Petition of suspicion: Dark money groups controlling Alaska are trying to get Alaskans to limit campaign contributions from individuals

One of the biggest dark money groups in the country, which has controlled many of Alaska’s election outcomes over the years, is the New Venture Fund. It’s a name every Alaskan should know, but that few do.

The New Venture Fund is the group behind a new pop-up group called Citizens Against Money in Politics, which seeks to instate a $4,000 campaign contribution limit in Alaska elections for groups, and a $2,000 limit for ordinary citizens. The group is collecting signatures all over the state, most recently in Fairbanks.

This initiative would give the ability of groups like the New Venture Fund to create numerous pop-up groups and spend money changing outcomes in Alaska, while putting regular citizens at a disadvantage for fighting them. It’s similar to what happened with 2020’s Ballot Measure 2, which brought in the ranked-choice voting method now used in Alaska, to disadvantage Republicans except for Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

The New Venture Fund, along with ASEA, AFL-CIO, and NEA-Alaska — also among the biggest forces in Democrat politics in Alaska — are doing what they say the Legislature should have done — create campaign contribution limits in Alaska. The limits that were the law of the Great Land, limiting contributions to $500 per individual to a campaign, were overturned by the Ninth Circuit and currently there are no limits at all on how much can be spent on a campaign.

The campaign limit laws, however, give particular power to those groups that are “independent expenditure groups,” which is what the dark-money constellation of which the New Venture Fund is but one hot-burning star. New Venture Fund is a subset of Arabella Advisors, which has become synonymous with political “dark money.” 

Year after year, Arabella guides donor money, which includes money from foreign billionaires like Hansjorg Wass, to the subgroups — New Venture Fund, Sixteen Thirty and Hopewell Fund. Rarely do those donations show up in a candidate’s campaign finance disclosures. But take, for example, Forrest Dunbar’s run for mayor of Anchorage. The Sixteen Thirty Fund funneled $35,000 into a group called “Building a Stronger Anchorage,” which was created solely to get Dunbar elected.

If New Venture Fund is successful in getting the signatures it needs to get campaign finance laws back on the books, it will pour millions into convincing Alaskans to vote for the initiative at the ballot box — all under the guise of making elections fair. In reality, it will make elections work for the New Venture Fund and its affiliates out of D.C.

The New Venture Fund also spawned “The Alaska Venture Fund,” a group that takes credit for stopping mining in Alaska.

For the Citizens Against Money in Politics, the group has reported $91,656.46 in contributions so far this year, with $75,000 coming from the New Venture Fund, and the AFL-CIO and NEA-Alaska contributing $5,000 each.

There is no group that has organized in order to combat the effort to limit the rights of citizens to contribute to campaigns.

And there is no sure way to know whose money is being laundered through New Venture Fund in order to change Alaska elections to benefit New Venture Fund and labor unions.

Citizens Against Money in Politics is headed in Alaska by Juneau Democrats, with former Attorney General (and former Mayor of Juneau) Bruce Botelho leading the charge.

Botelho brokered the deal that put Bill Walker and Byron Mallott together after the ballot was already set in 2014, helping that ticket to become the Democrats’ nominee for governor and lieutenant governor. He was a significant player in the drive to take the Republicans’ primary away from them and implement ranked-choice general elections in Alaska.