The Recall Dunleavy Committee had a rough week. After being jubilant over a huge set of wins on Jan. 10, when the committee’s lawyers swept the tables in Superior Court, the case to remove the governor had run into a wall.
[Read: Can Gov. Dunleavy get a fair shake in this court?]
The Superior Court judge who had just ruled in favor of allowing the group to start collecting signatures on a recall petition on Feb. 10, changed his mind. He sent the matter on up to the Alaska Supreme Court, washing his hands of further controversy.
But by then, the recall committee had scheduled training sessions for phone bank volunteers and signature gatherers, and had rented the Sullivan Arena in Anchorage for three days for a Recall Dunleavy festival, where the push to get over 71,000 signatures would get off to a strong start in mid-February.
Attorneys Jahna Lindemuth and Scott Kendall, former attorney general and former chief of staff to Gov. Bill Walker, are now heading up the recall of Dunleavy. For them, this is personal.
They had been cocks of the walk in the courthouse on Jan. 10, when the judge went through the motions of oral arguments, and then granted them an insta-win.
But if they started out January as lions of the court, they ended January as lambs.
This ruling was a big setback, and possibly a costly one, for the plans to stage their major media fanfare on Feb. 10, when the recall activists and paid employees would descend on the Division of Elections to pick up the petition booklets, while knowing full well the Supreme Court had not yet calendared the case.
The cart, it seems, was before the horse and on down the road a stretch:
- Volunteer phone-bank training was scheduled for Feb. 4 at AFL-CIO Hall.
- The signature-gathering training was to take place at the AFL-CIO Hall in Anchorage on Jan. 29, and at the IBEW Hall on Feb. 5-6.
- Then on Feb. 15-17, the group had already rented the Sullivan Arena to stage their three-day signature festival from 9 am to 8 pm daily.
All that planning is in question now that the recall petition’s validity, and whether the “stay” on collecting signatures in advance is Supreme Court material; the sides are awaiting the decision on when oral arguments will be made.
The Recall Dunleavy legal “dream team” of former Gov. Bill Walker is pushing for oral arguments sooner rather than later.
The Stand Tall With Mike group, which joined the defense of the governor as a legal “intervenor” in the case, is the sole reason for the slowing down of the race to recall the governor. The Division of Elections, represented by the Department of Law, had found no justifiable harm to allowing the petitioners to ramp up their campaign to unseat the governor. But Stand Tall With Mike lawyers said their side would be irreparably harmed if Recall Dunleavy Committee started juicing up the case in the court of public opinion.
If not for the Stand Tall lawyers, who are billing by the hour, the petition books would already be at the printer and they would be available for pick up on Feb. 10. The momentum would be off and running again.
The Alaska Supreme Court is likely to side with the Recall Dunleavy “dream team” lawyers in the end, and allow the recall matter to go before the voters in some form or another. But the oral arguments could be anytime this year. The Stand Tall With Mike group has agreed to an expedited hearing schedule, the terms of which are still being negotiated with the Recall Dunleavy group.
