Dunleavy continues to pay $4,000 a month to Washington, D.C. right-wing image polisher
Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who keeps talking about cutting government spending, keeps spending money on wasteful government contracts.
One case in point is the $4,000-a-month his administration has been paying right-wing publicist Mary Vought in Washington, D.C. for more than a year.
Perhaps it is in part a thank-you gift.
In November 2019, Vought attached her name to a letter of Outside right-wing stalwarts who said Dunleavy was being unfairly subjected to a recall by Alaskans. The letter falsely claimed that he had signed a bill cutting the budget by 40 percent and identified the legendary 100 “job-killing regulations” that no one has identified.
“For keeping his promises, Gov. Dunleavy is being rewarded with a recall effort. Conservatives around the country oppose this effort,” read the letter Vought signed in her capacity as executive director of the Senate Conservatives Fund.
Two months after that letter, Vought, a true conservative who grew up in Alaska, started getting her monthly state check to promote Dunleavy in right-wing circles.
A year ago, the state claimed that she had been hired in November, but her first $4,000 payment was made Jan. 15, 2020, according to the reborn state online checkbook.
Dunleavy aide Brett Huber also claimed she was hired to help on in-state communications from D.C., which is the lie you tell when you can’t admit that her hiring had nothing to do with communicating with Alaskans.
“True conservatives stand up for their values. Gov. Dunleavy is walking the walk he pledged to do, and his state is seeing the benefits,” the chain letter signed by Vought said,
As a true conservative walking the walk, Dunleavy has now given about $50,000 to fiscal conservative Vought since last January.
Vought is married to fellow conservative Russ Vought, who was Trump’s budget director. Russ says he plans to start a Trump support group, which already has a website and a mission statement.
The Voughts are Trump believers who fight the welfare state and demand fiscal discipline and an end to government fat.
Her husband , before his years on the Trump budget office “spent much of his past 15 years in Washington as a political brawler, waging war against GOP leadership first as a staffer on the conservative House Republican Study Committee and later as a top official at the Heritage Foundation’s political arm,” the Washington Post reported in 2019.
Mary’s employer, the Senate Conservatives Fund, has “a long track record of working against incumbent Republican senators, challenging them from the party’s right flank,” Roll Call reported.
Mary recently backed Sen. Josh Hawley for supporting the Trump insurrection.
“The junior senator from Missouri's decision to object to the election results showed tremendous courage. It brought him instant scorn from the media and even a public rebuke from his own Senate leader,” Vought wrote in an appeal for money.
“The progressive left may think they have defeated us, but millions of Americans believe in limited government, economic freedom, and traditional values,” said Vought.
A true believer in limited government would return the $50,000 she has collected from the state of Alaska.
The Dunleavy largesse benefits Vought and may benefit Dunleavy, but it doesn’t benefit Alaskans.
By the way, on Feb. 10 last year, Russ predicted the “coronavirus is not something that is going to have ripple effects” on the U.S. economy. And he promised that the Trump plan to replace Obamacare would soon be ready.
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