker could set up multiple political action committees or independent expenditure groups and force companies to pay those groups — or risk having their legislation sidelined.
Kastner is running for Senate seat H, which encompasses East Anchorage and JBER, a seat now occupied by Sen. Bill Wielechowski, a Democrat.
Word is that if Kastner doesn’t win, a group of citizens is preparing to launch a petition campaign to put the anti-corruption measure on the ballot and prevent legislators from starting their own political action committees and independent expenditure groups. A separate measure has been suggested that would prevent legislators from accepting state per diem when the Legislature is meeting in their home community.
First came the flier in the mailbox that says Bill Wielechowski, the most diehard Democrat in the Senate, defends Libertarian values.
Now, it appears that he is sharing campaign office space with the Democrat-turned-independent Vince Beltrami.
Beltrami, according to Alaska Public Offices Commission, is using the Alaska Democratic Party to file his reports.
BILL WIELECHOWSKI LITIGATING HIS WAY THROUGH ELECTION
In a local advertising mailer, Democrat Sen. Bill Wielechowski placed this ad during the campaign 30-day window ostensibly to give people an update on the lawsuit he has filed against the Permanent Fund Corp. over the governor’s taking of half of Alaskans’ Permanent Fund dividends. Problem? No “Paid for by” disclosure on it, and it’s clearly intended to help him win next week. Will the Alaska Public Offices Commission punish him? Not likely.
EARLY VOTING, ABSENTEES BY THE NUMBERS
As of Wednesday, early voting totals 22,281, and absentee ballots voted total 23, 702. There were 43,526 absentee ballots requested. Highly unusual is that more Republicans than Democrats are participating in early voting. Since 2008, Democrats have tended to carry the early vote, but this year, Republicans outnumber Democrats in the early voting.
Sen. Cathy and Rich Giessel and their grandchildren.
It was two years ago when Sen. Cathy Giessel was stretching her legs in a hotel lobby during a break at an Arctic conference in downtown Anchorage.
She was approached by a nice-looking young man wearing a suit and tie. His hair was trim and he looked like an up-and-coming professional. He was interested in the conference, it was obvious, but he looked her straight in the eyes and spoke:
“You’re Cathy Giessel, aren’t you?” he started. “You saved my life.”
She was taken aback.
The man looked nothing like she remembered him from 18 months earlier, when he had arrived at a homeless shelter and described his symptoms to a social worker, who said, “There’s a nurse in the clinic. You need to see her.”
If she had not seen him that night, he would surely have died. But she won’t divulge more, because as a consummate professional, she is protective of his privacy.
Cathy spends every Monday at this same homeless shelter, where she nurses the sick, the hopeless, the drug-addicted, and the down-and-out.
Often, she finds it emotionally hard to pull into the parking lot, knowing how much tragedy awaits and wondering if she can make a difference in just one broken life. But that night she did, and it sticks in her mind as a credo: “Never get discouraged. Never give up.”
Stories of people who have turned their lives around abound in Cathy’s life, as she has volunteered at pregnancy crisis centers and provided life-giving health care to children in rural Alaska. She was also a critical care nurse for many years in Anchorage.
Born in Fairbanks to a Wien Air pilot and stay-home mom, Cathy grew up tagging along behind her dad as he went to “the office,” which means he was flying people and freight between rural villages and Fairbanks.
Cathy Giessel with her father, hunting near Fairbanks before Statehood.
Her love for the people in rural Alaska was imprinted on her by her dad, who had tremendous respect for Native Alaskans – and they returned the love and respect he showed them.
“They loved him so much, and he loved them. It was a cool experience to see all the little communities that make up Alaska, and what great friendships he had all over,” she said. Those were the days – before Statehood — when trapped fur and ivory carvings were commonly bartered and gifted items.
“My dad bought lots of furs from trappers,” she recalled of the lifestyle that has all but disappeared in the 57 years since Alaska became a state.
Sen. Cathy and her mother, Ruth.
Cathy attended Catholic schools and Lathrop High School in Fairbanks, taking advanced placement classes. She wasn’t a school jock, but more of the “geek that took four years of Latin.”
She went to the University of Michigan, because she was not able to study nursing in Alaska and because it had a great football team. Between high school and college, however, she worked as an intern for U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens. She and other interns were able to live at the Stevens’ Bethesda, Maryland home that summer, a time she cherishes.
She remembers of Stevens: “He really had a heart for rural Alaskans. He cared about their health, about sanitation, communicable diseases, vaccinations — all of it.” As a nursing-bound student, that stuck with her.
Cathy Giessel, second from left, campaigning for Sen. Ted Stevens during his first run for office in 1970.
Cathy always wanted to study political science, but her mother had convinced her that nursing was a steadier option, that there would always be work.
Her mom was right. As a nurse practitioner, she worked in the North Slope School District for years, providing health care to people whose families she had first met as a child, going with her father from village to village. After he passed, she felt she was following in his footsteps in many ways, to help rural communities.
The experience helped form who she is today as a senator, one who not only knows the map of Alaska, but has been intimately involved with so many people who live in places few can find on that map.
“We are such a big and diverse state, and I think we forget that sometimes, living here in Anchorage. We get into that big-city thinking.”
But walking door-to-door in her district, which stretches from Portage north into the hillsides of Anchorage, she also is reminded that we’re still a small state.
“I met a young man in my district who asked me how long I’d been in the state. And when I told him about growing up with Wien Airlines, he said he was part of the Wien “family,” too. And it was like a family, growing up with Wien.”
That man is now a constituent of hers and is involved in Arctic policy issues in Alaska.
Cathy also worked as a critical care nurse, leaving that stressful vocation in 1980 as her second child arrived. She and her husband Richard had decided that day care, nannies and babysitters were not how they wanted to raise their children. So Cathy raised and homeschooled their three children up until their high school years.
She ran a 24-hour crisis hotline, volunteered, and for a while was a dressmaker, making wedding, bridesmaid and career suits for women at home, with her sewing machine.
Richard, who was an engineer, had gone into teaching at a Christian school, and the dressmaking helped ends meet during those years.
But there were times, during the economic crash of the ‘80s, when the pocketbook was empty.
“In the summer of 1986, we ran out of grocery money, and we just had to eek by until school started and Rich was getting a paycheck again,” she recalled. The experience gives her not just sympathy, but greater empathy for people going through tough times. She’s been there.
Cathy got involved in politics by taking part in her Republican local district meetings, and eventually working on campaigns. Finally, when Sen. Con Bunde was getting ready to retire, she threw her hat in the ring, walking her sprawling district from December of 2009 until October of 2010.
Redistricting changed her boundaries and she had to run in 2012, and 2014. Now she faces the biggest bank account in Alaska, the Big Labor one bankrolling her fiercest opponent yet, AFL-CIO President Vince Beltrami.
But she goes back to her faith, her family and her core principles time and again, to simply do the right thing every day, “Never get discouraged. Never give up.” She’s faced tough opponents before, and she has dug deep into her faith to shield herself from the character assaults and the lies.
“They are saying so many things that just aren’t true. They’re saying I voted against Erin’s Law, when I voted for it. They’re saying I voted against the law enforcement survivor’s bill, when we didn’t even get to vote on it due to procedural questions.” The House had already adjourned, so legal fixes to that bill could not be made, she said.
Although she is being outspent by Big Labor dollars, she won’t be outworked — either in her efforts to meet with every constituent at his or her door, or the work that she’ll do for them in Juneau.
But she’s also proud of being a grandmother, and always introduces herself as one in every public forum — as “a wife, a mother, and a grandmother.”
It is said that if you want to see Sen. Giessel really smile, just ask her about her grandchildren. She’ll be grinning from ear to ear.
