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Just asking questions To the Editor: Alaska representative Jamie Allard (R-Eagle River) asked via social media this week how many non-citizens voted in Alaska’s 2024 election, implying that thousands of “illegal” votes could sway our ballot measures. Simple answer to Allard’s question is, most likely, none. Non-citizen voting is illegal by state and federal law. Alaska’s Division of Elections and Department of Motor Vehicles rigorously enforce those laws by confirming citizenship before they process registrations. Provisional ballots are likewi...
Republican Donald Trump again won Alaska in the presidential election, the Associated Press announced on Wednesday. Trump had a 15.2-percentage-point lead over Democrat Kamala Harris, with roughly 70% of the state’s votes counted. Alaska was one of two states, along with Maine, that held a ranked choice election for president. However, the ranked choices of voters for trailing candidates would only be considered if no candidate received more than 50% of the first-preference votes. Trump was on track to exceed that level. Alaska has voted for t... Full story
The differences between Democratic incumbent Rep. Mary Peltola and her Republican challenger Nick Begich were on full display last Monday during the final planned debate of Alaska’s U.S. House race. Begich, a businessman who lost twice to Peltola in 2022, is again vying for Alaska’s lone U.S. House seat against Peltola, a former state lawmaker who won the seat in 2022 after leading for several years an intertribal fish commission. The outcome of the race could have far-reaching impacts in determining control of a closely divided chamber, dra...
Whichever side wins the national election Nov. 5 needs to think about why they did not get a larger share of the vote. Not that they ever really expected to win over the hearts, minds and ballots of 60% of voters. The honest reality is that most candidates would accept 51% as a clear victory in this divisive world. OK, maybe they’re prefer 52%. But they’ll happily declare a mandate on the thinnest of margins. Gloating is ugly. It makes sore losers out of disappointed losers. Even worse, many of those sore losers are increasingly embracing anger...
Republican Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom is withdrawing from the race for the state's lone U.S. House seat, she announced Friday via social media. With most votes counted, Dahlstrom is expected to finish third in the state's top-four primary election, behind Democratic incumbent Mary Peltola and fellow Republican challenger Nick Begich. Her withdrawal means the expected No. 4 finisher, Republican Matt Salisbury, will likely advance to the general election alongside Begich and Peltola, as would... Full story
Democratic U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola received more than half of the votes in primary results released Tuesday night, well ahead of Republican challengers, businessman Nick Begich III and Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom. With 387 of 403 precincts reporting through 1 a.m. on Wednesday, the incumbent Peltola had received 50.4% of the votes counted. She was running well ahead of her 36.8% share of the vote in the 2022 primary, which was held the same day as the special election she won to fill the seat left vacant by the death of 49-year Congressman Don... Full story
True political leadership requires accurately describing the challenges facing our state and nation and proposing realistic solutions. Nancy Dahlstrom, a Republican running for Alaska’s sole Congressional seat, has already failed this test. In an interview broadcast on Alaska News Nightly on July 16, Ms. Dahlstrom stated that, if elected, her “first priority” representing Alaska in Congress would be to get “the border wall closed” and force “16 million-plus people who are in the country illegally” (an inflated number) to “go back to where t...
Seattle has more power in the U.S. House of Representatives than the state of Alaska. And yet, ahead of this year’s House elections, there’s as much at stake with Alaska’s race than all four of the contests in King County combined. The vast majority of the 435 seats in the House are firmly Democratic or firmly Republican. Alaska is among a dwindling number of exceptions that could go in any direction. More than that, it’s one of just five places in the country that voted for Donald Trump as president in 2020 yet elected a Democrat to the Hou... Full story
Unbelievable. Elon Musk is promoting and pushing errors and false news into the heads of people around the world. All for personal profit or personal ego. Maybe just for personal fun. Whatever the reason, it’s irresponsible and dangerous. Musk, a serial entrepreneur who seems to have invented most everything but cold cereal, believes Grok, his artificial intelligence service pedaled through X, formerly known as Twitter, should be a news source. Not necessarily a trusted news source, but that’s not important in his world. “What we’re doing o...
The state of Alaska, with all the legal wisdom of a political agenda and the flowing words of a high-priced law firm, has filed a claim against the federal government. Nothing new about that — the state has filed and signed onto more lawsuits against the national government in recent years than President Joe Biden has forgotten dates or former President Donald Trump has told lies. Nothing to be proud of in any of that. The state’s latest legal endeavor came July 2 in a dubious lawsuit — with a few errors and omissions for poor measure — that as...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy, his attorney general and others in the administration are spending a lot of time and state money defending Alaska against its perceived political enemies, fighting the U.S. government at every turn of the river, protecting Alaskans from the latest federal regulations and standing up for conservative values. The list includes picking fights with private banks that want to move away from oil and gas lending, egging on fights over library books, supporting the state of Texas in its fight to string razor wire along the border...
The state of Alaska, a coalition of business groups and a pair of electric-power organizations have opened a new round in the generation-long fight over environmental protections in Southeast Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. On Sept. 8, the state and two other groups of plaintiffs filed three separate federal lawsuits to challenge a Biden administration rule restricting new roads in parts of the forest, which is home to some of America’s last stands of old-growth trees. Each lawsuit asks U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason to ove...
A legal challenge by the state to the Biden administration’s reinstatement of the roadless rule, banning logging and road building on more than nine million acres in the Tongass National Forest, was filed Friday, Sept. 8, in federal court. The complaint continues more than two decades of battles over the roadless rule protections initially enacted in 2001 under a policy initiated by then-President Bill Clinton. In recent years then-President Donald Trump nullified the policy and opened the forest area to development, with the administration o...
Elected officials, ballot initiative supporters and opponents, campaign managers and anyone else who writes, texts or tweets outlandish claims and promises should be required to stay after the election and write on the blackboard (remember those) 100 times: “I will not make stuff up.” After they have a chance to rest their arm, they need to go back to the board — OK, a whiteboard and a Sharpie works, too — and write 100 more times: “I am sorry for promising too much.” It’s gotten way too easy for anyone trying to win over the public to pro...
A federal judge in North Dakota on Wednesday blocked in 24 states the Biden administration’s newly effective definition of waters that can be regulated under the Clean Water Act. U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland, a George W. Bush appointee on retired status in the North Dakota District, issued a preliminary injunction in a case two dozen Republican state attorneys general brought against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers. The ruling for now blocks enforcement of a rule to expand what the EPA could c...
The halibut charter boat fleet in Southeast and the Gulf of Alaska will be able to collectively buy quota shares from commercial fishermen under a provision in the federal omnibus budget bill passed at the end of December. The program would be funded by a fee charged for every angler aboard a halibut charter. Seward’s Andy Mezirow is on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council and has been a champion of the program for a while. He said it’s a long time coming. The program was vetoed by President Donald Trump in his final weeks in office and...
WASHINGTON — The Department of Education announced last month it is extending the pandemic-era pause on federal student loan repayments until June 30 while legal challenges to the administration’s student debt relief program are fought over in the courts. The agency said if the student debt relief program has not been put in place by June 30, and if litigation is still tied up in the courts, student loan payments will begin 60 days after that. “Payments will resume 60 days after the Department is permitted to implement the program or the litig...
WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Monday issued a nationwide injunction indefinitely blocking the Biden administration’s student debt relief program in response to a challenge by six GOP-led states. The unanimous ruling by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis came after the six states — Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas and South Carolina — argued that the loan relief program threatens those states’ future tax revenues and that the plan by the Biden administration overrode congressional authority. “The injunction...
The nation's eyes are on the U.S. Senate and House races in Alaska, but anyone wanting to know the outcome will have to be patient. Defending their seats are two high-profile women. In the Senate is Lisa Murkowski, a Republican who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump – and who has been the target of ire from Trump and from hard-liner conservatives. She trailed Republican challenger Kelly Tshibaka by a small margin, 42.7% to 44.4% of the first 216,000 votes counted. But Murkowski w... Full story
Early in-person voting for the 2022 state general election opened on Monday. Petersburg residents can vote ahead of election day in the community center activity room Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. through Nov. 7. The election will use ranked choice voting where voters will be able to rank the candidates in each race based on their preference. After the polls close, each voter's first choice vote will be counted. If no candidate receives a majority of the votes, the candidate who...
The Alaska Division of Elections on Friday certified the state’s Aug. 16 special general election for U.S. House, confirming Democrat Mary Peltola as the winner. Peltola will be sworn in as Alaska’s lone U.S. representative later this month after defeating Republican candidates Sarah Palin and Nick Begich III. Though elections officials are still compiling statistics from the vote, political advisers, pollers and independent observers say there are five early lessons from Alaska’s first ranked choice election: Ranked choice voting mostly worke...
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that he will cancel up to $20,000 in federal student loan debt for Pell Grant borrowers and up to $10,000 for all other borrowers with an income of less than $125,000 for an individual and $250,000 for a household. Biden also announced his administration is extending a pause on student loan repayments until Dec. 31. The decision comes one week before the expiration of a pause of student loan repayments put in place at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. “Here’s the deal, the cost... Full story
Alaska voters will go to the polls on Tuesday, August 16 to mark their ballots in a couple of firsts: The first election under the state's new ranked-choice voting system and the election of Alaska's first new member of the U.S. House in 49 years. The three finalists for Congress selected in the July special primary election are Republicans Nick Begich, a Chugiak businessman, and former Gov. Sarah Palin, and former Bethel state legislator Democrat Mary Peltola. At a recent candidate forum in...
Despite repeated claims and allegations conjured up from the thin air of political dishonesty, there has never been any proof, no charges and convictions, no indictments for voter fraud that cost Donald Trump his reelection dream in the 2020 voting. And yet, the former president and his followers continue to spew out and stir up claims that thieves will do it again in 2022. It’s called “preemptive excuses.” If they lose in this fall’s elections, it must have been stolen. Can’t be that voters picked someone else. Best to start now with the...
Pollock protein noodles, southern-style Alaska wild wings, candied salmon ice cream, fish oils for pets, fish and chips meal kits and finfish earrings are just a small sample of past winners of Alaska’s biggest seafood competition — the Alaska Symphony of Seafood — which has showcased and promoted new, market-ready products since 1993. The annual event draws from Alaska’s largest and smallest seafood companies, whose products are all judged blind by an expert panel. Eighteen entries are in the running for the 2021 contest, the first leg of...
