The Alaska Public Offices Commission has denied a request to expedite the latest complaint against the sprawling campaign backing an initiative to repeal Alaska’s open primary and ranked-choice voting election system, pushing the decision until well after the group plans to wrap up its effort.
Commissioners met on Wednesday to hear from Alaskans for Better Elections, a pro-RCV group, on why the latest of its three complaints against Alaskans for Honest Elections, the anti-RCV group backing the initiative, should be taken up immediately. The latest allegations charge Alaskans for Honest Elections of running an unreported shadow campaign to fundraise and pay to collect signatures.
The latest complaint is based on recorded phone calls between Gregory Lee, a professional signature gatherer, and Mikaela Emswiler, the head of Top Fundraising Solutions. Lee approached Alaskans for Better Elections after Emswiler reportedly contacted him to assist with a paid effort to collect signatures, an effort that hadn’t been explicitly disclosed in previous reporting.
Financial reports filed by Alaskans for Honest Elections had a handful of expenses to Top Fundraising Solutions, but none explicitly mentioned paid signature gathering. Scott Kendall, the attorney handling the complaint for Alaskans for Better Elections, argued the recordings showed evidence of a shadow campaign and that Wellspring Ministries, a church whose leadership is also leading the anti-RCV campaign, was assisting in the effort.
He argued that the group’s paid signature-gathering campaign should be ordered to be put on hold until the reporting was corrected, something he said could be done in a matter of hours.
“They have the keys to their own prison,” said Scott Kendall. “They can decide to correct their top-three disclaimers, they can decide to pay the fines and then they can go back to work. If this commission doesn’t act before Dec. 15 or whenever they finish their drive, they will have flouted the law for nearly a year and suffered literally zero penalty for it.”
Disgraced former Attorney General Kevin Clarkson, representing Alaskans for Honest Elections, claimed the activity was “perfectly appropriate.” Clarkson said the paid signature gathering and data collation were covered in a handful of expenditures, totaling less than $20,000 to Top Fundraising Solutions under the blanket description of “campaign management.” He also shrugged off accusations that the group had received a monetary benefit from Wellspring because the company, not the campaign, was getting the below-market-rate rent.
“It’s not the campaign,” he said, that was benefitting from the below-market-rate rent. “It’s the company working for the campaign.”
In testimony, the group said they had gathered about 31,000 signatures, surpassing the roughly 26,000 needed to appear on the ballot. Emswiler said in the recorded call, however, that they were pretty well short of the signatures needed in several Anchorage-area districts required to satisfy the per-district requirements for the initiative process.
It should be noted, however, that Wellspring, Alaskans for Honest Elections and several other groups in the orbit are controlled by conservative activist Art Mathias. At the hearing on Wednesday, Mathias testified to the committee in his role with Wellspring, telling the committee that the $300 a month rent was in line with what they typically charge but conceded there is no written agreement and that the church has yet to be paid by the company.
Commissioners seemed skeptical about taking such an extreme step of halting the signature-gathering effort, noting that the petition booklets don’t include disclaimers. The full deliberation on the complaints occurred behind closed doors in an executive session, with APOC releasing the decision to the parties via email.
The commission ruled that the underlying violations alleged in the case “do not warrant expedited consideration. Rather, the matter would benefit from a full investigation and report from the staff.” It then ordered that the next meeting for January be pushed into February, well after the group has to submit signatures to the state.
Alaskans for Honest Elections is already facing recommendations from APOC staff of fines totaling well north of $100,000 for a laundry list of campaign violations contained in the first complaint brought against the group by Alaskans for Better Elections. Those accusations include violations of a laundry list of campaign finance laws, such as late, inaccurate, and incomplete financial disclosures, campaigning without properly registering, and, perhaps most scandalously, funneling campaign contributions through a church organized in Washington state.
APOC commissioners were supposed to issue a decision on that complaint before the end of November but gave themselves an extension to just days before the group must deliver its signatures to the Division of Elections to appear on the 2024 ballot.
Kendall also warned commissioners that it appears, based on several statements both in front of the commission and outside, that the organizers behind Alaskans for Honest Elections intend to wind down and dissolve the group once the signature petitions are filed and reformed under a new group, effectively skirting any penalties dealt to Alaskans for Honest Elections.
During the hearing, commissioners asked Phillip Izon — the other key campaigner who had several angry outbursts during Wednesday’s hearing and threatened to walk out rather than answer Kendall’s questions — whether he planned to wind down the group and skirt fines. He said he did not intend to. Clarkson also claimed that’s not the group’s intention but conceded that nothing about the ongoing process would prevent them from doing just that.
APOC ordered them to make good on that promise, noting: “Alaskans for Honest Elections stated under oath at the hearing that the organization will continue in existence until this matter and other related matters have been resolved. The Commission orders Alaskans for Honest Elections to honor that agreement.”
However, it’s unclear whether APOC has that power. Still, Mathias was named as a party in his personal capacity in the report and would still be vulnerable to hefty fines whenever APOC finally decides to resolve the issue.
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.