Let’s have transparency in political campaign funding

A journalist friend facing officialdom’s stone walls often would quote newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer: “There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy.” Pulitzer could have added “there is not a recall effort…,” too.

Secrecy is anathema to an informed electorate, an invisible thumb on the scale, serving best those who deserve it least — but need it most. Here in Alaska, we are not immune.

Take, for example, the effort to eject from office the state’s duly elected chief executive, Gov. Mike Dunleavy, for sins mostly imagined. Many of us simply are left to marvel at the lack of transparency that makes it difficult to gauge the howzits, whatzits and whozits of the recall effort, which launched with great fanfare on Aug. 1, 2019. We are gobsmacked at being asked to sack a governor — put the kibosh on a legitimate democratic election, mind you — without knowing who actually is asking, or who is paying for the effort.

The campaign’s titular heads are Vic Fischer, a former Democratic state senator and 1955 Alaska Constitutional Convention delegate, former state Sen. Arliss Sturgulewski, a moderate Republican from Anchorage, and Joe Usibelli, chairman of Usibelli Coal Mine. Recall Dunleavy must gather 71,252 signatures to force a recall. It had collected 37,550 by last week, its website said.

There are many questions, and the Recall Dunleavy website itself presents the first. Dunleavy was sworn into office Dec. 3, 2018. The domain was registered Feb. 2, 2019, only 62 days into Dunleavy’s term, the WHOIS domain registration website says. Ink on his oath of office barely was dry.

Dunleavy, it should be noted, did not release his “austerity budget” until Feb. 13, 2019, and his veto of $444 million from the already-trimmed operating budget approved by the Legislature, which caused big-government advocates to melt down, did not occur until months later, at the end of June. It appears somebody was engineering the recall effort before Dunleavy’s budget cut and vetoes — planning it even before he had done much of anything.

The bigger question: Who is paying for the recall effort, which surely includes signature-gathering, research and public relations firms, surveys, lawyers and who knows what else? Recall Dunleavy has had months of court fights all the way to the Alaska Supreme Court. None of that could have been cheap. Whose names are on the checks?

Alaskans may never know. State law allows Recall Dunleavy to collect and spend truckloads of cash from anybody, except foreign interests, without revealing where it came from or went — at least until the recall question wins a spot on the ballot. Only then, and only if any signature-gathering money is rolled over into a recall election campaign, would backers be forced to report every penny collected and spent since the effort’s beginning. If none of the signature-gathering money ends up in the election campaign, Alaskans might never know who paid the bills.

As of last week, Alaska Public Offices Commission campaign reports for Recall Dunleavy show only goose eggs. No contributions. No expenditures. Nada.

Perhaps to get a better overall picture, we can take a look at the contributions and spending of the Better Elections initiative, which already is on the Nov. 3 ballot. It is registered with APOC and is working diligently to destroy Alaska’s electoral system with 25 pages of gobbledygook changes to voting in Alaska. It wants Alaskans to approve ranked-choice voting, open or “jungle” primaries and limits on campaign contributions. It would do all that — oh, and destroy political parties, too — without the first round of legislative debate. The effort is aimed at ensuring fringe, marginal and leftist candidates have better chances of winning office.

Better Elections has taken in about $1.2 million, almost all of it from a handful of Outside interests, the group’s latest APOC report shows. It has spent more than $750,000 so far on things such as research, surveys, campaign management, printing of petition booklets and the like. Keep in mind, unlike Recall Dunleavy, it did not have protracted legal battles.

A big operation costs money and the questions remain: Why did the recall start so early? How much has Recall Dunleavy taken in – and from whom? Alaskans are being asked to fire their governor. Who is asking them to do so; who is paying the bills? Undoubtedly, ordinary Alaskans are pitching in. But who else? Would Alaskans still sign the petitions if they knew who was underwriting the effort? Perhaps Recall Dunleavy does not think so.

It would be smarter for recall proponents to go beyond the law and simply tell Alaskans who is funding the effort so they could make an informed decision.

Secrecy, after all, is the enemy of an informed electorate.

Paul Jenkins is editor of the AnchorageDailyPlanet.com, a division of Porcaro Communications.

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