Dahlstrom claims legislator violated state ethics law with pointed email

On July 22, Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher told a legislative hearing that 3,048 Alaskans had been removed from the voter rolls, but admitted that not all of them should have been because the state was using old data.

On July 23 at 10:52 p.m. Rep. Zack Fields, an Anchorage Democrat, sent this pointed and harsh email to Beecher:

Hi Carol,

What on earth is wrong with you that you would take obviously flawed data and terminate the most fundamental rights of Alaskans? Do you aspire to be an executioner of the democratic process? Do you lack a conscience? Are you such a craven political appointee you will do anything to advance your career? I have never, even amidst the very dark record of the Dunleavy administration, seen such a fundamental assault on the rights of American citizens. You should be ashamed of yourself. There is a long history of apparatchiks who will dismantle the rule of law, from the Nazis to Franco to Pinochet, and you are absolutely following in that tradition by attempting to dismantle the rule of law, which starts with the franchise.

Zack Fields

There are many things you can say about this email. You can say it was impolitic and impolite. You can say it reflects a strong disagreement with official action. You can say that there are better ways to communicate and this is offensive.

Or you can say that this is an alarming situation and that Fields’ anger is understandable.

What you cannot say about it is that it was illegal and unethical for Fields to express his opinion that way.

Yet that is the claim that Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom has made in an ethics complaint filed against Fields, first reported by the Alaska Landmine.

Dahlstrom, who has crowned herself the queen of the speech police in Alaska, needs a lesson about freedom of speech.

Dahlstrom alleges that Fields may have broken state law, which is absurd. She claims his email is “beneath the dignity” of the Legislature and that his email amounts to “personal abuse” of Beecher. She says it was not fair of Fields to say what he said. She said it is illegal for him to use the words he used.

Dahlstrom doesn’t seem to understand that removing people from voter rolls illegally has prompted an intense response among many people.

She claims that Fields is free to criticize her. But he is not free to criticize anyone in the manner he chose. We don’t need her deciding what language is acceptable in Alaska.

State officials receive more severe complaints with more biting language all the time. What’s different here is the messenger, not the message.

The dumbest part of Dahlstrom’s complaint is that she finds it suspicious that Fields sent the email to Beecher at 10:52 p.m., which she says is “approaching midnight,” and that the Legislature was not in session at the time.

Perhaps, says the caretaker of the state seal, Fields was not conducting a legitimate legislative oversight function. If so, he violated state law, which prohibits legislators from using a state resource such as his email account for a “nonlegislative purpose.”

No sensible person would agree with the lite guv on this allegation.

Fields said he would be failing to do his job if he didn’t try to push back and hold the Division of Elections accountable on “their blatantly illegal and outrageous attack on voting rights.”

“The notion that I shouldn’t check email at night or out of session is novel. I absolutely check my email at night. With kids I often catch up on email after getting children to bed and cleaning house. And I try not to miss emails in or out of session because it’s a 12-month-a-year job, especially with this administration, where you can’t take your eye off them for a single day,” Fields said.

“My intention was to get her to look in the mirror. I think elected officials do have a role to bear witness and this is one example.”

He said he has not received a copy of the complaint.

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