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.
BELTRAMI: NOT SAFE FOR WORK…FOR KIDS…OR DISTRICT N
AFL-CIO Union boss Vince Beltrami has a habit of belittling regular people on social media and in person. But in this audio captured by a concerned senior citizen, Beltrami goes on an unfriendly tirade. R rated for language. You’ve been warned:
Beltrami is trying to unseat Sen. Cathy Giessel in Senate District N. He’s aligned with Democrats, although he has recently registered non-aligned, leading a herd of Democrats-turned-Independents who are running this year in Alaska.
And Beltrami one of the founders of Together for Alaska, a Democrat-funded independent expenditure group that is now supporting his candidacy.
Paul Kendall, the man who recorded the audio, is a known political gadfly, but legislators have to deal with people like Kendall on a daily basis. Constituents call; they are not always rational, and in fact are usually unhappy. Dealing with cranky people and garden variety cranks is daily business for a legislator.
CATHY GIESSEL TALKS ABOUT FOSTER CARE, FAMILIES
At a chili and cornbread dinner in Anchorage, Sen. Cathy Giessel also showed her true colors. As she heads into her final week of door-to-door campaigning, she spoke about foster care and how one of her proudest moments has been sponsoring SB 180, to support greater access for children to loving homes while their parents take some time to get their acts together. The law she sponsored ensures that parents don’t simply lose their children to the state just because they’ve hit a crisis in their lives.
At one point, she started to get emotional, thinking about the stories of the families that she’s met in her journey who have been impacted by SB 180, sometimes .
And then she caught herself, and continued to press the importance of healthy families.
Here’s the Cathy Giessel the public doesn’t often see, talking about how faith, family, and love of Alaska motivates her to work hard for her community every day:
Nasty things are bound to happen during the week leading up to the election, and we’ve found some doozies arriving in mailboxes:
BILL WIELECHOWSKI SAYS HE’S LIBERTARIAN? In this flier, hard Democrat Sen. Bill Wielechowski tries to pass himself off as a Libertarian. Democrats are running so quickly away from their brand that it’s come to this?
PAT HIGGINS’ STOLEN VALOR: In his latest mailer, candidate Pat Higgins (the hard Democrat running against Charisse Millett, District 25) infers that his time spent as a personnel worker in the Marshall Islands for a company doing contract work with the military was the equivalent of keeping our nation safe as a member of said military. Millett called foul: Higgins was not an enlisted serviceman nor an officer, but just a contractor. He could quit at any time and he eventually did, so no hall pass for Higgins’ missing all those school board meetings while still drawing a school board salary.
HARRIET DRUMMOND’S SLEAZATHON: Incumbent Democrat Harriet Drummond goes after Mike Gordon in a new radio ad and mailer that all but calls him a drug pusher and child rapist. It gets the award for the sleaziest ad of the week, and that’s saying something. Former police officers are standing by to defend Gordon. This reminds us of when Drummond stood outside the Dena’ina Center upset that SB 21 was being signed into law. Her protest sign read: “Corrupt Bastards Club Third Floor,” which is the level of discourse her fellow lawmakers have come to expect from her. If she doesn’t get her way, she just goes for the gutter.
FORREST MACDONALD’S MONEY MISCHIEF: From the candidate’s filing in 2015, it appears he earned income in the range of $5,000 to $12,000 plus $8,800 in Permanent Fund dividends (including his wife and kids) plus $1,700 in GI Bill benefits. His children are enrolled in Denali KidCare, which is a subsidized health care program.
Yet this year he gave $11,250 to his campaign. The Democrat who wants to win Senate seat L against Natasha Von Imhof just doesn’t add up. Of course, if he won, he’d get the biggest pay increase in his life.
VINCE BELTRAMI WON’T COME CLEAN: Now the fake-independent running against Republican Cathy Giessel for Senate District N says he’ll take a leave of absence from his $185,000 job running the Alaska AFL-CIO. But what does that mean? Meanwhile, the AFL-CIO is one of the largest spenders in the 2016 election cycle, adding more than $11.5 million to the coffers of Democratic candidates, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The top recipient is Hillary Clinton. (The union’s super PAC, “AFL-CIO Worker’s Voices PAC,” spent another $7.3 million.) But Beltrami? He says he’s an independent. Queue the laugh track.
HARRY CRAWFORD CAUGHT IN A LIE: Harry Crawford, running against Lance Pruitt, is taking credit for the “red stripe ID” law, although it wasn’t his idea at all. A manager at a liquor store came up with the proposal years earlier, as reported in the Anchorage Daily News and other newspapers, and it was discussed widely at the time the idea came out, four years before the accident involving Crawford’s wife. The statement in his ad is a blatant lie.
WHO IS THIS PERSON? She was observed ripping up Trump signs in Anchorage rights of way and delivering them in a rage to Trump headquarters on Old Seward Highway at Klatt Road, before storming away in her black Lexus, license plate JBA832. We asked the police to respond and identify her, but no call back yet from APD. Eagle-eyed readers say she’s a well-known lawyer in town.
BILL WELD ESCHEWS ENDORSING MILLER: The Libertarian candidate for vice president was in town last week and threw his support for the U.S. Senate race to Lisa Murkowski, saying Joe Miller is a phony Libertarian.
A mailer from Joe Miller, Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate, uses the Alaska Republican Party disclaimer and return address. The party’s bulk mail permit is blotted out, and a Joe Miller bulk mail permit has been printed, but the whole effort was rejected by the U.S. Postal Service.
Maybe it’s theft. Maybe it’s mail fraud. Maybe it’s just playing fast and loose with the law.
The Alaska Republican Party on Monday filed a police report to document what the party believes is theft of materials and/or attempted mail fraud by Citizens for Joe Miller.
On a Federal Election Commission report, the Libertarian-registered Miller campaign said it received boxes and boxes of postcard mailers from the Alaska Republican Party as a contribution worth $4,500.
It turns out, these were old postcards from 2010, when the party backed Miller as the nominee, and opposed Lisa Murkowski, who had lost the primary. The party did not give Miller the postcards, said Tuckerman Babcock, party chairman. The only record of possible transfer of the materials comes from an account offered by the former communications director for the Alaska Republican Party, who says he let someone take them off his hands after the 2010 General Election.
That contentious election festers as a sore among Joe Miller supporters to this day. Murkowski went on to run a write-in campaign, as a Republican, in November of 2010, even after her candidacy was not supported by the Alaska Republican Party. She won. He lost. He cried foul. She essentially said “Where’s the beef, Joe?”
Murkowski had pulled off a miracle and Miller supporters have never forgot. To this day that chasm tears the guts apart in the Republican Party of Alaska, which has strong Libertarian leanings.
But last week, these old official party postcards, which should have been destroyed, surfaced when the Miller campaign tried to commit what the Alaska Republican Party considers mail fraud.
Miller, it appears, tried to post the items with a newly minted bulk mail permit, but with a “Paid for by the Alaska Republican Party” disclaimer, and with the Alaska Republican Party’s return address.
The Alaska Republican Party first learned that Miller possessed these old Republican Party campaign materials when Miller reported on his Federal Election Commission report that the party had donated the fliers to him this year. That was simply not the case, said Chairman Babcock.
What he said, actually, is this: “That’s a lie. The party made no such gift to the Joe Miller campaign in 2016.”
On Oct. 24, Miller changed his story, saying he had obtained the fliers from someone who dropped them off at his headquarters. Miller displayed the flier for the media and later posted it on social media.
To ensure that no fraud was in the works, Babcock paid a visit to Alejandro T. Tungul, supervisor of business mail at the main office of the U.S. Postal Service in Anchorage.
Babcock alerted Mr. Tungul to what he thought was a remote possibility that someone might attempt to mail the fraudulent flier with the party’s disclaimer or misuse the bulk permit of the party, both of which were printed upon the old 2010 fliers displayed by Joe Miller.
On Oct. 28, Mr. Tungul notified Babcock by e-mail, confirming that an attempt by the Miller campaign was made:
“Good afternoon. I tried calling you several times but no one answered. The attached mailing was presented for mailing but was not accepted. Thank you.”
The flier attached to Tungul’s e-mail was the same flier that Joe Miller had displayed publicly the previous Monday.
In addition, the flier Mr. Tungul attached did not include a disclaimer related to Citizens for Joe Miller, nor was the Alaska Republican Party’s bulk mail permit blackened out.
On Oct. 31, a party representative visited Mr. Tungul, who said the USPS had opened an investigation into the attempt to mail the flier.
Tungul could not share any other information except to confirm that those attempting to mail the items did not seek to use the bulk permit of the Alaska Republican Party. He was clamming up, however, because of the investigation under way.
Miller’s sworn FEC report says that he obtained the mailers from the Alaska Republican Party in September 2016.
But his Oct. 31 press release claims that his campaign actually acquired the old 2010 mailers from some an unnamed registered Republican individual — not the Alaska Republican Party itself.
If Joe Miller had been telling the truth when he claimed the fliers as a 2016 donation from the Alaska Republican Party, then the mailers were taken from the Alaska Republican Party without its consent, and the party considers that a theft.
However, if Miller himself somehow obtained the mailers and stored them until the present, then he appears to have committed a violation by knowingly and intentionally making a sworn falsehood on his FEC report.
Instead of correcting the old fliers with a new permit number, disclaimer and return address, Miller tried to leave the impression that the mailer was from the Alaska Republican Party.
If Miller had successfully sent the mailers, they would have gone out with a knowingly false “paid for by” notification saying the Alaska Republican Party had paid for the message.
Miller’s effort to correct that problem was to also print a new disclaimer, and leave both visible, with the public having no idea who paid for what.
Miller blotted out the Alaska Republican Party bulk mail permit, and printed his own, on the fliers. However, he left return address as the Alaska Republican Party. And, as shown here, he then put stamps on the mailer and sent them out across the state. Thousands of them.
It should be noted that the address on the old flier is now obsolete, as the Alaska Republican Party headquarters has moved.
Take a good long look at the picture above. That’s John-Henry Heckendorn in the middle with the big sign.
He’s the brains behind the Ship Creek Group, which is getting Democrats elected right and left in Alaska since he arrived on the scene just a few short years ago from the East Coast.
Heckendorn was the political director for the Alaska Democrats. He interned for Mark Begich. His Ship Creek clients are all Democrats. He is the best thing to ever happen to Democrats in Alaska.
In this photo, he is turning in 42,540 signatures to get Measure One on the Nov. 8 ballot. He’s happy.
Why would Heckendorn, who recently helped win four-for-four in Anchorage Assembly races and who dragged Dean Westlake over the finish line in the House District 40 race, want to push for every eligible Alaskan to be registered to vote? Out of the goodness of his heart, or out of the interest of a political agenda?
Liberal progressives are trying to turn red-leaning Alaska into a blue state. Ballot Measure One is part of their plan. Heckendorn is just the guy to do it.
It’s all being funded by outside groups backed by untraceable dollars that know they can socially engineer Alaska by simply getting more low-information voters to cast ballots.
Heckendorn and his Ship Creek Group have the contract with the ballot measure backers to make sure that happens.
Theirs is a two-pronged approach: First get everyone registered to vote, including those who have no interest and who will rarely vote. And second, make sure those ballots get voted in future elections. No matter what it takes.
The measure, put on the ballot by left-wing activists, would automatically register as a voter every single person who applies for an Alaska Permanent Fund dividend. You apply for a dividend? The state is going to make sure you’re registered to vote, not by your choice, but by the state’s. Of course it will weed out kids and felons, but everyone else will be fair game.
Let’s look at who at the national level is behind this push for automatic registration.
First we have the National Education Association, or NEA, which is a national union and a powerful one at that, with an annual budget of $300 million.
The NEA backs Democrats and spends $3.6 million on lobbyists in a typical year. It’s membership totals 3.2 million. Why does NEA want the automatic voter registration to pass? So it can bargain for higher teacher pay and less accountability for results. Having more Democrats in office will help.
The New Venture Fund is also a main funder of the propaganda blitz to pass Ballot Measure One.
The NV Fund is a grant-making organization that gives heavily to organizations closely associated with the Democratic Party’s key causes.
More than $550,000 is being spent on media messaging by the New Venture Fund to support the passage of Ballot Measure One. The fund’s president was quoted in the Alaska Dispatch News saying that when more people vote, it’s better for democracy.
But a look through the IRS Form 990 filing of the New Venture Fund reveals three big grant strategies: Pro-abortion groups, climate change advocates (anti-oil), and voter engagement efforts.
These three strategies are aligned: Get more uninformed people registered to vote, and then create strong messaging and marketing around specific issues to drive them to the polls to ensure that “progressive” lawmakers are elected.
The New Venture Fund is trying to change public policy by swinging elections. It is a pro-big-government group whose lobbyists are part of the revolving door, in and out of government. The Fund has also made six-figure contributions to Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president.
WHO ISN’T REGISTERED
A recent Pew study reports that some 24 percent of the eligible voting public isn’t registered to vote.
That may seem like a hefty number, until you consider this: According to a Gallup poll taken this year, when adults are asked to identify the country from which America gained its independence, 24 percent had no idea (they answered Russia, France, China, Mexico and Unsure).
In another question during the same poll, some 20 percent of adults answered incorrectly when asked if the earth revolves around the sun or the sun revolves around the earth.
It’s a rather sure bet that there’s an overlap between those who think the sun revolves around the earth and those who aren’t registered to vote.
But among those who are registered, some 25 percent hardly ever vote anyway. Three quarters of those people say they just don’t know enough about the candidates.
Is that not OK? To not vote if you don’t know what you’re voting for? In fact, many of us have felt similarly when faced with a long ballot filled with names of judges about whom we know nothing. But do we as a society governed by laws truly want willfully ignorant people pushed into the voting booth?
The liberal hive mind says yes.
But there are others who say no. Registering to vote, they say, is a demonstration of citizenship and is a responsibility that should not be automatically compelled by the government. When government pushes voter registration on people as nearly mandatory, it compells a behavior, and thus influences outcomes.
Ballot Measure One is a solution in search of a problem. Its backers are not being intellectually honest with voters because they have a clear and focused agenda to sway elections to Democrats and their causes.
On Ballot Measure One it’s buyer beware. The universal voter registration opens a world of unintended consequences for Alaska, and will likely turn a red state blue.
Alaska AFL-CIO Boss Vince Beltrami, fielding questions during KAKM’s Running series.
Weeks of intense criticism of AFL-CIO President Vince Beltrami have taken their toll.
The candidate who flipped from being a Democrat to a noncommittal has withered under pressure and in a recent letter to supporters, the union boss now says he will take a leave of absence from his job as AFL-CIO president, if elected to Senate District N.
There are a few problems with that:
Beltrami doesn’t disclose if he’ll take a paid leave of absence or if he’ll forego his $185,000 a year job.
Beltrami has to run for his job as AFL-CIO boss in another two years, which would be right in the middle of his Senate term.
How can he run for his AFL-CIO job if he is on leave?
Beltrami also doesn’t say if this would be a seasonal leave of absence, for the 90-day session, or if it’s an indefinite leave, since legislators work all year long.
And because it’s a personnel matter, voters will never know if the union is storing his earnings in a trust somewhere, which he’ll be able to access after he leaves office.
TAXES AND PERMANENT FUND DIVIDEND GRAB
It’s been a tough week for Beltrami, who went on the record on Alaska Public Media in support of broad-based taxes, and the restructuring of the Permanent Fund dividend.
“Some kind of broad-based revenues we have to be able to agree on,” he said during his moment at the mic on KAKM.
THE BULLY REVEALED
Beltrami also figured in a graphic published by an independent group opposing his candidacy, in which some of his less-than-civil Twitter comments were captured. According to the word cloud below, Beltrami likes to belittle those who disagree with him, using the words “lame” and “coward” more than any other words he uses on Twitter.
To see how the word cloud was created, here are two examples of the kind of political dialogue he has provided Alaska workers as theirAFL-CIO boss over the past few years. Will Beltrami do better as a senator than he does as a mean-spirited, belittling union bully?
It’s 8 a.m. and David Eastman is winding his way up the dark corridor of the Parks Highway toward Talkeetna, going against morning inbound commute.
It’s a drive he will make dozens of times in the coming two years as he seeks to represent District 10, which is much of Wasilla and the Susitna River Drainage. The election is Nov. 8, but today, it’s all about hearing the concerns and ideas of people in the northern part of his district.
Going against traffic has been Eastman’s way for years, as a conservative working to elect Ron Paul as president in 2012, or even at West Point, where he raised concerns about aspects of the curriculum that were at odds with Army values: “They brought in a guest speaker who claimed to be a gay cannibal, for instance. It was supposed to shock all us uber-conservative students.”
Eastman was born in Redwood City, California, and grew up in Orange County. Homeschooled, and private schooled, he decided at an early age that he wanted to live in Alaska.
But it wasn’t until he completed West Point and joined the Army that he finally achieved the dream that started when he was six years old.
“There were two slots open for military police in Alaska, and I got one of them,” he says. That was around Thanksgiving in 2003, after he’d been through the Army’s police officer training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.
David Eastman in his younger years, with an uncanny resemblance to Opie on the Andy Griffith Show.
Political life came easily to Eastman, whose Christian conservative upbringing included getting involved with Republican politics in high school and learning from his parents, who served on the board of Right to Life of Southern California.
He became the youngest delegate to the Republican National Convention in San Diego in 1996. Although at 15 he was a year younger than the cutoff age, the RNC accepted Eastman because “they liked my essay about how awesome Bob Dole was,” he explained.
His parents also encouraged him to go into business, which he did as early as age 6, when he opened up a refreshment stand out of his wagon at the local ball fields. He sold candy and soft drinks, and later went door-to-door selling Christmas cards.
“I never had to ask for money until I ran for office,” Eastman said.
In 2009, as he was leaving active duty and joining the reserve side of the Army, Eastman was accepted for a Summit Oxford fellowship, which allowed him to study in Oxford, England for a semester, where he focused on legal studies to complement his undergraduate work at West Point.
His resume item on Summit Oxford has become fodder for the Democrats who oppose him, but he counts his time studying in England as profoundly important to the development of his critical thinking skills. He was able to sit as a moot court judge for Oxford law students on more than one occasion.
Eastman made at try for pulic office first in 2012 after applying to Gov. Sean Parnell to fill Carl Gatto’s vacant seat. Gatto died while in office in April of that year.
Ultimately, Shelley Hughes was appointed, but Eastman ran for an open Senate seat after that, and he and three others lost to Sen. Click Bishop. With redistricting, he is now in Sen. Mike Dunleavy’s district.
“I always had it in mind to try again.” In 2016, now married to Jennifer and the father of two young children, he ran against Republican Rep. Wes Keller in District 10, and won the primary, vowing to bring fresh energy and strong conservative values to Juneau.
The sun was almost rising as Eastman rolled into Talkeetena to meet with people he hopes to represent. He knows he will be one of the more conservative voices in Juneau come January, and that Talkeetna will be one of the more liberal areas of his region.
But that’s OK with Eastman – he’s used to setting his own compass, driving north while others are heading south. And he’s well accustomed to the role of going against the conventional wisdom of politics.
WHO IS THIS PERSON? She was observed ripping up Trump signs in Anchorage rights of way and delivering them in a rage to Trump headquarters on Old Seward Highway at Klatt Road, before storming away in her black Lexus, license plate JBA832. We asked the police to respond and identify her, but no call back yet from APD. Eagle-eyed readers say she’s a well-known lawyer in town.
