JUNEAU -- A Libertarian Party nominee to the commission that enforces Alaska's campaign-finance and public-official disclosure rules faced skepticism from the Democratic and Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearing this week.
The nominee, William McCord, has lived in the state only since May, and the committee's chair, Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux, R-Anchorage, said Thursday she was examining whether McCord was qualified for a position on the Alaska Public Offices Commission.
"I don't have any problems with a Libertarian on APOC," LeDoux said. "This particular gentleman, however, doesn't appear to have lived in the state for long enough for me to feel comfortable with his appointment."
McCord's appointment to APOC by Gov. Bill Walker was facilitated by Walker's own election in November.
State law calls for four of APOC's five members to be split between the two political parties whose gubernatorial candidates earned the highest vote totals in the most recent election. The parties submit the names of nominees to the governor.
Commissioners have traditionally been Democrats and Republicans. But last year, the Alaska Democratic Party went without a gubernatorial candidate on the ballot after its candidate, Byron Mallott, agreed to run for lieutenant governor with Walker, a longtime Republican who dropped his party registration to receive the Democrats' support.
Walker originally made two Libertarian appointments to APOC. One was McCord, who lives in the Southeast community of Haines. The other was Mark Fish, who ran as the Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate in November.
But Fish's nomination was withdrawn last month after Walker's office realized that the Democrats currently serving on APOC were eligible to serve out their full terms. Only one of the Democrats is set to leave the commission in 2015. The other's appointment runs through 2017.
Michael Chambers, the Alaska Libertarian Party's chairman, said that Fish was his top preference out of five names he submitted to Walker. McCord was at the bottom.
"I think that he was involved in the Libertarian Party at the executive level in Washington state for a good period of time, and other than that, I hadn't even heard about Bill McCord," Chambers said. The party's APOC candidates were recruited through its website and social media, he said. "He just kind of showed up in Haines."
Karen Gillis, Walker's director of boards and commissions, said Fish's appointment was withdrawn simply because he'd been erroneously appointed to a specific seat filled through 2017 by Democrat Vance Sanders. McCord was appointed to replace Liz Hickerson, another Democrat whose term expired March 1.
"When it turned out that Vance had to stay, it was Mark that came out," Gillis said in a phone interview Thursday. "It wasn't deliberate."
McCord, 72, says he enrolled in the Libertarian Party in 1972, the same year it fielded its first presidential candidate. He maintained during his confirmation hearing Wednesday that he wouldn't let his political philosophy get in the way of his duties at APOC in spite of his membership in a party whose slogan is "minimum government, maximum freedom."
"When you're swimming in a stream, you swim where it's the best and most fluid way to swim," McCord told committee members. "There are certain things that we have to deal with, like two-way streets.Yes, I drive on the right side of the street just like everybody else. So, this is an agency that is a necessary part of our living together and working together in a political environment."
McCord is "semiretired" and has signed up to be a substitute teacher, he said in a phone interview Thursday. He acknowledged being "kind of new" to Alaska, but he said that could work in his favor by leaving him with "no obligations to anyone."
"Anybody could say: 'No, he's from out of state,'" said McCord, who lived in Mount Vernon, Washington, before he moved to Alaska. "Well, so are half of the Alaskans."
In Wednesday's hearing, both Republican and Democratic committee members peppered McCord with questions. They began by asking him why he'd answered "yes" to a question on his application that asked if he or his family could be financially affected by the commission's decisions, then responded "no" to a subsequent question asking him to explain the potential financial benefit.
McCord's puzzling response was that he actually answered the questions differently.
The committee members also asked McCord about his application and resume, which cite civic service including seven years as a community council organizer in Seattle in the 1960s and 1970s and five years on the board of a natural foods cooperative in Everett, Washington, more recently.
Under questioning from Rep. Max Gruenberg, D-Anchorage, McCord acknowledged that he had no experience in an enforcement role like APOC's, but he said he had experience in politics in Washington, where he said he'd gathered petitions and filed to run for Congress and for the state Legislature.
McCord later said he thought some of Gruenberg's questions stemmed from "a certain amount of sour grapes" about last year's election results and the Democratic Party's loss of an APOC seat.
Gruenberg, in a subsequent interview, said he would have "serious questions" about McCord's judgment based on his knowledge of state politics, "as well as his comments on and off the record."
Gruenberg added that he was interested in examining the underlying statute that provides for APOC commissioners to come from the two parties whose candidates have the highest gubernatorial vote totals. He said the law should allow for the appointment of people who represent the ideology of successful gubernatorial tickets.
"Otherwise, we are going to have APOC controlled by a series of small parties that don't represent very many people in the Alaska electorate," he said.