By REP. DAVID EASTMAN
For those looking for a Pro-Family Voter Guide for this election season, I recommend iVoterGuide, put together by the American Family Association in coordination with dozens of other pro-family groups (Family Research Council, Moms for Liberty, etc.).
For example, if you are looking at the Senate race in my district, it will tell you that my senator, David Wilson, is listed as a moderate based on his voting record, endorsements, political donations, and answers to the candidate questionnaire (all of which are viewable), and his two opponents are listed as conservative (conditionally) based on either their contributions or questionnaire (which are also viewable). It will give you a similar rundown on the presidential candidates, the congressional race, ballot measures, etc.
How does Alaska compare to other states when it comes to pro-family policies?
In Alaska, we use state funds to pay for abortion up until the moment of birth. We use state funds to pay for abortion travel. Note: neither are things you expect to find in other Republican states.
We give puberty blockers to kids and we use state funds to do it! These are not pro-family policies.
Some will say, “It’s the courts fault, not our Republican legislators”. Really?
I will simply highlight two issues that legislators voted on in the most recent legislative session.
The first is House Bill 17, the bill to mandate insurance coverage for long term birth control, which was vetoed by the governor. The bill was put forward by a Planned Parenthood-endorsed legislator. It mandates that insurance companies provide more birth control and larger quantities of it, including drugs that can cause as abortion in the first week of pregnancy.
Every time you request a new type of prescription birth control your insurance provider is required to sign off on another 365 day supply of the new drug. Insurance companies are prohibited from doing anything to discourage this from happening, like increasing your premium or requiring a co-pay.
There is nothing free market or conservative about this bill. It is opposed by fiscal conservatives and social conservatives alike. In a number of states you would get strange looks if you supported this bill as a Republican legislator. Yet, here in Alaska, most Republican legislators voted for it. Eleven Republicans in the house voted for the bill multiple times.
Unlike most Republican states that have banned them, our state still pays for puberty blockers to be given to minors. This year, three legislators voted to cut state funding for this heinous practice. When a Planned Parenthood-endorsed legislator, Rep. CJ McCormick, rose to block that effort, most Republicans in the legislature voted with him. The funding continues.
These are just two recent examples of when a majority of Republicans in the Alaska Legislature voted for anti-family policies brought forward by Planned Parenthood-endorsed legislators. To be helpful to conservative voters, a pro-family voting guide should reflect this.
iVoterGuide captures some of this through reporting legislative scorecards. The voter guide put forward by the Alaska Family Council (AFC) does not. Longtime AFC board member, Fred Dyson, penned an article in the ADN last week, “When The Good Guys Go Bad“, taking the Alaska Family Council to task for manipulating their pro-family voter guide to such an extent over the years that he felt obligated to speak out publicly. He resigned from serving on their board last year. It’s one thing to provide objective information to the voter, as iVoterGuide takes great pains to do. It’s another to carefully select and word questions in a way that makes your endorsed candidates appear to be more conservative than their opponents. The former provides a service to voters. The latter provides a service to someone else.
That someone else is often glad to return the political favor further down the road. They don’t call it a swamp for nothing.
Too often, groups that communicate with conservatives find it politically expedient to line up on the side of those in power (or those they expect to win the next election), even if they have to fudge the numbers a little to make their endorsements appear to line up with their stated values.
Another tell-tale sign that a group is catering to the swamp shows up in voter guides when candidates are asked to support issues on which they will never be asked to cast a deciding vote. If the candidate has no expectation of actually having to follow through on their position when the chips are down, all they are doing is virtue signalling. When a candidate is simply virtue signalling, the only people helped are the candidate and their supporters. The public gets nothing out of the arrangement.
Jim Minnery highlights Louisiana, Alabama, West Virginia & Tennessee as examples for Alaska to follow. In essence, his argument is that these four states all passed state constitutional amendments to roll back abortion and we should too. This is, ostensibly, why he makes public support for these two constitutional amendments part of the criteria he uses to endorse candidates, and marks each candidate ‘pro-family’ only if they publicly support the amendments.
The trouble is, it is mathematically impossible to pass these amendments in Alaska, and Jim knows it.
In addition to some of the objections laid out by others, I decline to publicly support the amendments because it is ultimately counterproductive to send conservative voters on a fools errand just so that some of us can have the short term benefit of looking good in a Voter Guide.
In response, Jim has spent a great deal of ink using my lack of public support for these two amendments to declare that I am less supportive of protecting babies than my opponent, Jubilee. Allow me to point out where Jim’s thinking breaks down.
Yes, as Alaska Right to Life has pointed out, the idea of putting into the constitution for the first time a “right” for grandparents to consent to the execution of their unborn grandchild is abhorrent. Whatever good his amendment might do, that’s literally what he is advocating.
Yes, as Alex Gimarc pointed out last week, in the Dobbs decision, Alito strongly rebuked the judiciary (both state and federal courts) for coming between the people and their elected branches of government. Alito is right. Courts should not be deciding what our laws are (not county courts, not state courts, not federal courts).
Yes, as Bob Bird pointed out last week, in Bess v. Ulmer, four members of the Alaska Supreme Court asserted the right to veto the passage of a constitutional amendment even after it had been passed by the legislature.
Yes, both of the amendments that Jim is promoting have been put forward for the very purpose of overturning clear examples of judicial activism from the Alaska Supreme Court itself. Good luck with that.
All four of these things are true, and we could discuss each of them at some length. However, Jim’s argument breaks down long before we get there.
As a practical matter, both of the constitutional amendments he advocates are impossible to achieve in Alaska, which is what makes them the perfect kind of questions to include in a voter guide if you are trying to curry favor with the swamp. The value of including these questions in a voter guide is the good will you can earn from politicians (and their supporters) who are campaigning for support from conservatives. Conservative voters, on the other hand, will gain nothing by supporting these kinds of political gimmicks.
Highlighting these kinds of questions in a voter guide also reinforces the establishment narrative that the quality of the Alaska Legislature is comparable to these other states. It isn’t, not even close. Let’s breakdown Jim’s argument.
Jim wants Alaska to follow the examples of Louisiana, Alabama, West Virginia & Tennessee without delay. If he didn’t, why would he be encouraging us to work today, in this election cycle, to swap out pro-life legislators who do not publicly support these amendments with pro-life legislators who do support them?
In encouraging Alaskans to swap out their legislators and follow after these four other states, Jim is encouraging conservatives to ride headlong into a box canyon from which there is no escape.
Let’s start with Louisiana. I contacted a number of pro-life organizations. None was aware of a single member of the Louisiana Legislature that has been endorsed by Planned Parenthood. Louisiana has 144 legislators. Zero out of 144 is 0%.
I use Planned Parenthood endorsement as a benchmark because Planned Parenthood is active in all 50 states and because it doesn’t simply endorse pro-choice candidates. In its own words, its standard for endorsement is “maintaining a 100% voting record while in office” (this includes a commitment to child mutilation and various other non-abortion issues that Planned Parenthood supports). On top of voting with Planned Parenthood 100% of the time, Planned Parenthood also “strongly encourages” every candidate applying for an endorsement to first sign a personal commitment to Planned Parenthood itself. Candidates that are simply pro-choice need not apply.
Alabama has 140 legislators. I was able to identify one legislator endorsed by Planned Parenthood, Rep. Marilyn Lands (D-Huntsville). One out of 140 is 0.7%.
Tennessee has 99 members in their state house, 17 of whom are Planned Parenthood-endorsed. Seventeen out of 99 is 17.17%. Their state senate has 33 members, 4 of whom are endorsed by Planned parenthood. Four out of 33 is 12.12%.
West Virginia has 100 members in their state house, 19 of whom are Planned Parenthood-endorsed. Nineteen out of 100 is 19%. Their state senate has 34 members, 3 of whom are endorsed by Planned Parenthood. Three out of 34 is 8.8%.
Alaska has 40 members in the state house, 15 of whom are endorsed by Planned Parenthood. Fifteen out of 40 is 37.5%.
Our state senate has 20 members, 7 of whom are endorsed by Planned Parenthood. Seven out of 20 is 35%.
Why is this important? It is important because in Alaska it is not possible to collect signatures to place a constitutional amendment on the ballot. Unless you can convince a constitutional convention to pass your amendment, the only way to put it on the ballot in Alaska, is to go through the legislature.
It takes at least 41 legislators voting YES to send an amendment to the people for a vote. This is not a problem in states like Alabama, or Louisiana or Tennessee or West Virginia, where the percentage of Planned Parenthood-endorsed legislators in their state house or senate are all below 20%. In Alaska, our 22 Planned Parenthood-endorsed legislators comprise over 36% of the legislature, more than enough to block any effort to pass an amendment.
Remember, with these 22, we are only talking about the most dedicated abortion advocates. This does not include Alaska’s other pro-choice legislators. When you add in the legislators that are pro-choice or otherwise unwilling to pass such an amendment, that number is even higher.
Remember, the effect of including these amendments in a pro-family voter guide isn’t to build a movement that will one day win the day (I could get on board with that!). The effect is actually the opposite because it cynically holds out false hope that the best path forward for saving babies is to pursue a constitutional amendment. By encouraging conservatives to focus their attention on a constitutional amendment (even a well written one), the Alaska Family Council gives conservative voters a false picture of the state of their legislature and undermines all other legislative efforts to save babies in the here and now.
Republican legislators need to stop voting for anti-family bills like HB17, and to continue funding for these kinds of anti-family policies. The swamp will tell you that you have to vote for them, but you don’t. It’s why they put that little “NO” button on your desk at the capitol building. Use it.
Rep. David Eastman represents Wasilla, District 27, in the Alaska Legislature. He was first elected to the Legislature in 2016.
