After deceiving Alaskans for months, Dunleavy admits he wants no limits on campaign donations

Gov. Mike Dunleavy has finally come clean, admitting to a reporter that he wants no limits on campaign contributions, which clears the way for rich people—like his brother Francis and Bob Penney—to funnel any amount of money into the Dunleavy campaign.

Credit the Anchorage Daily News for getting him on the record to say that it was his decision to not appeal a federal court case last fall that stuck down the campaign contribution limits. He wanted state contribution limits to go away and refused to defend the state law, even after an extraordinary request by the federal court to file an appeal.

“You know me: I’m the guy that wants people to be able to drive four wheelers on the road. I’m a freedom guy,” Dunleavy told reporter Nat Herz. “My tendency is to just let people do what they want in campaign finance law, as long as it’s disclosed and it’s accurate.”

For months Freedom Guy has allowed the lie to stand that the court case about campaign financing was dropped for other reasons. The bloated cadre of state-funded PR people trying to protect Dunleavy from himself even continued to claim this week that Dunleavy was neutral on campaign contribution limits.

On Friday, Alaska Public Media reported, “Dunleavy spokesman Jeff Turner said the governor doesn’t have a position about what the new limit should be and will not be introducing a bill to set one.”

But that claim is false. Dunleavy has had a position all along. He wants no limits on campaign contributions and ordered that the case be dropped.

As the Daily News reported Saturday: “Dunleavy said he had directed his Department of Law not to ask the full 9th Circuit Court to rehear the lawsuit — even though one of the judges on the court invited such a request — because he thought the panel’s decision invalidating the contribution limits was correct. (A spokesman for the Department of Law said that ‘litigation decisions fall to the attorney general in consultation with client agencies.’)”

Ignore that nonsense in parentheses. That’s never how this stuff works. Dunleavy told the AG what to do.

Rather than admit that the state agreed with the rejection of the law, Attorney General Tregarrick Taylor put his name on a court filing that would embarrass a conscientious lawyer.

Taylor said the state accepted the decision to strike down the Alaska law on contribution limits not because the state agreed, but because there was no certainty that an appeal would succeed. It would an an “unwise use of resources that could ultimately result in more harm than good for the state’s interests.”

We now have testimony from Dunleavy that Taylor was lying. The governor says he agreed with the court decision and ordered Taylor to drop the case. Taylor lied to the court and Alaskans.

Dunleavy sees this as a chance to tap into more money for his reelection campaign, perhaps allowing his rich brother Francis to write a giant check or allowing him to spend the secret stash of anti-recall millions raised by his support group.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Les Gara accurately sized up the Dunleavy position last fall, cutting through the attempted deception, and is alone among the candidates for governor pushing for a legislative solution now.

"Governor Dunleavy carefully made Alaska's donation limits disappear through a refusal to appeal the August ruling, by refusing a court invitation to appeal that ruling, and by refusing to uphold his sworn oath to defend Alaska's laws. This, by a Governor who has been appeal-happy his whole term," Gara said in a press release.

Dunleavy is hoping the Senate will kill any legislation that sets reasonable limits, using the bogus excuse that there is no time to write a bill. That would allow Dunleavy to avoid vetoing the bill and facing direct political consequences during the campaign.

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