Former Alaska Rep. LeDoux faces trial on election misconduct charges after campaign aide signs plea agreement

Former Alaska state Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux was in Anchorage Superior Court on Tuesday for an evidentiary hearing ahead of a long-delayed election misconduct trial, which is scheduled to start Thursday.

First elected to the state House in 2004, LeDoux was accused by state prosecutors of encouraging people who did not live in her House district to vote for her in the 2014 and 2018 primary and general elections.

LeDoux, her campaign aide Lisa (Vaught) Simpson and Simpson’s son Caden Vaught were charged four years ago with election fraud. LeDoux faces 12 charges that include five felonies, court records show.

LeDoux is a former Kodiak Island Borough mayor first elected to represent Kodiak in the Alaska Legislature in 2004. She served two terms in the House from there. She later relocated to East Anchorage, and was elected again in 2012, serving four consecutive terms in the Legislature. She served in Republican majorities and in a largely Democratic bipartisan majority.

Simpson and Vaught each signed plea agreements on one misdemeanor charge of second-degree unlawful interference with voting. All remaining charges against the pair were dismissed.

Simpson signed her plea agreement on July 8. She still faces up to one year in prison. She agreed to potentially testify against LeDoux.

Vaught had his 360-day sentence suspended last year. He was ordered to complete 40 hours of community service by the end of June. As part of his plea agreement, Vaught is also required to “testify truthfully” against LeDoux.

In a Tuesday interview, Kevin Fitzgerald, LeDoux’s attorney, said state prosecutors had not offered a plea agreement to LeDoux, “and we haven’t accepted one.”

”I guess time will tell about the strength of the state’s case,” he continued to say.

LeDoux has maintained her innocence since she was charged with election misconduct in 2020. In court on Tuesday, the former Republican state lawmaker was largely impassive on the eve of her election misconduct trial.

Tuesday’s hearing focused on whether evidence of so-called “prior bad acts” could be admitted at trial. Jenna Gruenstein, chief assistant attorney general at the Office of Special Prosecutions, apologized to the court for submitting audio evidence of law enforcement interviews that had not previously been filed.

Fitzgerald told the court he didn’t believe the audio interviews had been withheld intentionally. But he said in an interview that it was surprising to see evidence he anticipated to be “voluminous” submitted days before a long-anticipated trial was scheduled to start.

“That’s not really how it’s supposed to work,” he said.

Fitzgerald said he and LeDoux, a fellow attorney, would decide soon whether to file for a short continuance to process the new evidence.

At Tuesday’s two-hour hearing, state prosecutors cited text messages allegedly sent by LeDoux in 2014 to encourage Bonnie Bailey to vote for her, despite Bailey not residing in her district.

Bailey, who described herself as a longtime family friend of LeDoux’s, testified under oath that she had separated from her then-husband and was temporarily living outside of LeDoux’s district. Bailey said she didn’t believe LeDoux was trying to violate election laws by encouraging her to only change her voter registration after the election.

Anchorage Judge Kevin Saxby said he would make a decision soon on whether to admit Tuesday’s evidence.

In the audience on Tuesday was far-right Wasilla Republican Rep. David Eastman. He said by text message that he hoped to see “the state make a strong case and for LeDoux’s innocence to be respected until it is proven otherwise.”

“The charges levied against LeDoux during an election year undeniably impacted her election campaign in 2020, and it is therefore incumbent on the state to demonstrate that it brought these charges against her in good faith, instead of using our justice system to influence the election of someone it may have viewed as political opposition,” he said.

Eastman won a case last year that challenged his eligibility to hold office over his lifetime membership in the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia group linked with the violent insurrection in the U.S. Capitol that took place Jan. 6, 2021.

LeDoux lost her reelection bid in the 2020 primary election months after charges were filed against her.

LeDoux has requested a jury trial. Jury selection was scheduled to start on Thursday. Fitzgerald said he expected the trial to last at least a week from Monday.