This story was originally published by Dermot Cole, Reporting from Alaska.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy is spending state money on another data mining expedition on Facebook, claiming he has petitions on parental rights and education reform.
Are the petitions real? What do they say? Who will get the petitions? Who knows?
“By clicking submit, you agree to send your info to Governor Mike Dunleavy, who agrees to use it according to their privacy policy,” the Dunleavy ad says. “Facebook will also use it subject to our data policy, including to auto-fill forms for ads.”
One of Dunleavy’s new ads features a fake image of four lecherous old characters with oversize noses polluting the room with cigar smoke and a headline, “They don’t want you to have parental rights.”
Other ads with alleged petitions claim that teachers are leaving because the Dunleavy teacher bonus plan failed in Juneau and that families are fleeing the state because of a lack of education “reform,” a word that means whatever you want it to mean. Everybody loves reform. And everybody loves parental rights.
The governor’s Facebook page is controlled by Jordon Shilling, a Dunleavy political employee who sorts nominees for boards and commissions.
“Sign our petition to support parental rights in Alaska,” Dunleavy says in one of his ads. “Together, we can promote educational options that empower parents and improve learning outcomes for all students.”
“Sign the petition today and let your voice be heard,” Dunleavy says.
There is nothing on the state website about the alleged petitions. I asked Dunleavy’s spokesman where Alaskans can find the petitions. He replied, “You click on the ‘sign up’ button at the bottom right corner of the ad.”
No petitions.
The ads repeat some of Dunleavy’s regular complaints about the Legislature, unionized teachers and school boards. He wants his appointees on the state school board to be able to create new charter schools, claiming the existing process with local school boards is “convoluted.”
We’ve seen petition claims from Dunleavy before that turned out to be as phony as his photo of the old ghouls who want to take parental rights away from Alaskans.
In 2019, Dunleavy claimed he was gathering signatures on a petition to submit to legislators to support a Permanent Fund Dividend of $3,000.
“We need your help to make sure that we follow the decades-old statute,” Dunleavy said on Facebook.
“Please sign the petition that we have online and let your legislators know where you stand on following the decades-old calculation so that a full PFD can come out of this legislative session,” he said on Facebook ads, paid for with public funds.
He also claimed he had a petition to cap government spending. And a petition to pay back PFDs.
But there were no petitions on which Dunleavy collected signatures to submit to the Legislature for a bigger dividend, for a cap on spending or for paying back dividends.
He was simply collecting names and addresses of people who could be called upon for political support, disguising the nature of the exercise by calling them “petitions.”
It was a data-mining expedition to build a mailing list that the governor’s office could use for marketing and partisan politics.
The phony petition drives were just one aspect of the improper behavior described in the lawyer’s report that followed an ethics complaint about the use of state money for Dunleavy’s political ads.
Dunleavy’s attorney told the investigator for the state personnel board that the petitions were fake.
These “petitions were only used to gather constituent information and were not used to directly petition the Legislature or to advocate for the subject policies in any manner.”
“Further, an Excel spreadsheet disclosed by the governor listing the ad purchases made by the governor’s office refers to these petition ads as ‘lead generation,’” attorney John Tiemessen wrote in 2020.
“Lead generation is a business term which means ‘the action or process of identifying and cultivating potential customers for a business’s products or services.’ A curated lead list may have value to the governor’s office for future targeted communications with self-selected groups of citizenry,” he wrote.
In other words, the governor lied to Alaskans about his so-called petitions and their purpose. He was looking for leads.
But Tiemessen, the independent counsel in the case, excused the governor and his staff in 2020 by saying that since Dunleavy was not then an official candidate then for reelection, none of this was improper.
“There is insufficient evidence to conclude that these ‘petition’ ads were intended to differentially benefit or harm a candidate, potential candidate, political party or political group,” wrote Tiemessen. “There is also no current indication that the resulting lead list has been sold outside of the governor’s office or that it is being used for personal gain by any individual.”
The main lesson to be drawn from the new amateurish political petitions is that Dunleavy is hoping to build a database — using tactics that are not being openly disclosed — to support his long-standing campaign to direct public funds to private schools, which is against the Alaska Constitution.
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