Homer Rep. Sarah Vance — one of the state’s leading Christian Nationalist lawmakers — likely violated state ethics laws when she used her legislative office to threaten the Homer News over its coverage of a memorial she helped organize for Charlie Kirk.
Her letter to Carpenter Media, sent on Alaska State Legislature letterhead, sparked a firestorm in local media last fall, with reporters and editors resigning after ownership gave in to Vance’s threat that “the consequence will be financial as well as reputational” if they didn’t soften the story.
But beyond a warning to not do it again — which, in a post where she’s quite literally clutching the flag, she argues infringes on her First Amendment rights — the Republican won’t face any penalty.
That’s the end result of a House Select Committee on Legislative Ethics investigation, which was publicly released last week. While Vance and other Christian Nationalist lawmakers complain that the ruling has a chilling effect on their First Amendment rights, the order was far more narrowly focused on whether Vance used a state resource — namely, the Alaska State Legislature Letterhead — for a non-legislative or partisan purpose.
Vance — who made headlines for, among other things, complaining that a hearing on Missing Murdered Indigenous Women didn’t include the experiences of white women — wrote the letter to corporate ownership, complaining about the Homer News and its local born-and-raised reporter for describing Kirk as espousing “often racist and controversial views” in what was an otherwise largely positive story about the vigil.
The story not-so-mysteriously disappeared in the following days, replaced by a rewritten version that sanded off the uncomfortable edges of Kirk’s legacy, without the input or even notification of the local reporters and editors. Dramatically changing a story without a reporter’s and an editor’s input is taboo on its own, let alone the fact that it was corporate ownership bowing to political pressure, and the resulting exodus continues to reverberate across Alaska’s media landscape.
The only thing left near a bump on Kirk’s legacy was a staid mention that his “views have been tied by many to a rise in Christian nationalism” and that he’d tour college campuses to hold debates with students where he “defended his views, including criticism of the Civil Rights Act and Martin Luther King Jr., as well as opposition to gun control and affirmative action.”
Gone altogether were mentions of conspiracy theories over COVID-19, climate misinformation and the racist replacement theory.
According to the ethics report, Vance didn’t meaningfully participate in the investigation, other than requesting that the complaint be dismissed. Still, just by looking at the letter, the ethics panel could see that, yes, the letterhead was used, and the committee determined that the contents of the letter fell into the realm of partisan political activity.
It calls out the following lines as particularly problematic:
- “…the article weaponized inflammatory labels and partisan rhetoric…
- “These are not facts. They are editorial judgments and political talking points.”
- “If the paper continues to treat community events as opportunities for partisan spin, the consequence will be financial as well as reputational.”
- “What the Homer News published instead read like an obituary drafted by a political adversary.”
The ethics report concludes by basically telling Vance to be more considerate in the future when using state resources to advocate for political issues outside of the realm of her work with the Alaska Legislature. The slap on the wrist is not atypical for the ethics committee, which seems to favor warnings and advisories over penalties.
For her part, Vance has remained resolute that she did nothing wrong in threatening the paper into changing its story, arguing in a post accompanied by a picture of her draped in the flag that this is precisely what Kirk died for.
“The irony is not lost on me. The committee contends that calling out partisan bias somehow constitutes partisan political activity,” she wrote. “Nor is it lost on my constituents that Charlie Kirk paid the ultimate price for exercising his constitutional right to peaceful free speech, losing his life in an act of political violence. Now, in defending his memory and speaking openly about issues that matter to my community, I find my own speech being scrutinized through a process that many view as an attempt to silence dissent.”
It should be clear that the ethics committee’s concern wasn’t so much the content of the speech as the fact that she was using state resources to advance it. That’s a point several people made in the comments on her flag-clutching post.
“Your speech was never on trial. Your conduct as a public official was,” one person wrote. “When every consequence is rebranded as censorship, ‘free speech’ becomes less a constitutional principle than a convenient excuse to avoid accountability. The Constitution protects your voice; it does not place your office above ethical review.”
Vance has previously suggested that she may appeal the decision to the courts.
Localizing Christian nationalism
While not specifically mentioned in the ethics complaint, part of Vance’s issue with the original story was that it floated the term “Christian-Nationalist icon” to describe Kirk, which is likely personal for Vance because she is quite literally a charter member of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, an organization that seeks to imbue public service with conservative Christians.
And it should be noted that the lone dissenter from the finding that Vance had likely committed an ethics violation, Big Lake Rep. Kevin McCabe, is also a member of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers’ Alaska branch. He, too, complained that by warning her against using state resources for partisan purposes, the state was infringing on Vance’s First Amendment rights, which we should remember were being used in an effort to limit a newspaper’s speech.
Vance’s threats were just one example in a larger conservative cancel culture war over what they felt was unfair treatment of Kirk in the wake of his assassination. People lost their jobs, including a teacher-of-the-year finalist (costing the district $300,000), a university professor in Tennessee (costing the system $1.7 million) and a Florida biologist (ending in a $485,000 settlement).
Merely quoting President Trump, for example, was enough to put an ex-cop behind bars for 37 days (netting him a $835,000 settlement).
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 Bluesky.
