GOP gubernatorial candidates take aim at each other
“He’s slandering Bernadette,” GOP publicist Suzanne Downing claims about Dave Bronson, calling him a misogynist who is helping the Democrats by refusing to drop out of the governor’s race and clear the way for Bernadette Wilson.
Downing claimed he is making phone calls to Alaskans trying to round up Republican support for his campaign, while attacking Bernadette Wilson, who got 10.2 percent of the vote.
Bronson got 8.2 percent. Both of them are claiming that the math works for them. If you add up all the votes for the other GOP candidates—more than 50 percent of the total—they could win. This is not as simple as they are claiming. They are competing now for the endorsements of other Republicans.
What’s clear is that they both say they want unity more than anything else. He wants the GOP to unify behind him, not Bernadette Wilson. Wilson wants the GOP to unify behind her, not Bronson.
Downing, who has been promoting Wilson since the start, didn’t identify any lies that Bronson is supposedly telling about Wilson. The Republicans will be consumed by an “internal war” because he won’t drop out, Downing says.
Downing claims that Bronson is going back on a written promise to drop out if he was not the leading Republican, but Bronson and his defenders say the Republican vote was split so many ways that no one has a real lead.
He agreed to “to drop out of a race where you have garnered less than a majority of votes and where your continued competition with another Republican will split the vote.”
The Alaska Landmine has reported on some of her past financial troubles, which is perhaps what Downing meant when she claimed that “opposition research from his team has been slipped to political operatives and bloggers, while third-party political organizations aligned with Bronson’s campaign” are going after Wilson.
“The message is becoming unmistakable: If Bronson cannot win the Republican contest, he appears prepared to make it as difficult as possible for Wilson to win the general election,” Downing wrote. “That is a formula for electing Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins or Tom Begich.”
“His misogyny has got the best of him at this point,” Downing claims.
As far as Democrats JKT and Tom Begich go, they haven’t said if any dropouts are planned. Begich was quoted by the Anchorage Daily News as saying he doesn’t know what will happen.
“There’s some similarities between Dave and Bernadette. There’s some similarities between myself and Jonathan,” Begich told the ADN. “Will it lead the two Democrats to consolidate? It might. But by the same token, having four voices there talking about these issues may be an even better decision. I don’t know what the answer to that question is yet.”
Wall Street Journal claims confusion
The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial probably written by Wasilla contributor Kim Strassel, is repeating the falsehood that Alaska voters are too stupid to tell Sullivan, Dan S.(Registered Republican) Incumbent, from Sullivan, Daniel J. Jr.
Strassel wrote a column last week saying that the ballot listing one Sullivan after another was too confusing for Alaska voters.
Now the newspaper has repackaged the same stupid claims in an editorial.
“The top four candidates in the Senate race, eligible to appear on the fall ballot, include two Dan Sullivans, meaning control of Congress could turn on voter confusion. Not so funny now, is it?” the editorial complains.
Strassel and the Journal offered no proof that anyone voted for Sullivan, Daniel J. Jr. who intended to vote for the guy after him, Sullivan, Dan S. (Registered Republican) Incumbent.
To do so, a voter would have to be as muddle-headed as a Wall Street Journal editorial.
The 2.5 percent vote for Sullivan, Daniel J. Jr. is a protest vote, an anti-incumbent vote, and most of those 3,829 people will chose Peltola first in the fall.
Control of Congress is not going to be decided on voter confusion.
“I don’t have any plans on withdrawing at the moment,” Sullivan said during a phone call with KFSK. “But I still do have a few days just for a final decision in case something should come up between now and then.”
“I’ve been looking at a lot of the voter data and following some of the real data wonks who really get into it, and I feel pretty vindicated that it seems to prove that there was very little, if any, voter confusion between the senator and myself,” he said.
The alleged federal investigation of his candidacy, mentioned only by anonymous sources and never confirmed, remains a mystery, he said.
“For those who have been following the mystery stories of DOJ investigations and subpoenas, at this point, I have heard nothing or received any notification of anything of the sort,” Sullivan told the Petersburg station.