The sprawling campaign to repeal Alaska’s open primaries and ranked-choice voting system has brought on disgraced former Attorney General Kevin Clarkson to respond to allegations that it’s defying state campaign finance laws, accusing the effort of being a George Soros-funded plot to silence Christians.
Alaskans for Honest Elections, Art Mathias, Wellspring Ministries and the Ranked Choice Education Association are accused of a myriad of campaign violations that include failing to properly register to campaign and failing to report campaign contributions and expenses in a timely fashion. While outside Alaska’s campaign finance laws, the allegations also raise the issue of tax-exempt faith groups—Wellspring Ministries and the Ranked Choice Education Association, which is incorporated as a faith-based group—getting directly involved in political activity.
The complaint was brought earlier this month by Alaskans for Better Elections—a group that supported the passage of open primaries and ranked-choice voting in 2020 and opposes the voter initiative to repeal the system—and is helmed by well-known attorney Scott Kendall. Kendall has fielded several campaign finance complaints in front of the Alaska Public Offices Commission (APOC) in recent years that have put him on the opposite side of far-right conservatives.
In a news release, Mathias attacked Kendall directly, invoking the far-right’s favorite villain, billionaire George Soros. A prominent backer of progressive candidates and causes, Soros has become a fixture of far-right conspiracy theories that paint him as an evil puppetmaster. Both Kendall and Soros are Jewish.
“The local Soros-funded attorney that filed this complaint is attempting to weaponize APOC with his many intentionally inaccurate and inflammatory statements,” Mathias said. “He is attacking me, my church, Christians and our initiative to replace his Marxist voting system.”
The complaint filed by Kendall recognizes explicitly the group’s right to campaign against ranked-choice voting and open primaries but says they can’t dodge the state’s campaign laws.
“It is certainly their right to oppose those improvements and to advocate for a return to closed-party primary elections and plurality winners,” argued the original complaint. “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.”
Asked about the Soros language, Kendall pointed to his thread on Twitter/X that called the allegations about Soros “thinly veiled anti-Semitic attacks” with screenshots of an article posted by the Anti-Defamation League entitled “The Antisemitism Lurking Behind George Soros Conspiracy Theories.” He also noted, “I never received a dime from Soros or any of his organizations” and that “I’m not a ‘Marxist. Actually, I like capitalism” before admonishing Mathias for invoking Soros.
“I take comfort in knowing my many Christian friends & family members would never engage in such anti-Semitic tropes, & also that they’d never abuse their faith for political purposes as this man apparently continues to do,” Kendall continued. “To be clear, Mr. Mathias has every right to disagree with election reforms, & every right to defend himself from alleged campaign finance violations. But he should do so without forming fake churches or resorting to wild anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about his opponents.”
Responding to the allegations
Mathias’ comment makes no specific mention of Clarkson representing the campaign. Clarkson had long been involved in far-right legal cases in Alaska before becoming Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s first attorney general. Clarkson then abruptly resigned in 2020 after an investigation by the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica revealed he had harassed a younger state employee over the course of hundreds of “uncomfortable” texts.
In a five-page letter responding to the initial questions raised by APOC investigators, Clarkson claims that the allegations are based on Alaskans for Better Elections’ “misunderstandings of the various organizations name its initial complaint and the relationships (or lack thereof) that those organizations have (or do not have) with each other and with the individuals named in the complaint.”
The letter then addresses three requests raised by the APOC investigators: The nature of Ranked Choice Education Association’s tax-exempt status; Wellspring Ministries’ banking records from Nov. 1, 2022, through June 31, 2023; and why the Ranked Choice Education Association and Wellspring Ministries share the same physical location.
In essence, the request for more information is an attempt at understanding how the Ranked Choice Education Association—which is incorporated as a faith-based group under Wellspring Fellowship (different from Wellspring Ministries)—is related to the others and whether it was directly involved in advocating for the repeal of ranked-choice voting, which would bring it under the purview of APOC regulators. While the organization’s website is said to have never directly advocated for the system’s repeal, it is accused of hosting much of the campaign materials developed by Alaskans for Honest Elections and another anti-RCV group.
Clarkson responds that the Ranked Choice Education Association and Wellspring Ministries aren’t political groups and therefore are not subject to the state’s campaign finance regulations. He does concede, however, that Mathias made a personal contribution to the Ranked Choice Education Association that was then directly given to Alaskans for Honest Elections. It doesn’t explain why Mathias chose to fund Alaskans for Honest Elections but rejects the notion that funds were being funneled through RCEA to give donors a tax break.
“With all due respect to you and to APOC, RCEA’s tax-exempt status is not within APOC’s jurisdiction, and it is not within your or APOC’s purview to investigate or question,” wrote Clarkson, later adding, “Other than making the donations to Alaskans for Honest Elections that were reported to APOC, RCEA is not involved in the efforts to introduce and/or promote (the anti-RCV initiative) in Alaska.”
As for the banking records, Clarkson says that Wellspring Ministries has rejected that request “in its entirety” and reiterates that the group has not been involved in any form with the campaign to repeal ranked-choice voting.
“Both WM and RCEA have First Amendment rights to free exercise of religion, free speech, and free association that APOC’s requests burden and threaten to impinge,” Clarkson argues.
Finally, as for RCEA having office space at the same Anchorage address as Wellspring Ministries, Clarkson also argues that there’s nothing untoward about the relationship. Alaskans for Better Elections contends that the office space amounts to an in-kind contribution by Wellspring Ministries to RCEA in support of repealing ranked-choice voting that should have been reported.
“RCEA merely rents a modicum of an office presence and a mail depository in WM’s building,” Clarkson notes, reiterating again the claim that neither group has advocated for or supported the repeal of ranked-choice voting. “Nothing about WM’s and RCEA’s relationship subjects them to APOC’s jurisdiction.”
Whether that’s true or not, though, will be up to APOC to decide in the coming weeks.
The response
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.