A complaint filed today with the Alaska Public Offices Commission takes aim at the relationship between the campaign to repeal Alaska’s voter-approved ranked-choice voting system and Wellspring Ministries, a conservative Anchorage church.
The pro-RCV group Alaskans for Better Elections filed the 25-page complaint, detailing what it argues is a sprawling campaign spread out among several registered and unregistered groups, including one that is organized as a tax-exempt church, that all have connections to Wellspring Ministries. It accuses them of failing to properly register to campaign, failing to file timely disclosures, inflating their bottom line and laundering contributions through what they claim is essentially a phony church.
The complaint calls on the state campaign regulator to fully investigate the operation, noting that the agency has already dinged the group and has yet to come into compliance.
“Whether by design or through sheer incompetence, the scope and scale of respondents’ violations are staggering,” argues the complaint, “and has kept the public from knowing who is financing this confederation of opponents of Ballot Measure 2. Complainants respectfully request that APOC staff thoroughly investigate these violations along with any others that come to light during an investigation.”
[Read the full complaint here]
With the group still gathering the signatures to certify the initiative for the 2024 ballot, the complaint specifically notes that it’s not requesting an emergency hearing on the matter but instead, a full investigation because “a thorough investigation is more important than a rapid (but perhaps incomplete) outcome.” State law gives the Alaska Public Offices Commission a 60-day window to investigate the complaint and hold a hearing, but the commission can—and regularly does—extend those deadlines.
In essence, the complaint alleges that key campaigners Art Mathias and Phillip Izon have used Wellspring Ministries, the Ranked Choice Education Association (which is registered as a church under Wellspring Ministries’ IRS tax-exempt status), Alaskans for Honest Elections and Alaskans for Honest Government as a complicated scheme to limit public oversight into who is funding the effort to recall Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system and how that campaign is being run. They also accuse them of using the Ranked Choice Education Association to mask contributions while also making them tax-deductible.
The only group of those properly registered to raise and spend money on the ballot initiative to repeal RCV is Alaskans for Honest Elections, and the complaint alleges that it has hardly complied with the reporting requirements for ballot groups and has missed several filing deadlines already. The other groups, the complaint argues, are improperly operating outside the bounds of the state’s campaign finance laws.
The Ranked Choice Education Association was established as an educational organization under the Wellspring Ministries. The complaint alleges that its “educational” material was generally just materials produced by the Alaskans for Honest Elections and Alaskans for Honest Government groups. However, it notes that its website was generally scrubbed to appear less connected to the campaigns and less overt in its messaging.
“Although the RCEA was founded as a church on paper, it is clearly acting primarily as a partisan political entity,” the complaint argues. “While the RCEA’s website does not actually reference 22AKHER by name, even a cursory review reveals information that—in the context of 22AKHE’s existence and RCEA’s control by other respondents—can be interpreted in no other way than as a call to support the repeal of (ranked-choice voting).”
The complaint also notes that Izon and Mathias hold key roles in every organization. Izon’s business partner owns one of the companies being paid to run the campaign and produce advertising.
“In short, (Alaskans for Honest Elections’) entire operation appears to have been set up by Mr. Izon and (his business partner Diamond) Metzner as a grift—and a clumsy one at that—to funnel every dime AHE raises back to them, and them alone,” the complaint alleges.
While the complaint frequently raises the issue of an IRS tax-exempt church like Wellspring Ministry getting involved in politics—whether through masked monetary contributions or by providing facility space for the anti-RCV Ranked Choice Education Association—it notes that it’s not within the purview of Alaska campaign finance regulators. Instead, it argues that it’s a matter of public interest and oversight to know who is involved in the attempt to overturn the state’s election system.
“It is certainly their right to oppose those improvements,” argues the complaint, “and to advocate for a return to closed party primary elections and plurality winners. However, it is not their right to deceive Alaskans by running roughshod over our campaign finance laws. Yet that is precisely what they have done.”
Editor’s note: Matt Buxton regularly does a podcast with Pat Race, who is a board member of Alaskans for Better Elections. Beyond a nice time to catch up, the podcast does not make any money.
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.
