Rep. David Eastman and former Rep. Christopher Kurka, both far-right Wasilla Republicans, may not keep the best of company, but it isn’t a violation of the Legislature’s ethics rules.
The House Ethics Subcommittee on Wednesday dismissed a complaint accusing the two of unethically using state resources when far-right anti-abortion activist Patrick Martin, the director of Alaskans for Right to Life, visited the capitol building in 2022. Martin’s visit to the building resulted in allegations that he harassed a female staffer and got into a verbal altercation with another.
Ethics complaints against legislators are normally confidential until resolved, but because both Eastman and Kurka waived their right to confidentiality, it gave us an unusual window into the deliberations.
The basics of the complaint are this: Martin visited the Alaska Capitol in 2022 to distribute anti-abortion petitions to several legislative offices, allegedly using the offices of Kurka and Eastman throughout the day. The complainant, who remains anonymous, argues this was an unethical use of state resources because the meetings lasted longer than 15 minutes (no such rule exists), and Martin was acting as an unregistered lobbyist.
The background, however, is more complicated.
Eastman, Kurka and Martin have long been close political allies with a penchant for fighting with other Republicans. Kurka is the former director of Alaska Right to Life, one of the most hardline anti-abortion groups in the state. Alaska Right to Life, both under Kurka and Martin, has frequently made life difficult for Republican legislators not deemed conservative enough on abortion votes — most raised by Eastman — with targeted campaigns and other messaging.
Those attacks haven’t sat well with fellow Republicans. In 2020, Alaska Family Action — another conservative anti-abortion group — endorsed Eastman’s primary challenger, arguing he “isn’t an effective policy maker or legislator.” Several sitting Republican legislators actively campaigned against him.
That election didn’t go the challenger’s way, not just seeing Eastman win re-election but the election of Kurka as a state legislator, giving Eastman an ally. Eastman would later be booted from the Republican caucus, and the two Republicans would see their homes drawn into the same legislative district during the latest round of redistricting.
Martin also traveled to Washington, D.C., with Eastman on Jan. 6, 2021 and later defended Eastman against disqualification for his membership in the Oathkeepers militia group. There’s no proof either entered the U.S. Capitol, and neither has been charged.
At the hearing on Wednesday, Kurka and Eastman were joined by about a dozen supporters from around the state to demand that the House Ethics Committee drop the complaint altogether, alleging that they were being attacked because they were anti-abortion.
“Am I supposed to do legislative business on the Capitol steps or down the street at the coffee shop with people coming to meet with me over pro-life issues? This is ridiculous,” Kurka said.
Martin also testified, saying it appears the two legislators were being punished for his actions.
Several testifiers, including Kurka and Martin, accused Big Lake Republican Rep. Kevin McCabe of being behind the complaint, arguing that he should face consequences for filing it in the first place. When questions arose about whether accusing McCabe in a public setting was permissible, committee Chair Deborah Fancher said they couldn’t limit public testimony but that didn’t mean they were correct about the filer.
“We have not said that is actually the person who filed the complaint,” she said. “We have not confirmed or denied that.”
The panel deliberated on the issue during an executive session for about an hour before returning and announcing that they had voted to dismiss both complaints. A written report explaining the decision has yet to be posted on the Legislative Ethics website, but is expected to be published on Thursday.
Why it matters
The Alaska Republican Party has deep, bitter internal divisions. While much of the acrimony in recent years has been focused on ousting moderate, centrist Republicans, there’s been an undercurrent of fighting on the party’s far-right edges. Extreme-right members like Kurka and Eastman have frequently made a practice of taking shots at other Republicans not deemed conservative enough on issues like abortion and the dividend, part of a trend of applying pressure to them to change their votes.
McCabe has several times spoken out against the infighting.
As far as the ethics complaint goes, what’s important to keep in mind is there is not anything particularly unusual about citizens making extended visits at friendly legislators’ offices, particularly when they’re closely aligned on a particular political issue. And there’s no hard and fast rule about how long legislators can have a person in their office (though there’s a certian point at which a person’s activisim can fall under the state’s lobbying requirements).
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.