This story is republished with permission from Dermot Cole and originally appeared on dermotcole.com.
Now we know that A Stronger Alaska doesn’t exist. It is simply part of the name of a checking account set up and controlled by the Republican Governors Association.
The RGA christened a checking account with the Chain Bridge Bank on Feb. 25, 2021, the “Republican Governors Association, A Stronger Alaska” and moved $ 3 million into it from another one of its accounts.
It didn’t create a group when it named the checking account and the GOP association retained the legal authority to control the account.
This was three days before a new Alaska law went into effect that required identifying the people and groups who contribute to so-called “independent expenditure groups.”
It appears likely that the RGA wanted to keep control of the money and saw no need to turn it over to a real group it didn’t control more than a year-and-a-half before an election in Alaska. So it pretended to set up a group in documents it filed with Alaska campaign regulators, thinking no one would ever find out about this sleight-of-hand.
The RGA reported to the Alaska Public Offices Commission that A Stronger Alaska was a “group” that controlled the $3 million from undisclosed sources that it wanted to spend to support Gov. Mike Dunleavy in 2022. The RGA also told the APOC that it was the “contributor” of the $3 million.
But A Stronger Alaska is imaginary. It is simply a name on an RGA checking account, as demonstrated by the documents filed Thursday by the RGA with the APOC.
The RGA did not contribute to the non-existent group, it merely moved $3 million from one of its accounts into a checking account controlled by the RGA.
At any time, the RGA can close the checking account of “Republican Governors Association, A Stronger Alaska” and do whatever it wants with the money.
The RGA wouldn’t have to ask A Stronger Alaska for the money back because A Stronger Alaska is from the land of make believe. All of this contradicts what the RGA and its top officers told the Alaska Public Offices Commission.
The commission will hold an emergency hearing Friday at 9 a.m. on the complaint by two groups charging that A Stronger Alaska is a sham organization and that the RGA is really calling the shots.
Erim Canligil, the chief financial officer of the RGA in Washington, D.C., claimed A Stronger Alaska has no employees so that is why it does not have a employment identification number with the IRS.
That makes no sense.
Canligil made this bizarre claim in an attempt to explain why all of the expenses of A Stronger Alaska have been reported to the IRS as actually being expenses of the Republican Governors Association.
The IRS says that all political groups, including those with no employees, must have employment identification numbers. The number is used to identify a business entity. It is a simple thing to get one and a business needs one to open a bank account.
A Stronger Alaska doesn’t have a bank account and the RGA uses its employment identification number because A Stronger Alaska is a gimmick.
The RGA will claim that since it gave a name to one of its checking accounts, it satisfied Alaska law and created a genuine independent group.
We can only hope that when the RGA and its lawyers flood the zone with bafflegab that they do not succeed in confusing the five members of the public offices commission.
Dermot Cole has worked as a newspaper reporter, columnist and author in Alaska for more than 40 years. Support his work here.
