By popular demand, here is the letter that Alaska Gov. Bill Walker sent to leaders in the Alaska business community after he received a D grade on the Alaska Business Report Card:
Walker to Chamber: Don’t grade me, bro’
Gov. Bill Walker was feeling tased by the recent Alaska Business Report Card. He brought it up in his remarks to the Alaska State Chamber of Commerce, which was holding its fall meeting in Kenai this week.
The Alaska Business Report Card had given him a “D” grade. It released that grade on Sept. 13. A number of those people who take part in the project were in the audience.
“You need to stop giving us grades,” he said to the business leaders assembled at the Challenger Learning Center, before stopping himself and shifting direction. He said, “Don’t pick on my administration. I am pretty defensive about my team.”
Many on his team come from the private sector, Walker continued. They gave up huge jobs and big paychecks to come and work for his administration. “Attack me,” he said, “just don’t attack my people.”
Two weeks ago the governor sent a letter to the Chamber and other groups participating in the Report Card project, in which he painstakingly defended his administration in a strongly worded rebuke.
“Enclosed is a point-by-point response to your unsigned letter dated September 12, 2016, purporting to assess the performance of my Administration during the past legislative session. Overall, it is difficult to take the grade or analysis seriously, [ital. ours] on account of your shifting criteria and inaccurate and selective use of facts,” Walker wrote.
But Walker did take it seriously. He disputed each and every grade he received and went on for six pages — single spaced — doing so. He sent his rebuttal letter not only to the Alaska Chamber of Commerce, but to the Alaska Support Industry Alliance, the Resource Development Council, and Prosperity Alaska, a group that sponsors the Accountability Project.
Walker’s letter went on to chastise the business community: “Our state is facing an unprecedented fiscal challenge…What have your organizations done to help solve this overarching threat to Alaska’s prosperity?”
Business leaders have repeatedly admonished the governor to bring down government overhead before looking for new revenues.
In his remarks to the Chamber this week, he remarked about how hard it is to govern during times of crises: “I will take all the blame, and if there’s any credit you can take the credit.”
But in his letter to the Chamber and other groups that make up the Alaska Business Report Card, he put the blame squarely on members of the Legislature: “To blame my Administration for the inaction of lawmakers — some of whom publicly admitted that their re-election was a higher priority than fixing the fiscal gap — negligently fails to assign responsibility to where it belongs.”
The governor blamed the Legislature for not passing even one item of his New Sustainable Alaska Plan, a mix of taxes and Permanent Fund restructuring:
“Also not factored into your assessment was our proposal, introduced during the last legislative session as part of the New Sustainable Alaska Plan, to pay these credits off in full. Here again, it was legislative inaction that resulted in the eventual outcome. Without a single piece of our plan passing the Legislature, it would have been irresponsible to pay out the credits beyond the minimum required in statute,” he wrote in his letter of rebuttal to the Report Card partners.
But during the legislative session he had a different tune. He said his entire tax plan had to pass — it was all or nothing. He would not accept just an income tax, a gasoline tax, or higher corporation taxes. He demanded all of the parts, including the restructuring of the Permanent Fund, to be passed at once.
In a May 31 press conference, Walker also bristled about criticism of his administration:
“Those that say we haven’t done enough — I’m pushing back on that. I’m very offended by that. That’s unjustified and it’s an insult — not to me — it’s an insult to my staff. Our directors, our cabinet members, that have given up, you know, a lot of their personal time to travel this great state to do that.”
This week he was equally offended, only he expressed it directly to the Alaska business community.
No Trump or Johnson in election pamphlet: Here’s why
THE DIVISION OF NEGLECTIONS IS ‘WITH HER’
Voters in Alaska got a surprise when they opened up their Official Election Pamphlet this week. There was no information about the top of the Republican ticket: Donald Trump and Mike Pence.
There’s also no information on Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson.
Hillary Clinton, the Democrat however, is featured, along with her running mate Tim Kaine. So is Jill Stein of the Green Party, and a handful of other also-rans.
Once criticism started rolling into the Division of Elections, Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott issued a carefully worded statement that includes this paragraph:
“For presidential and vice presidential candidates from a recognized political party, parties submit their Certificate of Nomination. All of the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates were asked to submit materials from the National and State Party Chairperson. However, the Republican and Libertarian candidates did not submit anything for publication in the Official Election Pamphlet by the August 30, 2016 deadline.
Here’s the explanation given by Alaska Republican Party Chairman Tuckerman Babcock:
“The Division of Elections never contacted the Trump campaign,” he said, after consulting with both Trump representatives and the Republican National Committee.
Instead, the Division went a circuitous route: “They sent a letter to the RNC about an election matter, and in the fourth paragraph they made a reference to the official election pamphlet. The Division of Elections never actually contacted Trump’s people to see if the information had gotten to the campaign.”
Babcock was copied on the letter to the RNC, but the Alaska Republican Party doesn’t typically contact national candidates about the pamphlet deadlines, he added, and so it wasn’t an action item for the local party.
The Division of Elections is arguing that their idea of notifying the Trump campaign was sufficient, although the results in the pamphlet indicate that only one out of three candidates knew of the deadline.
“No one at the local level knew that the information had not been submitted until the election pamphlet was printed,” said Jerry Ward, Trump’s campaign director for Alaska, who found out about the missing information the same way everyone else did — by opening up the voter pamphlet he received in the mail.
“The Election Division never reached out or even sent the information to Trump Headquarters in New York City. That’s where all questionnaires and materials go. We don’t fill out materials here at the local level. Instead of sending it to the published campaign address, they sent it to the RNC. Who does that?”
The answer may be that a barely competent Election Division, which was defending itself in court against a challenge over the District 40 double-voting scandal, does just that.
Whether intentional or unintentional, the Division’s method for contacting the three major national candidates resulted in a one-in-three success rate.
“People have been calling me this morning concerned that Gov. Mallott is trying to suppress Republican voter turnout. They’re furious, saying that Mallott thinks it’s OK to let people in rural Alaska vote twice, and it’s also OK to publish an election pamphlet with one out of the three major candidates for president represented,” Ward said. “It doesn’t look like the Division made any real effort to reach out to the Republican candidate.”
At the very least, the State of Alaska needs to correct the problem on their web site and with a supplemental mailing, Ward said. “It’s not like they didn’t know where Trump headquarters was in New York City.”
Babcock has asked the Division of Elections to provide him with the exact address they sent the pamphlet information to for the Hillary Clinton campaign and the other campaigns that are represented in the pamphlet, such as Darrell Castle, Constitution Party, and Rocky de la Fuente, a non-affiliated candidate. There has been no response from the Division, he said.
Voters curious about the Trump campaign can go to his web site, where a contact number is clearly posted on the front page.
BALLOT MEASURE INFORMATION MISSING
Ballot Measure One, which will make voter registration automatic for anyone applying for their Permanent Fund Dividend, provided a statement in favor of the measure, but no opposing statement.
The Division explained it this way in the voter pamphlet:
“After posting to the Alaska Online Public Notice System and solicitations, the Division of Elections did not receive a response for the Statement in Opposition for this ballot measure.”
Walker to State Chamber: I need more money
WHAT WALKER DIDN’T SAY WAS NOT LOST ON BUSINESS LEADERS
Gov. Bill Walker’s speech to the Alaska Chamber of Commerce’s Fall Forum on Wednesday came during a crucial time in his administration’s budget cycle.
Department budgets are now nearly finalized and are ready to be hammered into the budget system. Within two weeks, they’ll be 99 percent done, if this administration is anything like others.
The governor by now knows what his budget is going to generally look like going into the next fiscal year. He will be presenting the budget to the Alaska Legislature the first week of December.
But Walker didn’t mention any budget particulars to the State Chamber, a group that has consistently told him to cut agency budgets first before pursuing new revenues. What he said was, in essence, “I’m going to need some more money.”
Walker said he will present a similar package of taxes during the upcoming legislative session, only now those taxes will be higher.
“Some will be higher than last year,” he said. “If we don’t do something this year, it will be more difficult in subsequent years.”
The taxes he will propose may very well include an increase in corporation taxes, according to those close to the administration.
“We have to have some stability, take the volatility out of our income so the Legislature doesn’t have to worry about huge rises and large falls,” he said, describing the pitfalls of being an oil-dependent economy.
“I want to make sure no future governor ever has to make the kinds of decisions I have to make,” Walker said.
Later during the fall meeting, former state budget director Cheryl Frasca said that actual cuts to agency operations during the last budget cycle were under 10 percent.
She said the 44 percent number that Commissioner of Revenue Randall Hoffbeck was touting as cuts included all cuts going back to 2013.
Supremes: Mistakes happen, Westlake wins
THE GOVERNOR’S CANDIDATE IS NAMED WINNER
Today the Alaska Supreme Court reversed a lower court’s ruling and awarded the House District 40 win to challenger Dean Westlake. Both Westlake and Rep. Ben Nageak are Democrats. The winner of the Aug. 16 primary is the presumed winner of the General Election on Nov. 8, as there are no Republicans or other candidates on the ballot.
The court decided that the double voting in Shungnak, resulting in 100 ballots cast, was merely an election worker error, not election malconduct, and that in Kivalina it was voter error. But the decision was not explained by the court.
The 50 voters who cast ballots in Shungnak were told to vote two ballots, rather than one.
The decision was published by the Court, but the thinking behind the decision was not given.
A visit to the nail salon: Trump is fine
OPPOSITION TRIES TO SHELLAC TRUMP, BUT HE’S GOT THIS VOTE
If you want to know what women are thinking, head to the nail salon. That’s what this writer did, and here’s what she found out about what non-politico women think about Donald Trump:
He’s a typical male. He talks a big game about women sometimes. Bravo. Big deal, the women said. We’ve heard it before, and we’re not perfect either.
“If people heard some of the stuff I’ve said about men and their big swinging d—s…” said one patron, to a ripple of uncomfortable laughter. Yes we’re all guilty of being crass.
Of course, we all want our presidents to be perfect, not crass. During his 2000 campaign, George W. Bush was caught on a hot mic calling New York Times reporter Adam Clymer a “major league a–hole.” The media went berserk. It was as if they’d never heard the word before, certainly never applied to one of their own. Queue laugh track.
Or how about the hot mic that caught Ronald Reagan joking, just before his weekly address to the nation in 1984: “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”
Or Barack Obama calling Kanye West a “jackass.” Or that time he said: “And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” Speaking of jackasses…
This is different. This is Donald Trump being a New York boor. This is a side of the Donald we know is there and we don’t like.
And yet, the women in the salon said: “I don’t care. I’m so sick of the political ruling class and it’s never going to change unless we get someone in there who is a change agent, and besides, he’s been a businessman all his life, not a politician.”
What’s surprising is that while some women are reacting from a place of trauma, and Donald’s words are the equivalent of picking at a very painful scab, many others are going to be voting with their heads, in spite of all the things that may have happened to them in their lives.
They don’t care that he has a wife that looks more robot than human. They don’t care that he has orange hair and even oranger skin. They care about the country and getting it back on the right track. They care that they’ve been sliced and diced and divided by Obama and they are sick of it. They’re worried about having more government crammed down their throats.
And they don’t think Hillary has what it takes to bring back sanity or move the country forward. “She’s going to be another four years of Obama,” said one Alaskan, examining her newly trimmed hair in the mirror. “In fact, I’ve always thought she’d lie her way to the top, and was I right, girls?”
This is not a scientific sample. In fact, it’s merely a slice of life in midtown Anchorage on a bright Tuesday afternoon.
Over at the Fivethirtyeight blog, Daniel Nichanian says women favor Hillary over Donald by a nearly unbelievable margin. If only women voted in November, Hillary would win by the largest landslide in history, 458 electoral votes for Hillary and 80 for Donald, he says. Today, those 80 electoral votes were getting their nails done.
It’s abundantly clear that women voting in November will be the deciding factor and that between now and Election Day, they’ll be bombarded in the media with gender-sensitive messaging that tugs them toward Hillary and away from Donald.
Trump had better put on his big-boy pants and start courting the women’s vote, or he will have a hee-yuge amount of explaining to do on Nov. 9.
Nageak vs. Mallott: What now?
NAIL BITER FOR NAGEAK AND WESTLAKE
Superior Court Judge Andrew Guidi had harsh things to say about the badly performing Alaska Division of Elections. To remedy the mismanagement of the primary in District 40, he threw 14 votes out from the disastrous, poorly run Aug. 16 primary.
Judge Guidi published his decision on Thursday and Rep. Ben Nageak emerged the winner by just two votes.
Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott decided he’d take the matter to the Alaska Supreme Court because as a partisan Democrat, he and Gov. Walker want nothing more than to get rid of Nageak and replace him with challenger Dean Westlake.
Oral arguments begin at 10 am on Wednesday.
WHERE DOES IT GO FROM HERE? Will the Supreme Court reverse the decision? Not likely, our experts tell Must Read. After all, the remedy arrived at by Judge Guidi is the same one that the Supreme Court settled on in Finkelstein vs. Stout.
Further, if the Supreme Court decides the contest should be re-voted on the November General Election ballot, it would be creating a brand new election condition that in no way mirrors a primary, where people must choose between the R ballot and the ADL ballot. A ruling like that could very well go to the U.S. Supreme Court.
A second challenge of the election will be heard this week in the Alaska Supreme Court. It is an appeal by Nageak of the actual state recount that led to the original eight-vote win by Westlake.
Meanwhile, Mallott reassured the public in a written statement that he will abide by the Alaska Supreme Court’s ruling. Using the “royal we,” he said:
“We are disappointed that the Superior Court ruled that a poll worker error in Shungnak was sufficient to change the outcome of the House District 40 Primary Election. We have already appealed the ruling to the Alaska Supreme Court. We want absolute clarity on the issues involved and will follow whatever measures the Supreme Court deems appropriate in order to secure a fair election for the two Democratic legislative candidates in House District 40.”
Clash of the titans
The two gladiators approached the stage slowly, like animals crouching, circling each other, ready to pounce.
Donald and Hillary were engaged in the biggest game of chicken in their lives. For the viewers, it was almost like watching mutually assured destruction in the making. He — as a fast-moving businessman with a rapidly approaching past. She — as an expert enabler of a possible rapist husband who sat caged nearby.
Both had already hit the nuclear button, and the countdown to obliteration was underway. This was going to be full scorched-earth.
We have to give Donald the win on the debate and not just because moderator Martha Raddatz started debating him halfway through. Donald did not allow the moderators to walk all over him in the way they did to Mitt Romney.
Hillary had already pulled the trigger on Friday by releasing the audio on Donald’s discussion of his boorish exploits. It was a calculated move to allow the visceral reaction to develop in the public, and to knock Donald off his game. It didn’t work: Donald brought his A game.
FIRST RAPIST? The debate Sunday night was a chance for Hillary to come clean about the actual abuse of women by her husband, and her absolute unyielding defense of him. She didn’t come clean. It was all lies, she said.
Twenty-five years ago, on national television Hillary defended her husband, saying this on 60 Minutes: “I’m not sitting here some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette.”
Last night, she was in full Tammy Wynette mode, standing by her predatory man, and the subtext of the entire debate was Bill Clinton on trial.
Donald produced a Facebook broadcast prior to the main event, accompanied by women who accuse Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct, er, rape.
The women, Juanita Broaddrick, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey and Kathy Shelton, then sat in the audience during the debates, not far from the man they accused. It was awkward.
This writer is reminded that while Donald has been in the real estate and international beauty pageant businesses (dare we say land and cattle?) and has led an admittedly hedonistic private life, Bill and Hillary Clinton chose the path of public trust.
The Clinton Machine has abused that trust badly — separately and together, as the first couple of Arkansas and the first couple of the free world, which they plundered through their fake influence-buying foundation. They’re America’s version of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos: Corrupt, powerful, unrepentant.
Juanita Broaddrick said last night, “Mr. Trump may have said some bad words, but Bill Clinton raped me and Hillary Clinton threatened me. I don’t think there’s anything worse.”
Donald appeared on the debate stage under more pressure than perhaps any candidate in history. He didn’t melt down, and he certainly didn’t back down. Instead, he showed just what kind of leader he would be if put up against someone like, say, Vladimir Putin.
In June, Hillary questioned Donald’s temperament: “This is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes. It’s not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin.”
Last night, he proved her wrong. As it turns out, he’s got more than mettle. He’s got every bit of nerve it takes to lead.
One Alaskan Trump supporter wrote to Must Read over the weekend with this view:
“In battle, the leaders are up front. This election is a battle. Those Republicans who turn tail and run to the back in fright over Trump’s locker room talk are more shameful than anything Trump could say. Turn tails who renounce their support for our Republican candidate need to rethink. Please, Republicans, get back on track and support the strongest, most determined candidate. Talk is cheap. Trump is a builder. Give him support. Do not suggest a turn tail to take his place.”
TAKEAWAY: Bedwetters who prematurely called the election for Hillary just had their nether regions handed to them. It’s not over. The Republican base is still on board.
OUCH! FASHION STATEMENT: The blouse worn by Melania Trump during last night’s debate? Here it is on Net-a-Porter’s website. Yes, it’s called a pussy-bow. Now you know:
