FAIRBANKS, KENAI, ANCHORAGE VOTERS WILL DECIDE
This year’s General Election has more fake nonpartisans running than at any time in Alaska history.
Stealth partisans running for the Legislature this year are emerging out of ostensibly nonpartisan elected seats in local government, but they’re anything but nonpartisan.
In Fairbanks, fake nonpartisan Marna Sanford skipped the Primary and put herself on the ballot as a petition candidate for the General Election. Sanford is part of the far-left wing of the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly, and before that served on the Planning Commission.
Her campaign contributions come from Democrats like Rep. Grier Hopkins, Sen. Scott Kawasaki, former Sens. Suzanne Little and David Guttenberg, as well as a host of others who align with the Democrats, even if they have an “N” or “U” by their name. Even Jason Grenn, a former representative who ran as a no-party candidate but caucused with Democrats, has chipped in cash. A list of some of her contributors can be found here.
How can voters tell Sanford will caucus with the Democrats? She signed the recall petition against Gov. Mike Dunleavy. This means if she wins Senate Seat B, she’ll be a vote against the conservative agenda.
Sanford is running against trucker Rob Myers, a Republican who came out of the citizenry, not an elected seat, to defeat Sen. John Coghill in the August Primary Election.
Sanford, a savvy candidate, represents the current trend among Democrats to disavow their party to be acceptable to centrist voters, as the Democratic Party gets further and further Left.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders is one of those fake independents, and both Al Gross, running for U.S. Senate, and Alyce Galvin, running for U.S. House, are trying the same trick on Alaskans.
On the Kenai Peninsula, a local officeholder is also making a play for higher office by running as a no-party candidate against a Republican incumbent. Kelly Cooper is trying to unseat Rep. Sarah Vance for the Homer-Anchor Point seat, District 31.
Cooper currently serves on the Kenai Borough, a nonpartisan office. She, too, skipped the Primary and is on the General Election ballot as a petition candidate.
She is supported by Democrats Hal Spence (former writer at the Anchorage Daily News), the National Education Association political account, IBEW political action account, Democrat Rep. Matt Claman, the Alaska Center for the Environment, and she received a nice fat check from former Rep. Paul Seaton. A partial list of her donors is at this link.
Cooper has been a thorn in the side of Republican Borough Mayor Charlie Pierce, and as the Assembly president and the leading advocate for the all-mail-in election, which is turning out to be a big avenue for expected voter fraud. She closed the Assembly Chambers and won’t reopen meetings to the public until the Chambers are remodeled with CARES Act funds. She was a supporter of Seaton, who also ran as a nonpartisan on the Democrat ticket during the last election — and lost.
Lately, she has refused to recuse two Assembly members with direct conflicts of interest regarding budgetary votes. In 2019, she spoke at the Homer Women’s March, and praised U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Alaskans on the Peninsula report getting phone calls supporting Alyse Galvin, Al Gross, and Kelly Cooper — all fake independents.
Also running as a fake nonpartisan who rose from the ranks of local politics is Anchorage Assembly member Suzanne LaFrance. Her Assembly aide, Adam Lees, had run in the Primary Election for District 28. Lees was a placeholder. Immediately after the election, he dropped out and LaFrance was put in his place to square off against James Kaufman.
LaFrance is another candidate who signed the Recall Dunleavy petition last year, and her donor base is peppered with Leftist luminaries, such as Assembly members Chris Constant, Meg Zalatel, Austin Quinn-Davidson, and Forrest Dunbar, former U.S. Sen. Mark Begich, former Alaska Democratic Party Chair Kay Brown, former Democrat Sen. Johnny Ellis, and Rep. Ivy Spohnholz.
These fake independents would join Ketchikan’s original fake, Rep. Daniel Ortiz, who has always voted with Democrats from Day One.
Voters will be deciding between authentic and fake on Nov. 3. If Sanford, Cooper, and LaFrance go to Juneau to join hard Left Reps. Ivy Spohnholz, Harriet Drummond, and Geran Tarr, Alaskans will be in for quite a ride.
