Crucial campaign finance measure on the ballot Tuesday
One of the most important items on the state election ballot Tuesday is Ballot Measure No. 1, which would bring back campaign contribution limits in Alaska.
This is not to be confused with Ballot Measure No. 2, which is not on the ballot in Alaska until November.
Ballot Measure No. 1 has been a long time coming, mainly because Gov. Mike Dunleavy and others blocked progress on reasonable campaign contribution limits after the old law was struck down by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2021.
Right now campaign contributions are unlimited in Alaska, while 38 states have limits. That will only change if Ballot Measure No. 1 is approved.
Twenty years ago 73 percent of Alaska voters supported contribution limits. The ballot measure has not been heavily publicized, but the more people learn about it the more likely they are to support it. The text is below.
When the court struck down the law in 2021, something extraordinary happened: One of the three judges on the federal appeals court nearly begged the state to file an appeal, suggesting that the case be reviewed by a larger group of judges, but Dunleavy said no.
Dunleavy, who loves nothing more than filing lawsuits with public money, refused to defend the campaign finance law in court, having his AG claim it would be a waste of money and that the state had no guarantee of success. Wasting money without a guarantee of success had never stopped Dunleavy before.
Dunleavy opposed the state law.
“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 four-and-a-half years ago.
But for months Freedom Guy had 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 that Dunleavy was neutral on campaign contribution limits.
On March 4, 2022, 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 Dunleavy wanted no limits on campaign contributions and ordered that the case be dropped, pretending all the while that he was impartial.
Rather than admit that the state agreed with the rejection of the law, 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.”
The three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals didn’t provide detailed instructions on how to fix Alaska’s contribution limits, but it pointed a way toward the solution on the ballot Tuesday—raising the amounts to take not of rising costs.
The 1996 donation limit of $500 equated to a buying power of less than $300 in today’s dollars.
The $500 limit in 1996 replaced what had been a $1,000 per person limit in 1974, when the state first approved a law limiting contributions. Under the 1974 limit—had it been linked to inflation—the per person maximum now would be more than $5,000,
The state cut the limit to $500 in 1996, while the Legislature raised it to $1,000 in 2003. Then a voter initiative in 2006 cut the allowable amount back to $500, ignoring the impact of inflation.
The Legislature this year approved new campaign finance limits. Dunleavy vetoed the bill. The ballot measure is a necessary step toward fixing our flawed campaign finance system.
Your contributions help support independent analysis and political commentary by Alaska reporter and author Dermot Cole. Thank you for reading and for your support. Either click here to use PayPal or send checks to: Dermot Cole, Box 10673, Fairbanks, AK 99710-0673.