The Alaska Division of Elections has sent a correction to voters in Anchorage’s District 15, advising them of a mistake the division made on the official election pamphlet, where on Page 19, the division or its contractor labeled candidate Mia Costello a Democrat.
Costello, a Republican, is running for the seat being vacated by Rep. Tom McKay. She’s running against two Democrats — Dustin Darden and Denny Wells.
The division workers evidently did not spot the error until the voter pamphlet was received by voters. It immediately corrected the online version of the information, but the one that was sent in the mail was the horse that had left the barn.
After the mistake was pointed out to the division, the Alaska Democratic Party then threatened to sue the Division of Elections if, on its corrected mail piece, it did not also list the Democrats who were appearing on the ballot. The division complied with the Democrats’ demand, and the mail piece has now been sent to district voters. Here’s how it looks:
In September, the Democrats also sued to keep a Democrat off of the ballot in Alaska, but they lost their lawsuit, which was a thinly veiled campaign attempt to protect Rep. Mary Peltola from having another Democrat on the November ballot.
A national news organization took notice this week that Rep. Mary Peltola is lying about Republican candidate Nick Begich, who she accuses of planning to destroy all fish in Alaska, outsource all jobs to other countries, and somehow remove all children from the state of Alaska.
Peltola’s campaign has hit some new lows in Alaska politics. “Nice Mary” has turned into “Vicious Mary” during the last days of the campaign. Some of Peltola’s bizarre ads are illustrated by these two found on her website, which she refuses to remove:
Mary Peltola adMary Peltola ad
Republican candidate Nick Begich called out Peltola during the fisheries debate in Kodiak for lying about him with her ads.
“I think it’s also important that we be honest in politics. And you know, I’m seeing ads right now from, again, one of my opponents up here on stage that says, if you elect Nick Begich, there’ll be no more fish,’” Begich said. “Well, that is ridiculous, and that is shameful, and for her to maybe run ads like that that she approved from her campaign, lying to the people of Alaska, that’s wrong,” he added.
Peltola responded that she knew nothing about the ads.
“I don’t know what attack ad is being referred to. I know nothing of this,” she said at the fish debate. “That was not my ad there. There are a lot of ads out there. I know I’ve had seven million dollars and attack ads over the last few weeks, and it’s time that I stand up for myself and stand up for Alaskans and say enough is enough: I’m not here to do any petty bickering.”
But if she didn’t really know what her own ads were saying then, she knows them, 10 days later. But she still won’t take them down.
Even the news outlet Townhall found her dishonesty to be of interest to its national audience.
Typically, it’s independent expenditure groups that are in charge of the mudslinging, and candidates try to distance themselves from that nasty aspect of campaigning. But Peltola herself has taken ownership of the role of chief mudslinger, spreading lies about Nick Begich, and savaging Nick’s father, Nick Begich Sr.
Peltola’s continuous attacks on Nick’s father’s business have risen to the level of an obsession with her opponent’s father, who is both a miner and a businessman, and Peltola has attempted to confuse voters, since the two share a family name.
At the same time, Peltola never brings up her own father, Ward Sattler of Stony River, nor does she invite him to events or appear with him in any photos or videos. In fact, Peltola never mentions her father. It’s only Nick Begich’s father that has her full and constant attention.
My earliest memories of things political in Alaska were the controversies surrounding Jay Hammond’s defeat of the legendary Bill Egan for governor in 1974, followed four years later by Hammond’s primary defeat of Wally Hickel. Both those elections were rife with error and fraud.
The Alaska Supreme Court said in plain language that the 1978 Hammond-Hickel primary was tainted by malconduct to the extent that the true outcome was in doubt, but it refused to upset the election result. There was fraud in Knowles’ 1998 victory over Robin Taylor but again, the court refused to upset the election result.
Back in the day, Alaska had four time zones and was, in Southeast Alaska, four time zones from the East Coast. On election night, once the votes came in from Southeast and the Railbelt, you knew how many votes you needed so you got on the phone to rural Alaska where you had two more time zones and two more hours to find votes; let the bidding begin.
Those were the days when the “Bush Caucus” had enormous power in Alaska politics. I’ll never really understand why Gov. Bill Sheffield collapsed Alaska into one time zone (with a few small exceptions) because it took away one of the greatest power sources the Democrats had: the Bush Vote.
Since the free gas incentives in the first Knowles election, fraud hasn’t been much of an issue in Statewide elections, which isn’t to say there wasn’t any, but it wasn’t determinative. There have been more than mere suspicion in many House, Senate, and local elections, but those don’t get much attention.
Alaska’s voting system has always been ripe for fraud. The registration system was far too loose, it was too easy to cast an absentee or challenged ballot, and supervision of the vote count was somewhere between scant and non-existent in much of the State. They were “finding” bags of ballots in the trunk of Trooper cars weeks after the elections in the Hammond-Egan and Hammond-Hickel elections. Somehow we became complacent in the Murkowski-Palin-Parnell-Walker years because the elections weren’t that close.
Then the good-government types did the stupidest thing in Alaska history; they came up with the Permanent Fund dividend automatic registration, as if motor-voter wasn’t fraud bait enough. Everybody and his dog can and does apply for a PFD. The Permanent Fund Division of the Department of Revenue has virtually no verification or fraud detection capability. It relies on PFD fraudsters doing something stupid and getting ratted out by their jealous neighbors. The State makes a lot of smoke and noise busting a few of them every so often and uses that as its fraud deterrent. Only God knows how many registered voter don’t live here or who don’t exist.
Fast forward to the Scamdemic. The communists, excuse me, Democrats used the Scamdemic as their justification to assault Alaska’s already sketchy election laws. There were plenty of leftist judges who were ever-so happy to go along. The judges removed the second signature verification from absentee ballots. They sent out unrequested absentee ballot applications to thousands of “registered” voters who might or might not exist.
We already had an extended early voting period, so the Democrats could use George Soros or SEIU money to bring punks with iPads north to work the neighborhoods and harvest votes or, some think, harvest ballot applications from mailboxes. I don’t know how much the unions and other leftist groups were using their resources to produce fraudulent ballots, but they certainly had the capability. Give them a list of registered voters that you know no longer live in the district or even in the State, and they’ll give you however many votes you want.
If you were trying to design a voting scheme that was easy to defraud, look no further than Anchorage’s all mail ballot system. Anchorage uses the State of Alaska’s filthy voter rolls. Practically everybody who has come to Alaska seeking a summer job or fleeing an arrest warrant and who applied for unemployment and food stamps is a registered voter, even if they didn’t get the job and went back to Podunk in a month. Practically every military guy who got ordered here applied for a PFD when eligible and even though it has been 10 years and he/she has no intention of ever returning, s/he’s a registered voter in Alaska and a PFD recipient.
Anchorage has a lengthy “early voting” period and provides anyone who asks a list of who has and hasn’t voted so far. That is simply a vote harvesting scheme. If you are a union, you have a very accurate contact list of all your members, in most cases provided to you by a public employer at public expense. You check the list of who has and hasn’t voted, and you send somebody to go jack up the ones that haven’t.
The leftist special interest groups are almost as effective but they have to do their own work to keep their contact lists up to date. The unions and the leftist front groups WILL get out their vote. I’ve always suspected that a lot of those people don’t know they voted, but we’ve never had a government that was courageous or honest enough to check.
In Anchorage, the Left buys votes at wholesale; conservatives/Republicans have to get their vote at retail. The Democrats/leftists/union get most of their votes in neatly organized blocks of union members and interest group members. They are easy to identify and turn out, and particularly with the union members there is an implicit threat if they don’t turn out and vote “right.”
The Left can organize their vote without ever running a single mass media advertisement; email and social media will contact every one of their constituents, and only their constituents.
The Right has to try to contact their constituencies through a hopelessly fragmented media market and with shoe leather and phone calls, and since the State’s rolls don’t have accurate or up-to-date addresses or contact numbers, a conservative candidate has to spend a lot of money for somewhat more accurate lists, or just trudge down the streets of the districts hoping to find somebody who hasn’t already voted for the leftist.
Even the shoe leather is somewhat subsidized by the public treasury to turn out the Left’s vote. Most unions have some sort of paid release from work for “union business.” Union members can be released from duty with pay to handbill, put up signs, or engage in get-out-the-vote activities for union endorsed candidates at the public expense. I have personal knowledge of union/Democrat get-out-the-vote phone banks set up in State of Alaska conference rooms. I have personal knowledge of union members being sent out to put up signs for union backed candidates on “work” time.
The elections are rigged.
And, no, the exception isn’t proof; Mayor Bronson’s election was a fluke. Mayor Ethan Berkowitz’ implosion and the growing revulsion to the leftist Assembly’s Scamdemic fascism made his election possible, but that election gave him nothing with which to govern; he has one and a half votes on the Assembly, an Assembly which is dedicated to the proposition of not letting him govern.
So long as we have the current mail ballot electoral system, the Municipal government will only serve public employees and parasites; the rest of us just get to pay for it all. The School Board is no better — the taxpayers and parents have one vote on the board, Dave Donley; the teachers’ union has the rest.
Lots of Republicans are pounding their chests about an impending “Red Tsunami” because of the Democrats’ weak showing in the polls these days.
It is an illusion; they don’t have to win the vote, they just have to win the count.
Art Chance was a retired Director of Labor Relations for the State of Alaska, formerly of Juneau and then living in Anchorage. He was the author of the book, “Red on Blue, Establishing a Republican Governance,” available at Amazon.This column first ran in February of 2022 and is rerun in his memory.Art Chance died on Oct. 17, 2023.
Here in South Anchorage, District 15, we are treated to three candidates.
Two of them are Democrats. There’s perennial candidateDustin Dardin and another perennial, Denny Wells, who has run for the past few cycles. They are running against Republican Mia Costello to replace incumbent Tom McKay, who won the last two times around.
Wells is the prototypical Democrat candidate, surrounding himself with happy, joyful photos of his young family in an attempt to convince us all that he is something other than what he is.
I received his campaign mailer last week. It is large format, 8 x 12”, full color printed on card stock — an expensive piece of work.
On the mailer, he claims he understands the issues that matter most to us. In his own words, the issues include the following:
Protecting abortion rights and ensuring Alaskans have access to birth control and IVF treatments
Supporting strong public schools so all our kids can succeed
Lowering costs for families and creating new, good paying jobs
Keeping our communities and families safe
Making healthcare and prescription drugs more affordable
Looking at his bio, his website and his campaign literature, he has done nothing in his entire life to deal with any of these important priorities, making this list little more than standard Democrat campaign rhetoric. But words are indeed important, so let’s at least look at a few of them in an attempt to predict what he is truly about.
In his campaign mailer, Wells posts a photo of a happy family with three young daughters. If you have three daughters at a young age, abortion rights are simply not important. Whose babies is he proposing to terminate?
As for IVF, Alaska had under 9,400 total births in 2022 among the entire population, meaning IVF is at best less than 100 of that total. This means IVF as an issue in Alaska is nonexistent, making Wells interest in it little more than a current Democrat talking point.
He claims to support strong public schools, while ignoring the complete meltdown of those very same public schools, infestation by Critical Race Theory and the trans craze. Worse, he refuses to acknowledge that Anchorage School District hired an unqualified superintendent who pledged to further both CRT and trans while the Anchorage School Board hides that commitment from the general public. Thank you, Margo Belamy.
Want to fix the public schools? Put control of the money as close to the students as humanly possible. Yes, that means vouchers.
There are other examples, but you get the idea. This boy is a committed lefty, saying and doing whatever he needs to say and do to get elected.
An analysis of his campaign donations is also instructive. If you go into APOC and search under Denmar Wells (his actual name), you end up with a list of over 1,150 donations by Aug 10, 2024 is most instructive.
Sort the list by largest donations, and you first come up with Robin Brena, former Gov. Bill Walker’s bag man, anti-oil jihadi with a cool $20,000 to start the campaign.
The list of $1,000 donations goes on to a murderer’s row of unions and union PACs, along with strong support from Andrew Halcro, who’s never seen a Republican he didn’t want to knife in the back. These donations total $77,000 of his $190,000. Who do you think is going to be driving his legislative bus should he be elected?
From this, Denny Wells is the next iteration of Young Master Jason Grenn, who bounced Rep. Liz Vazquez out of the Legislature in 2016 because he was young and fresh. Rep. Grenn ended up being a Democrat tool, a legislative disaster who most recently helped saddle Alaska with ranked-choice voting. Wells looks like him, campaigns like him, and will have a similar negative impact to our wallets and livelihoods.
I would think long and hard before considering any of Denmar Wells’ empty promises.
Mia Costello is proven, reliable, and has delivered for years in this part of town. It’s time to return her to the House. It’s time to ignore, once again, the unions and their Trojan Horse candidates.
Alex Gimarc lives in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disabilities policies. His weekly column “Interesting Items” is a summary of news stories with substantive Alaska-themed topics. He was a small business owner and Information Technology professional.
According to Outkick, an online sports publication, the University of Nevada Reno’s women’s volleyball team held a vote among players and voted to forfeit the scheduled Oct. 26 match against San Jose State, because of SJSU’s transgender player Blaire Fleming.
Earlier, the Nevada athletic department said in an exclusive statement to OutKick that the team would play the scheduled match. But evidently the players have a different idea of what a fair playing field is.
“We, the University of Nevada Reno women’s volleyball team, forfeit against San Jose State University and stand united in solidarity with the volleyball teams of Southern Utah University, Boise State University, the University of Wyoming, and Utah State University,” the team wrote in an exclusive statement to OutKick.
“We demand that our right to safety and fair competition on the court be upheld. We refuse to participate in any match that advances injustice against female athletes.”
San Jose’s women’s team plays New Mexico, which lost to Nevada over the weekend.
In Alaska, Rep. Jamie Allard has been working to get legislation passed that reserves girls teams for actual girls, rather than allowing boys to play on the teams simply because they want to. Last year, her legislation died in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Exxon Mobil Corporation has executed the largest offshore carbon dioxide (CO2) storage lease in U.S. history with the Texas General Land Office.
The lease is for over 271,000 acres and complements the onshore CO2 storage program ExxonMobil is developing. The company said this lease solidifies the U.S. Gulf Coast as a carbon capture and storage leader.
The carbon dioxide, collected from various industry sources, is pumped beneath the seabed and thousands of feet underground into depleted oil and gas fields beneath impervious rock layers, as explained in this video:
It’s unclear what impact the development of massive CO2 storage in the Gulf of Mexico has on the fledgling carbon storage industry that is being created in Alaska, led by Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who is looking for an “all of the above” approach to energy.
This year, the Alaska Legislature passed the governor’s legislation that created a commercial framework to regulate carbon storage, natural gas storage, as well as state financing for natural gas in Cook Inlet and geothermal energy. It is the administration’s hope that such an industry will provide a new revenue stream for Alaska. The market for Alaska would primarily be Japan, at this point. That island nation is looking for a place to bury its CO2.
The Exxon lease will primarily benefit the Texas Permanent School Fund, providing millions in funding to Texas public schools, the State land office said.
Exxon’s history in Alaska Alaska spans nearly 100 years since drilling its first well at Yakataga Beach in 1925.
Since then, the company explored throughout Alaska, including Cook Inlet, the Alaska Peninsula, St. George Basin, Norton Sound, Navarin Basin, Yukon Flats, Beaufort Sea, and the North Slope. It is one of the top three producers in Alaska and owns a share in the Trans Alaska Pipeline. After developing the Point Thomson field, ExxonMobil transferred operations to Hilcorp, but retains a working interest in Point Thomson, Prudhoe Bay, Endicott, and Kuparuk fields.
Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola applied for an endorsement from a major defund-the-police group — and she got it.
MoveOn.org said it is proud to endorse Peltola in her quest to return to Congress this November. The money will soon flow into her campaign.
“The state once had a strong, respected presence in Washington, D.C., but today, political gridlock and outmigration are threatening Alaska’s unique way of life,” MoveOn wrote in its endorsement. By once, they may not mean in the past two years but the 49 prior years during Rep. Don Young’s term in office, but the group’s meaning is unclear.
MoveOn is a nonprofit and leftist political action committee formed in 1998 to distract the political world from the sex scandals of President Bill Clinton, it pioneered the use of viral email petitions to prevent his impeachment.
In 2020, it was central to the defund-the-police movement around the country. Peltola, in her request for an endorsement and funding from MoveOn, said her beliefs align with the group’s mission.
“Mary Peltola continues to try to pull the wool over Alaskans’ eyes, but it’s clear to see that she is a member of the hard left, said Nick Begich, the Republican candidate who opposes her. “Mary Peltola sought and received the endorsement of an organization that wants to defund police and leave our southern border wide open. This is radical. This is extreme. This is not what we expect from an Alaska representative. It’s time for Alaska to move on from Mary Peltola.”
With three weeks left until Election Day, OpenSecretspredicts that 2024’s federal election cycle is on track to be the costliest ever, with a total cost of at least $15.9 billion in spending. This will surpass the 2020 cycle’s record-smashing total of $15.1 billion.
Outside groups, largely super PACs, have spent roughly $2.6 billion on 2024 federal elections, outpacing spending in any previous cycle. If the current spending trends hold, OpenSecrets projects that total outside spending for the entire election cycle will exceed $5 billion.
This staggering price tag of the 2024 election cycle comes with caveats. Inflation between 2020 and 2024 has been significant. When adjusted for inflation, the 2020 total fundraising total would be the equivalent of $18.3 billion in 2024 dollars.
2020 presidential primaries were significantly more expensive
Former NYC Mayor MichaelBloomberg ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 and singularly spent $1 billion of his own money on the race during a short 30-day period before dropping out on March 4th, 2020.
In contrast, neither Vice President Kamala Harris nor former President Donald Trump are expected to have spent or raised $1 billion through the end of September.
Combined, Bloomberg and fellow 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer spent over $1.4 billion in their own funds to self-finance their 2020 primary campaigns. Even without factoring in that unprecedented influx of self-funding, Democratic candidates in the 2020 primary still outspent Republican candidates in the 2024 Republican primary by about $500 million.
2024 presidential general election fundraising trends
Fundraising trends are moving in different directions for Harris and Trump. The replacement of President Joe Biden with Harris on the ticket has spurred an enormous boost in fundraising on the Democratic side.
While Harris has not announced September fundraising totals, Harris and the Democratic Party are projected to have raised about $1 billion or more from July through September, based on information provided by the Harris campaign documenting weekend fundraising totals, and what they reported for July and August.
Trump and the Republican Party raised $430 million over the same period, including fundraising totals announced by the campaign and party committee for the month of September as well as what was reported to the FEC in prior months. If fundraising trends continue, this will likely result in Harris exceeding the Biden campaign’s 2020 receipts, while Trump may struggle to match what his campaign reported in 2020.
Going into the final stretch before Election Day, the Harris campaign has not yet reported its fundraising totals from September, but as of the end of August, Harris and the Democratic Party reported $404 million cash on hand. Trump and the Republican Party reported having $283 million at the end of September. Based on previous trends OpenSecrets expects this to be spent before Election Day, in addition to money that will be raised during October, which could easily exceed another $500 million. OpenSecrets analysis of FEC data from 2020 shows the two general election campaigns, along with the RNC and DNC, combined to spend over $1.1 billion between Oct. 1 and Nov. 23.
Outside spending is up, favoring Republicans
As OpenSecrets has reported, outside spending for 2024 is well outpacing previous cycles.
As of Oct.7, outside spending — largely through independent expenditures purchased by super PACs and hybrid PACs — reached $2.6 billion, nearly a billion dollars more than outside groups had spent by the same point in 2020. With a full month of spending yet to be reported, OpenSecrets projects that 2024 outside spending will surpass 2020 spending before Election Day, even accounting for inflation.
This outside spending significantly favors conservatives so far, a switch from 2020 where liberal groups spent more money than conservatives. As has now become standard, the groups spending the most money are the presidential-candidate-linked super PACs with Make America Great Again Inc. spending over $239 million supporting Trump, while Future Forward has spent over $212 million supporting Democratic presidential candidates.
Cryptocurrency-linked super PAC Fairshake and its affiliates have spent $123 million supporting both Democratic and Republican candidates, an unusual pattern among top-spending super PACs.
While outside spending groups are generally required to disclose donors to the Federal Election Commission, there are exceptions.
Future Forward, the pro-Harris super PAC, discloses donors to the FEC but its top donor is a dark money nonprofit organization, Future Forward USA Action and therefore is classified by OpenSecrets as a partially disclosing organization.
On the congressional side, each of the four super PACs linked to party leadership are also partially-disclosing groups. Combined they have reported receiving nearly $72 million in contributions from their affiliated dark money groups. This obfuscation of the true source of funds to super PACs is a commonly used method by political groups to bypass meaningful disclosure, and we continue to see significant spending by non-disclosing groups.
Congressional races seeing more money than in 2020
While the race to the White House typically dominates coverage during presidential cycles, 2024 congressional candidates are also attracting record spending. The limit for donations from individuals to candidates increased from $2,800 to $3,300 per election over that four-year time period. This means that over an election cycle an individual can now give $1,000 more to a federal candidate than they could four years ago.
With the Senate held by Democrats and the House by Republicans, both parties hold spending advantages in the chamber they hold.
In the House, the spending gap is small. But in the Senate, Democrats have outspent Republicans by over $150 million. In every swing Senate race, the Democratic candidate has raised/spent at least 75% more than their Republican counterpart, including races where neither candidate is an incumbent.
While Republicans have currently outspent Democrats in the lower chamber, this trend might not hold in the next few months. Democrats running in the general election have collectively outraised Republicans, hinting that Republicans may have faced more active primaries or spent more of their money earlier.
Democrats running in the general election have, on average, about $175,000 more cash on hand than Republicans. This generally includes fundraising through the end of June with some candidates in later primaries having reported more recent fundraising information.
Where does the money come from?
While Bloomberg is not spending money on his own campaign this cycle, he still ranks among the cycle’s top donors – behind five conservative donors. This is the first cycle where the top 5 megadonorsare all supporting Republicans, contributing to a major fundraising advantage conservative outside spending groups have seen so far.
The top 10 individual donors have contributed $599 million – 7% of all money raised – thus far for the 2024 cycle. Extending the list to the top 100 donors shows that they account for 16% of all fundraising, and extending it further to the top 1% of all donors accounts for a full 50% of all money raised. In contrast, all donors giving under $200 account for just 16% of all money raised. With conservative groups outpacing their liberal counterparts in outside spending this cycle, it is no surprise that the top five individual donors to outside groups are conservative givers.
The total fundraising from small donors, as an overall percentage of fundraising, has hovered around 20% for several presidential cycles with a notable uptick in the 2020 cycle.
Democrats running for federal office in 2024 have taken substantially more from small donors giving under $200 than their Republican counterparts. So far, 28% of donations to Democratic candidates are from small donors, compared to 19% to Republicans.
Doug Weber, Dan Auble, Andrew Mayersohn, Olivia Buckley and Anna Massoglia contributed to this report.
Methodological Notes:
In estimating the final total cost of the federal election for 2024, OpenSecrets used the 2020 election as a guide for predicting how much money remains to be spent. Some extenuating circumstances from 2020 were excluded. First, the extraordinary infusion of self-funding, $1.4 billion, from Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer in the 2020 Democratic primary would have artificially inflated our calculations and it was excluded. Additionally, approximately $500 million was spent after the general election in 2020, specifically on the two Georgia runoff races that were held in early January 2021. We do not expect a similar situation to happen this year and therefore we removed that spending from our calculation of what we expect to be spent going forward.
The Democrats are working hard to manipulate Alaska’s controversial ranked-choice voting system into helping them in Alaska’s congressional race, where Rep. Mary Peltola seems to be slipping from her first-place spot. The Democrats are on record now pushing messages to conservative male voters to only vote for the third-party candidate, John Wayne Howe.
In a piece of campaign deception, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee accidentally publicized the instructions to its operatives and supporters on how to defeat Republican Nick Begich, by tricking Republicans and conservative men. Here’s what the DCCC is advising its network of operatives and political groups:
“White men under the age of 60 without a college degree, who are either very likely to be Republican or slightly more likely to be Republican than Democrat, who are not pro-choice or registered Democrats, and who live in the Anchorage and Fairbanks media markets, including in South Central Alaska – need to see ads narrowly targeted to them on digital platforms like Meta, Twitter, YouTube, and programmatic CTV that:
“John Wayne Howe is a Fairbanks native who is running for Congress to keep Alaska for Alaskans and make sure the government does not interfere with Alaskans’ freedoms. Howe believes that man-made climate change is bad science, and that we need to rapidly expand oil production here in Alaska for Alaskans. He will always stand for the Second Amendment and opposes any restrictions on the right to bear arms.”
That is the message that Alaska men will be inundated with for the next three weeks leading up to Election Day in order to trick those the age of 60 who do not have a college degree into not voting for Begich, who has the endorsement of the Alaska Outdoor Council and Gun Owners of America, the governor of the state and even Donald Trump.
The DCCC says directly to not rank: “It is important that people who vote for John Wayne Howe rank him first and do not consider other choices.”
In other words, the Democrats, who support ranked-choice voting, are telling Republicans to not rank anyone else but John Wayne Howe. The DCCC then has begged its allies to flood the airways with this communication message: “It is essential that voters hear more communication on YouTube from allies than from opponents.”
Those who mark Howe first and then abandon their ballots will see those ballots tossed after the first round of counting. In the primary, Howe received 1/2 percent of the vote. The Democrats think that 1/2 percent is their path to victory for Mary Peltola.
