Tyson Gallagher, longtime ally to Gov. Mike Dunleavy, has been acting chief of staff for months. Today, Dunleavy named him to the permanent role, another sign that the governor is confident his 52% lead in the governor’s race will not change substantially. It also means that Randy Ruaro, who left the role in July due to family and health reasons, will not be returning to state service.
“I have the utmost confidence in Mr. Gallagher’s ability to manage the day to day operations of my administration, while simultaneously advancing the policy goals I have laid out for the next four years,” said Gov. Dunleavy. “He has served the state in a variety of roles and demonstrated an ability to understand the complexities of public policy and to create solutions that move our state forward.”
Born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska, and a graduate of the University of Colorado, Boulder, Gallagher has over 13 years’ experience working on Alaska policy and budget issues.
Gallagher began working for the State of Alaska in the Office of Gov. Sean Parnell, and then in the Office of Management and Budget. While at OMB, he worked on transportation and revenue issues, as well as coordinating the Governor’s capital budget, and participating on behalf of the Administration in the National Association of State Budget Officers. After leaving OMB, Gallagher served in the Commissioner’s Office at the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities where he focused on Community Engagement.
Interest in politics took him to the legislative branch, where he worked for Rep. Lynn Gattis during her tenure on the House Finance Committee. Gallagher also spent nearly five years managing government relations at GCI working on telecom issues on both the state and federal level.
Gallagher returned to state service in 2021, when he took the position of deputy chief of staff in Governor Dunleavy’s first administration and has served as acting chief of staff since July 2022.
A new poll commissioned on behalf of the right-leaning Club for Growth shows Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ascending in the views of voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, Georgia, and Florida.
WPAi Intelligence polls conducted on behalf of Club for Growth Action Nov. 11-13, 2022, show that Donald Trump trails DeSantis by double-digits in both the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary as well as in Florida and Georgia.
In a separate poll commissioned by the Texas Republican Party, Republican voters in Texas support DeSantis as the Republican nominee for 2024 over Trump by more than 10 percentage points. The poll also asked voters about other potential candidates, including Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo, Tim Scott, Mike Pence and undecided. DeSantis had 43% to Trump’s 32%, but in a separate question, if Trump decided to not run again, DeSantis would have 66% of those polled, with none of the others even getting to double digits.
Meanwhile, former President Trump has said he will have a big announcement on Tuesday and politicos believe he will announce a run for president. The Club for Growth poll was released on the eve of that announcement.
In the WPAi poll for Iowa, DeSantis leads Trump by 11 points, a substantial shift from where the race stood in August, the group reported.
DeSantis now leads 48%, with 37% for Trump.
Trump has dropped by 15 points from 52% in August.
In New Hampshire, where the first Republican primary is held, DeSantis has gained a 15-point lead in a head-to-head match-up, WPAi said.
DeSantis has gained seven points and Trump has lost eight since an August poll of the primary.
August polls showed a tie, but DeSantis now has a 15-point lead.
DeSantis has expanded his lead over Trump in a Florida theoretical primary match-up. DeSantis just won a landslide victory in Florida for his second term as governor over former governor and recently resigned Rep. Charlie Crist. DeSantis won with 59.4% of the vote and many speculate he may be the Republican’s next rising star.
In Florida, DeSantis has high approval ratings for how he has handled the rise of the woke agenda.
In August the pollster found that DeSantis led Trump by seven points.
Now DeSantis has gained seven points and Trump has lost 12 points of support to give DeSantis a sizeable 26-point advantage.
DeSantis has also expanded his lead in a Georgia primary match-up.
In August, DeSantis held a six-point advantage in a head-to-head Georgia match-up.
The lead has now grown to 20 points as DeSantis has gained eight points and Trump has lost six points of support.
WPAi conducted polls of n = 508 likely Iowa Republican caucus voters, n = 401 likely New Hampshire Republican primary voters, n = 1,044 likely Florida Republican primary voters, and n = 843 likely Georgia Republican primary voters. Data was collected November 11-13, 2022. In Iowa, Florida, and Georgia data was collected using a mix of 50% live interviews to cell phones and 50% IVR calls to landlines. In New Hampshire data was collected by live telephone interviews with 60% of interviews conducted to cell phones and 40% to landline phones. The samples were selected from each state’s voter file and were stratified by geography, age, gender, and vote history to ensure a representative sample. The surveys have margins of error of +4.4% for Iowa, +4.9% for New Hampshire, +3.0% for Florida, and +3.4% for Georgia.
Alaska and 39 other states won a combined $391.5 million settlement with Google over location tracking practices.
The group of attorneys general filed the complaint after the Associated Press exposed that Google is collecting personal and behavioral location data and selling it to advertisers. Location history in Google settings was off unless it was turned on by the user but the web & app activity setting is automatically turned on for users.
Because of that, the attorneys general believed that Google was in violation of state consumer protection laws because it was misleading customers about its location tracking. They claimed the location history setting caused users to be confused about how all-encompassing that setting was on user’s phones.
“For years, Google has prioritized profit over the privacy of South Carolinians who use Google products and services,” said South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, whose state will receive $7,813,840.87 from the settlement. “Consumer privacy is one of the most important issues facing consumers right now, and our office will continue to do its part in ensuring the protection of our citizens in this way.”
The attorneys general of Oregon and Nebraska led the settlement negotiations, assisted by Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee.
“Consumer privacy is one of my office’s top priorities,” said Oregon attorney general Ellen Rosenblum, whose state will receive $14.8 million from the settlement. “That’s why it’s so important to me that Oregon played a key role in this settlement. Until we have comprehensive privacy laws, companies will continue to compile large amounts of our personal data for marketing purposes with few controls.”
The final settlement was also joined by Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin.
“Consumers were deceived by Google as to when their location was being tracked and how that information was used,” said Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, whose state will receive $19.5 million under the settlement. “With the proliferation of smart devices that collect increased data on its users, today’s announcement highlights the need for updated privacy laws that more effectively protect consumers.”
The settlement includes an agreement that Google will begin showing additional information on location-tracking settings on an account, making key information about location tracking clear and unavoidable to users and requires Google to give users detailed information about the types of location data that Google is collecting.
Jon Styf is an award-winning editor and reporter who has worked in Illinois, Texas, Wisconsin, Florida and Michigan in local newsrooms over the past 20 years, working for Shaw Media, Hearst and several other companies.
Alaska is where political ideas can get beta tested and subsequently rolled out to the rest of the country. This goes back to 1975, just 16 years after statehood, when voters made Alaska the first state to legalize personal use of marijuana. It’s a cheap media market where voters are independent and persuadable.
The Rube Goldberg contraption that is Alaska’s new election system was adopted by voters after an aggressive campaign involving national dark money in 2020. With its various pulleys, levers, algorithms, machine-only counting, and no practical way to audit an election, it has added uncertainty and confusion to the voting process, and distrust in the results. It is also much more costly because it takes so much explanatory advertising by the Division of Elections.
This year, its intended results are being revealed, with a likely reelection of Sen. Lisa Murkowski, and many Republican legislative candidates losing in the ranked choice system that is now in use.
The open primary ballot and ranked-choice voting general election also resulted in Alaska voting for a Bernie Sanders-style Democrat for Congress, even though barely 13.5% of Alaska voters are registered Democrats.
Nevada was next. Even before Alaska had a chance to show the rest of the world what a mess it had made of its election system, the combination of jungle primaries and ranked choice voting was on the Nevada ballot this Nov. 8, and passed 52.8% (latest count). A minor difference between the two systems is that in Nevada, the top five candidates emerging from the open primary would appear on the ranked-choice ballot in general elections, while in Alaska, it’s the top four candidates.
Yet, Nevada has a chance to reconsider its decision. In order to initiate the change required to enact a constitutional amendment in Nevada, this question need to be approved in two consecutive even-numbered election years. That means Ballot Measure 3 has to go back to the voters on Nov. 5, 2024. Then, the Legislature has to adopt it. And so the fight will go on in the Sagebrush State.
In Alaska and in Nevada, the system designed for progressives to control the outcomes was funded by mostly liberal dark money from outside the state.
Alaskans for Better Elections, started by Sen. Lisa Murkowski defenders, wrote the language for Alaska’s Ballot Measure 2, and was handed $7 million to market it. Most of the money came from Unite America ($3.4 million), Action Now Initiative ($2.9 million), and Represent.Us, which wrote, “Alaska’s elections are flooded with secret money, hindered by a lack of voter participation, and overshadowed by divisive politics. But together we can change what elections look like in Alaska by fighting to end the prevalence of dark money in the state’s elections, providing open primaries to all of Alaska’s voters, and implementing Ranked Choice Voting at the ballot box.”
On the other side, $600,000 was all that Defend Alaska Elections had to work with in 2020. The group didn’t have billionaires from outside the state helping, and Alaska business leaders who might pitch in to save the election system did not have the foresight to see that they were being played. Defend Alaska Elections lost its effort to prevent this disaster-by-design election system by just 3,781 votes. A sliver, but a loss nonetheless.
In Nevada, the forces for and against the ballot measure were similarly unbalanced: Nevada Votes First political action committee spent nearly $20 million. Top donors were Institute for Political Innovation founder Katherine Gehl, Action Now, Inc., GOP mega-donor Kenneth Griffin, liberal mega-donor Kathryn Murdoch, California real estate magnate John Sobrato, and Unite America.
The group opposed to the ballot question, Protect Your Vote Nevada political action committee, raised just $1.5 million. Top donors were Nevada Alliance, Majority Forward, and the Nevada Conservation League.
Under Nevada’s Ballot Measure 3, candidates would run in a single primary election, which is what Ballot Measure 2 gave Alaska in 2020, destroying the Alaska Republican Party’s ability to prevent Democrats from crashing their primary ballot and thus electing an unwinnable candidate for the Republicans to offer voters in the general election.
In a state that tends to go Republican, this open primary means there are more Republicans on the general election ballot and more discord among the candidates and their factions, which has proven to break down the party’s unity behind a candidate going into the general election. The Republican Party in Alaska has been badly hobbled by open primaries and ranked-choice voting.
Alaska’s election system has also slowed down the results to a snail’s pace. The final tabulation on the election doesn’t take place until Nov. 23, and certification is scheduled for Nov. 29. Legal challenges have four days to be filed. That puts the entire election into nearly a month after Nov. 8, Election Day.
Nevadans may wish to observe what is going on in Alaska. The fact that the Republican-leaning state to the North just elected a hard-left Democrat to Congress should tell Nevada voters everything they need to know about open primaries and ranked-choice voting. Nevadans ought to walk away from the betting table because this election gamble has the odds stacked against them.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy has appointed Health Department Commissioner Adam Crum as the new commissioner of the Department of Revenue. Crum has served with Dunleavy since the first days of his administration, and managed the state through the Covid-19 pandemic, with some of the best outcomes in the United States, including one of the lowest death rates from the virus.
“Commissioner Crum demonstrated to me, and all Alaskans, his management and leadership abilities over the past four years as health commissioner,” said Dunleavy. “From preparing and protecting Alaskans from the global pandemic to the reorganization of the Department of Health and Social Services, he is a skilled and dedicated public servant and I look forward to another four years working with him to move Alaska forward.”
Crum was born and raised in Alaska and has experience in the private sector in strategic management, organizational development, executive consulting and working on mega-projects. The governor noted that a primary skillset is Crum’s ability to establish and lead effective teams, and this can be seen by Alaska’s nation leading Covid-19 response and vaccination distribution, and the marked improvement of multiple divisions at DHSS during his tenure.
Prior to being appointed commissioner in December 2018, Crum was executive vice president of his family’s company, Northern Industrial Training. Crum is active in community service organizations and has served as a board member for groups like the Salvation Army and MyHouse, a group that works specifically with homeless youth. Both groups work with clients dealing with mental health, substance use disorder, transitional housing and workforce development issues. He has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Northwestern University and a Master of Science in Public Health degree from Johns Hopkins University.
Dunleavy named Heidi Hedberg as acting commissioner of the Alaska Department of Health.
Heidi Hedberg, commissioner, Department of Health
Hedberg has been with the state since 2009, serving in various capacities within the Division of Public Health, Department of Health, and most recently as the Director for the Division of Public Health. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Alaska Pacific University. She moved to the state in 1995 from Seattle, Washington.
Prior to her state service, she worked with various non-profit organizations for 12 years. She also chairs the Governor’s Advisory Council on Opioid Remediation and serves on the Governor’s Council on Homelessness, and State Emergency Response Commission.
Hedberg will become acting commissioner starting Wednesday. Both she and Crum will face confirmation hearings in the Legislature this winter.
New Hampshire voters on Tuesday voted no to a constitutional convention, with a decision of 66% against, 34% in favor. Like Alaska, New Hampshire votes on the matter every 10 years.
In Missouri, voters take up the matter every 20 years. This year, as in the past, they voted it down; the result was 67.7% against, 32.30 in favor.
Alaska voters had the highest percentage of the three states when it came to saying no to a constitutional convention. Voters went 69.84% against the idea. Alaska voters will get a chance to decide the question all over again in 2032.
A constitutional convention brings together elected delegates who meet and consider changes to the state’s constitution. Any proposed changes approved by the delegates must also be approved by voters in a statewide election.
The last time voters in a state approved a constitutional convention question was in 1996 in Hawaii, when the question passed 50.5% to 49.5%. But the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled against the vote, saying that the question had not actually passed the voters since too many voters left their ballots blank on that question.
Prior to that, Alaskans passed the constitutional convention question in 1970, but the Supreme Court, responding to a lawsuit from opponents, threw out the vote, saying the wording of the ballot question was misleading. The question was reworded and put on the 1972 general election ballot, where voters rejected it. Since statehood, 1970 was the only time a constitutional question has passed in Alaska.
The Alaska Permanent Fund is one of the institutional investors that had exposure to the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which filed for bankruptcy on Friday, along with 134 of its associated companies. There will be losses.
The Alaska Permanent Fund’s investments were through Sequoia Capital, headquartered in Menlo Park, Calif., and other venture capital firms. Sequoia sent a letter to its limited partners on Wednesday marking down the value of its investments in FTX to $0.
The Alaska Permanent Fund had committed as much as $200 million to Sequoia’s Global Growth Fund III, according to Pensions and Investments, an online blog. It was that fund that made the investment of up to $214 million of pooled money from various investors into FTX; thus, the Alaska Permanent Fund’s exposure was not the full amount.
Other institutional investors that had money tied up in FTX include the Ontario, Canada Teachers’ Pension Plan, and the Washington State Investment Board. The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan had $95 million invested in FTX Trading and FTX US, but reports that the loss will have a limited impact on the plan.
Sequoia Capital removed its glowing profile of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried from its website last week and replaced it with a markdown notice.
“Aliquidity crunch has created solvency risk for FTX and its future is uncertain. Many have been affected by this unexpected turn of events. For Sequoia, our fiduciary responsibility is to our LPs. To that end, we shared this letter with them today regarding our investment in FTX. For FTX, we believe its fiduciary responsibility is first to its customers, and second to its shareholders. As such, FTX is exploring all opportunities to ensure its customers are able to recover their funds as quickly as possible.“
FTX users could be out as much as $8 billion in losses, after it appears that FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried used money from customer accounts to transfer to other accounts and fund risky investments. Those companies include FTX-owned Alameda Research, which owes FTX some $10 billion.
The loss on FTX is offset by the fund’s roughly $7.5 billion realized and unrealized gains, Sequoia said in its letter.
“We are in the business of taking risk. Some investments will surprise to the upside, and some will surprise to the downside. We do not take this responsibility lightly and do extensive research and thorough due diligence on every investment we make,” the letter explained, signed “Team Sequoia.”
“At the time of our investment in FTX, we ran a rigorous due diligence process,” the company said, although that is now in question, since it appears the CEO of FTX was running a Ponzi scheme to fund his political favorites in the Democrat Party.
In 2018, the then-$81 billion Alaska Permanent Fund Corp. committed $200 million to Sequoia’s Global Growth Fund III, and the $161 billion Washington State Investment Board retirement system approved an allocation of up to $350 million, according to Pensions and Investments.
FTX founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried resigned Friday as CEO, and about 130 companies affiliated with FTX also began voluntary bankruptcy proceedings, according to FTX’s website.
Those companies that are also embroiled in the bankruptcy include:
105. LedgerPrime Bitcoin Yield Enhancement Master Fund LP
106. LedgerPrime Digital Asset Opportunities Fund, LLC
107. LedgerPrime Digital Asset Opportunities Master Fund LP
108. Ledger Prime LLC
109. LedgerPrime Ventures, LP
110. Liquid Financial USA Inc.
111. LiquidEX LLC
112. Liquid Securities Singapore Pte Ltd
113. LT Baskets Ltd.
114. Maclaurin Investments Ltd.
115. Mangrove Cay Ltd
116. North Dimension Inc
117. North Dimension Ltd
118. North Wireless Dimension Inc
119. Paper Bird Inc
120. Pioneer Street Inc.
121. Quoine India Pte Ltd
122. Quoine Pte Ltd
123. Quoine Vietnam Co. Ltd
124. SNG INVESTMENTS YATIRIM VE DANIŞMANLIK ANONİM ŞİRKETİ
125. Strategy Ark Collective Ltd.
126. Technology Services Bahamas Limited
127. Tigetwit Ltd
129. Verdant Canyon Capital LLC
130. West Innovative Barista Ltd.
131. West Realm Shires Financial Services Inc.
132. West Realm Shires Services Inc.
133. Western Concord Enterprises Ltd.
134. Zubr Exchange Ltd
In July, Sam Bankman-Fried said he and FTX had a “few billion” on hand to shore up struggling crypto firms to prevent the collapse of the digital currency industry, and at the time he said the worst of the sector’s liquidity problem had likely passed.
Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts is hopping mad at Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk, and has threatened to take congressional action against Twitter and other Musk-owned companies, after someone set up a “verified account” on Twitter that impersonated the aging Democrat senator. Markey wrote Musk a letter demanding to know how the fake account got through the verification system known as “blue check.”
“A @washingtonpost reporter was able to create a verified account impersonating me—I’m asking for answers from @elonmusk who is putting profits over people and his debt over stopping disinformation,” Markey wrote on Twitter Sunday afternoon. “Twitter must explain how this happened and how to prevent it from happening again.”
“I’m asking for answers from [Elon Musk] who is putting profits over people and his debt over stopping disinformation,” Markey had tweeted on Friday.
As it turns out, Markey had given permission to the Washington Post reporter to set up the fake account. But we digress.
Musk’s response on Twitter was snarky: “Perhaps it is because your real account sounds like a parody?”
The tweet-fight continued, with Markey writing Sunday afternoon his retaliatory message: “One of your companies is under an FTC consent decree. Auto safety watchdog NHTSA is investigating another for killing people. And you’re spending your time picking fights online. Fix your companies. Or Congress will.”
It almost sounds like a government official’s threat against Musk’s right of free speech. Some may see it as an abuse of power.
Democrats are unhappy with Musk, who has turned more conservative in the past few years. Congress has subpoenaed Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to answer questions about its practices, and now may turn its attention to Musk. Now, with the Senate in Democrat control, Markey could use his powers to hold governmental hearings to embarrass Musk, reveal corporate practices and company policies, and interfere in the free market. Markey sits on the Commerce, Science, and Transportation committee, where is assigned to the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security and the Subcommittee on Communications, Media, and Broadband.
Markey has served as U.S. senator from Massachusetts since 2013. He was the congressional representative for Massachusetts’s 7th congressional district from 1976 to 2013.
Unregulated crypto currency traders funding political campaigns. What could go wrong?
News broke this week that the FTX currency exchange, similar to a Ponzi scheme, crumbled and took down the investments of millions of people.
The 30-year-old founder of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, who operates outside the United States, resigned Friday as the company declared bankruptcy. A caretaker CEO who helped Enron recover from bankruptcy has come in to try to usher the company through the bankruptcy process. (This is not investment advice, but if you are invested in FTX, you won’t see your investment back any time soon.)
Bankman-Fried, who conned billions of dollars out of people and transferred tens of millions of dollars to Democrat campaigns, was the Democratic Party’s second-largest donor this year, after well-known Democrat funder George Soros.
His operation was, in essence, a money-laundering scheme for Democrat campaigns. At the same time, Bankman-Fired was buying influence in Congress, as a key player in stopping the “red wave” that was to be the 2022 elections.
To help flip Alaska blue, Bankman-Fried donated $6 million to the Democrat House Majority PAC, which in turn donated $5,000, the maximum amount allowed, to the campaign of Alaska’s Democrat Congresswoman Mary Peltola.
FTX is a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange founded by the MIT graduate in 2018. It was primarily focused on derivatives, options, volatility instruments, and leveraged tokens.
Bankman-Fried “stormed on to the US political scene with multimillion-dollar donations that led lawmakers, particularly Democrats, to believe he was ushering in the next generation of donors. But in a matter of days, his business empire collapsed into bankruptcy and the prospect of millions more in donations evaporated,” writes the Financial Timeson Sunday.
In 2020, Bankman-Fried was the second-largest donor to get Joe Biden elected president, also after No. 1 George Soros. Bankman-Fried was only 28 years old at the time and had only been in the crypto business for about 1-2 years.
2022 top donations to candidates.
The majority of Bankman-Fried’s donations to Democrats — about $28 million — was through the Protect Our Future Pac, which used the funds to support 25 Democrats in congressional races. Of those, 18 have won their races, including Virginia’s Abigail Spanberger and Florida’s Maxwell Frost, a 25-year-old.
From OpenSecrets.org
But for Bankman-Fried, it was more about furthering his crypto businesses. He intended to influence public policy and gave to some right-leaning political action committees. But only about $155,000 went to Republicans, such as Alabama Sen.-elect Katie Britt, who was an ally, and Arkansas Sen. John Boozman. Bankman-Fried also donated to the campaign of Sen. Debbie Stabenow, the Senate Agricultural committee overseeing crypto, which Boozman also serves on.
Some politicos said they suspected Bankman-Fried’s primary goal in politics had been to further his crypto interests through the political process. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, said he had not heard of Bankman-Fried until people started mentioning him as a potential investor in Twitter. “But then I got a ton of people telling me [that] he’s got, you know, huge amounts of money that he wants to invest in the Twitter deal. And I talked to him for about half an hour. And I know my bullshit meter was redlining. It was like, this dude is bullshit – that was my impression.”
Sam Bankman-Fried on Twitter last week, where he had many things to say, this among them.
One of Bankman-Fried’s other interests was to elect lawmakers to the House of Representatives who would focus on pandemics. He was one of the founders and was the main funder of a group called Guarding Against Pandemics, a political influencer run by his brother, Gabe Bankman-Fried, who was an adviser to Democratic political action committees and was a staffer to Democrats in the U.S. Capitol. The purpose of the group was to ostensibly work on preventing the next Covid pandemic, but it may be another political scam or money-laundering operation.
At the peak of his crypto scheme, the Bankman-Fried was said to be worth $26 billion. At the beginning of last week, his worth was pegged at $16 billion. At the end of the week, it was pegged at zero.
Bankman-Fried’s other crypto company, Alameda Research and Weste Realm Shires Services (known as FTX.US), are are embroiled in the same meltdown, which has also entangled other crypto companies as the fallout continues.
Bankman-Fried is now in the Bahamas, where he is likely a flight risk to a jurisdiction that has no extradition treaty with the United States. The United States has extradition treaties with about 107 countries.
