State Rep. Sarah Vance’s new staffer, Bob Ballinger, is known for helping to pass one of the strictest abortion bans in the country, with no exceptions for rape, incest, or the health of the mother, and attempted to strip discrimination protections from LGBTQ+ people. Ballinger is a former member of the Arkansas house and senate, and lost reelection in 2022.
Ballinger and Vance are members of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, which works to elect Christian conservatives to public office and pass faith-based laws around the country. Vance is listed as the NACL chair for Alaska and Ballinger is its director of law and policy.
The NACL claims the dominionist belief system that “God’s plan for humanity was for those who believe in Him to take authority over everything in the earth.”
Members of the group sign a pledge committing to support some of the most extreme positions of the religious right, including strict abortion bans, making same-sex marriage illegal and biblically run government. Signatories to the pledge also affirm the belief that the “lost” will suffer an “everlasting conscious punishment.”
The NACL advocates for school choice legislation that would divert money from public schools to private and religious schools through a voucher system, and requires members to pledge support for Israel.
Last session, Vance introduced a bill to ban Israel boycotts, which failed to pass the house by one vote. Vance also passed an anti-trafficking bill, but not without controversy. During debate on the bill in the Judiciary Committee, which she chairs, Rep. Andrew Gray proposed an amendment to prohibit private schools from hiring convicted sex offenders and traffickers, a law already on the books for public schools. Vance voted no and lobbied her caucus to follow suit. As a result, while public schools in Alaska are prohibited by law from hiring people convicted of sex crimes, private and religious schools still aren’t.
Ballinger praised Vance’s work with the NACL, saying in a Facebook post that she “is a very active member and leader with NACL.”
The NACL was founded in 2019 by Arkansas State Sen. Jason Rapert, who spoke on “Save the Nation” about being a “proud” Christian nationalist and said he intends to “restore the Judeo-Christian foundations of our government that were intended from the very beginning.”
The NACL crafted some of the strictest abortion bans to state legislatures, including to Arkansas, which has a near total ban, the only exception being “to save the life of a pregnant woman in a medical emergency.” States with strict bans like the one in Arkansas are seeing a surge in maternal death rates.
While debating rape and incest exeptions in the Arkansas State Senate, Ballinger argued that it didn’t matter how a baby was formed, and related a story about a child born of incest, asking: “Should he have been killed because his dad was a creep?”
Abortion rights are protected in Alaska under the state constitution, but this has not stopped Vance from trying to limit them. In 2020, she introduced a heartbeat bill that would ban abortions after a heartbeat is detected, which is before most people know they are pregnant.
Ballinger also takes a hard line against equal rights for the LGBTQ+ community. In 2015, he sponsored a bill which would have allowed discrimination of LGBTQ+ people for housing and employment on religious grounds. During debate on this bill, Ballenger said that gay rights and civil rights are different because people are born into their race but sexual orientation is “a choice.”
Vance showed similar views towards the LGBTQ+ community, voting against multiple bills that would protect LGBTQ+ people from discrimination and co-sponsoring a couple bills that would bar trans girls from participating on girls sports teams.
Ballinger lost his bid for reelection to the Arkansas State Senate in 2022, and his term ended Jan. 9, 2023. While Ballinger won’t have a vote in the Alaska Legislature, as a staffer, he will play a critical role in researching and writing proposed legislation.
