Half of the Anchorage Assembly’s seats will be decided in this April’s municipal election. According to campaign finance reports submitted to the Alaska Public Offices Commission earlier this week, many of the six races are close in terms of fundraising, with some exceptions.

In the years since Anchorage shifted to mail-based balloting for its elections, many candidates have generally adjusted their spending strategies, retaining cash until March, when voters begin receiving their ballot packets. Several of this cycle’s candidates appear to have held off on major spending. But a number of challengers seeking to knock off incumbents have made significant expenditures already.

Voters will begin receiving their ballots in the mail in mid-March, and ballots are due back by the April 7 deadline.

District 1 – Downtown/North Anchorage

Assembly Chair Chris Constant is barred by term limits from running again. Four candidates are vying to fill his seat, though only two reported significant fundraising and campaign expenditures.

Sydney Scout reported raising $50,130 since launching her campaign last year. She’s spent a little more than half of that, with close to $23,000 in cash still on hand.

Among Scout’s donors are a number of political action groups representing labor and public safety unions. She saw a few larger contributions from local donors but overwhelmingly reported smaller contributions under $500. Among her financial supporters are many prominent local politicos, including several current members of the Assembly and Anchorage School Board, as well as Democratic groups.

Most of her $27,509 in expenditures so far have gone to campaign services paid to Amber Lee Strategies, as well as $7,500 to True Blue Associates, a strategy firm run by two former progressive bloggers who have worked for Democrats in the Legislature in the past. There are a number of purchases for ads on Meta’s social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram, as well as in-person campaign events.

Justin Milette reported raising $36,771 in his Alaska Public Offices Commission disclosure, with at least $13,000 from Milette himself. He received several other major donations, including $5,000 from a loan officer at Alaska Growth Capital, another $5,000 from a local attorney and $2,500 from independent investor Justin Weaver. That was about the same amount Weaver contributed to Scout’s campaign.

Milette received contributions from a number of prominent local political figures and advocates, including Republican gubernatorial candidate Treg Taylor and Sami Graham, who briefly served as chief of staff for former Mayor Dave Bronson.

Most of Milette’s spending — $22,566 — has gone to the firm Red Dirt Campaigns for a range of services, including donor data, printing, canvassing data and media products.

Two other candidates filed to run for the seat, Nicholas Danger and Max Powers. Danger reported no campaign income. Powers had not submitted a fundraising disclosure report to APOC as of Thursday.

District 2 – Eagle River

Assembly member Scott Myers, who currently represents the communities north of the Anchorage Bowl, is not running for a second term.

First-time candidate Donald Handeland reported raising more than $40,000, of which a little more than $26,000 has been spent so far.

Though Handeland reported contributing $2,500 of his own money, he raised the overwhelming majority of his funds through relatively modest donations from well over a hundred people.

Many prominent conservatives show up on Handeland’s donor rolls, including former heads of the Alaska Republican Party Tuckerman Babcock, Randy Ruedrich and Peter Goldberg; both of the district’s current Assembly members, Myers and Jared Goecker; and many of the individuals who regularly contributed to Bronson’s mayoral campaigns.

Handeland reported spending more than $13,000 on campaign services from Red Dirt Campaigns. He also bought digital ads on social media. He split costs with four other candidates for a fundraising event called “Axe the Tax” at a local ax-throwing parlor. The fundraiser was premised on candidates’ shared opposition to a proposed city sales tax, which was eventually pulled back by Mayor Suzanne LaFrance in early January.

Campaigning against Handeland is Kyle Walker, who ran unsuccessfully to represent the district during the last cycle. Of the $8,258 he reported raising, $5,500 came from union PAC contributions. The remainder were small individual donors.

Though Walker reported a little more than $4,000 in expenses so far, he listed another $13,666 in financial commitments to the Ship Creek Group for campaign management and a comprehensive suite of services. Ship Creek has been a major player in local politics, working primarily with moderate and left-leaning candidates, but is attached to only one other Assembly campaign this cycle.

District 3 – West Anchorage

The race is a rematch of the 2023 contest for the same seat, in which Assembly Vice Chair Anna Brawley beat challenger Brian Flynn by a 17-point margin. Then as now, there is a lot of money flowing to both candidates.

So far, Flynn has outraised Brawley but is also spending down his war chest more aggressively, primarily on campaign services by firms both inside and outside of Alaska.

Brawley reported $52,044 in campaign contributions, including thousands of dollars from just under a dozen organized labor PACs. Her largest individual donor was retired banker Victor Mollozzi, who contributed $4,000 in two separate installments. Among her prominent backers are current members of the Assembly and school board, Democratic former U.S. Sen. Mark Begich and Democratic gubernatorial candidate and former state Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins.

Brawley has spent several thousand dollars so far on campaign services from Amber Lee Strategies, the same firm that handled her 2023 run. She’s also paid for printed signs, as well as access to the Alaska Democratic Party’s voter information. But most of her resources are in reserve. Brawley listed $17,400 committed to the The Mobilization Center, a local outfit that handles field operations for political campaigns.

Flynn reported raising $81,663. Among his contributors are a number of prominent local Republican and conservative politicians, including outgoing School Board member and current Assembly candidate Dave Donley, Republican former House Minority Leader and current state Rep. Mia Costello, and former Anchorage first lady Deb Bronson.

Flynn received a few hefty donations from individuals. John and Kari Ellsworth, who own part of the Anchorage Wolverines junior hockey franchise, gave a combined $6,500. Business owners Teresa Hall and Diane Bachman each gave $5,000.

According to Flynn’s APOC report, he’s spent $63,414. The biggest portion of that, more than $21,000, has gone to Optima Public Relations, a Wasilla-based firm that primarily handles conservative and Republican political campaigns. He also spent more than $7,000 on direct mail handled by national Republican consulting firm Axiom Strategies, and several hundred dollars more to its polling arm Remington Research for text messaging services. A $3,700 expenditure was listed to former Assembly candidate Travis Szanto for “putting up signs, sign frames.”

District 4 – Midtown

Incumbent Felix Rivera is terming off the Assembly. The race to replace him is between two older candidates who both have experience with local political campaigns, and are roughly even on their fundraising and expenditures so far.

Dave Donley has served as a Republican in the Alaska Legislature, and is winding down three terms on the Anchorage School Board. He reported raising close to $39,000 so far, of which he’s spent almost $28,000. A number of influential conservative politicians, both current and former, chipped in to his campaign, including gubernatorial candidates Treg Taylor and Shelley Hughes, as well as former Anchorage mayors Rick Mystrom and George Wuerch. He also received contributions from several union PACs.

Donley’s main expenditures include services provided by Red Dirt Campaigns, which range from consulting work and data to social media and content production. He’s also spent money advertising on conservative opinion blogs.

Paralegal and former nurse Janice Park reported raising $42,226, and has spent less than half of that. Park has unsuccessfully run several times for legislative positions as a Democrat. She received contributions from several current and former Democratic lawmakers, as well as current members of the Assembly and the Anchorage Democrats. Her largest contributor was Justin Weaver, the private investor, who so far has donated $14,000 to Park.

Park has made a lot of small ad buys to Meta for social media reach, as well as on traditional analog printed signs. But her largest expenditure is for “campaign consulting, including communications, compliance, and strategy” to True Blue Associates.

Kim Winston, a third candidate who formally filed for the seat, reported no income to APOC.

District 5 – East Anchorage

Incumbent George Martinez is fending off a challenge from Cody Anderson, a retired non-commissioned Air Force officer and church pastor.

Martinez raised close to $11,000, most of it in new contributions from individual donors and unions, on top of $5,000 in money carried over from a past campaign. Several current Assembly members chipped in modest amounts, along with a $300 contribution from the Anchorage Democrats.

Martinez only listed $5,634 in campaign spending so far. The two largest expenditures in his APOC report were $1,000 for “promotion/advertisement” to a company based in Miami, Florida, and $1,256 to Alaska Airlines for “travel,” with no additional details listed in the report.

Anderson reported raising $45,878, however his campaign finance disclosure listed payments to his campaign manager and other substantial expenditures as income, distorting the total by more than $16,000, according to a review of his APOC report.

Among those donations are thousands of dollars from employees at Mountain City Church, where Anderson works, including $1,000 from former head Jerry Prevo and $2,000 from lead pastor Ron Hoffman. The Anchorage Republican Women’s Club donated $750.

Anderson’s biggest expenditures listed were $5,500 to his campaign manager for various services and $7,500 for content creation and social media placement to Stephanie Williams, who worked as a special assistant under former Mayor Bronson before resigning in 2021.

District 6 – South Anchorage

Incumbent Zac Johnson is running for a second term against Bruce Vergason, whose background is in business and construction, as well as a third candidate, Janelle Anausuk Sharp, an environmental scientist.

Johnson reported $33,272 in contributions, with $9,239 spent and more in future financial commitments to a local political firm.

Johnson received contributions from several organized labor groups, along with current and former members of the Assembly.

He listed $11,500 in future payments committed to Ship Creek Group for comprehensive campaign management services.

In his APOC filing, Vergason listed $43,843 in fundraising and $17,052 in spending. He received major contributions from local business owner Susanne Gionet and physician John Nolte, who donated $5,000 each.

On top of $6,290 paid to Optima for campaign work, Vergason also paid $2,460 to election data firm i360 for canvassing services, along with significant outlays for sign printing. Vergason was part of January’s ax-themed fundraiser, coordinating with Handeland, Anderson, Donley and Flynn on the joint event.

Sharp appears to have raised around $3,500. Though her APOC disclosure listed a significantly higher figure, it erroneously categorized expenses as income. Cheryl Frasca, who is listed as her campaign treasurer, has a long record of handling compliance reports for political campaigns, including several current Republican gubernatorial candidates, and headed the municipality’s Office of Management and Budget under Bronson.

Outside of a $679 contribution to Optima for campaign logo design, Sharp’s biggest expenditure was $4,233 to The Business MD for services that include “assisting with general campaign strategy and organization, communications guidance, and outreach planning to help strengthen voter connection organization, all of which is advisory in nature.” The company is run by a local businesswoman focused on emotional intelligence coaching.

Jeffrey Epstein was on a mission to meet with Vladimir Putin when an intriguing proposal dropped into his email.

The Russian president was ready to receive Epstein, according to an October 2014 message from a correspondent on a database of more than 3.5 million files belonging to the late convicted sex offender that have roiled global politics and business.

“I spoke t= Putin,” wrote the interlocutor, whose identity has been redacted by the US Department of Justice. “He would be very glad if you were to visit and explain=financial markets in the 21 st century. Digital currency. derivative= structured finance. I would set up the meeting when you are next in=Europe. I am sure you two will like each other.”

Hours later, Epstein forwarded the message with a request for advice to Kathy Ruemmler, who’s stepping down as Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s general counsel after details of her association with the disgraced financier emerged in the files released by the Justice Department.

In his response, Epstein anticipated that her advice would be not to go “for the moment” and that was in fact the case. Ruemmler’s reply was brief: “Yes my answer is still the same,” she wrote. “Your fun i= denied.”

The caution at that point was understandable. Months earlier, Putin had sent Russian troops to annex Crimea from Ukraine, prompting wide-ranging US and European Union sanctions and sparking the geopolitical crisis that has since spiraled into the largest conflict in Europe since World War II.

Epstein’s fascination with Putin and Russia was undimmed, though, even as the documents paint a picture of a man who appeared largely clueless about who had genuine power and influence with the Kremlin leader. The files show a years-long effort to secure a one-on-one meeting with Putin, whose name appears about 1,000 times in the database.

The emails are quoted here as they appear in the DOJ release, including spelling and grammatical errors.

Ultimately, it seems, his quest was unsuccessful. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin never met Epstein as far as he’s aware, and no evidence has emerged so far to show that they did.

Earlier that year, in January, Epstein pitched former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjorn Jagland as the politician apparently prepared to meet with Putin in Sochi. The Russian Black Sea resort was shortly to host the 2014 Winter Olympics, the most expensive in history as Putin lavished $50 billion to present the games as a showcase of his country’s post-Soviet restoration.

Sport wasn’t on Epstein’s mind. “you can explain to putin , that there should be a sopshiticated russian version of bitcoin,” he wrote. “it would be the most advanced financial instrument availbale on a global basis.”

Jagland was among the most prominent European politicians at the time as secretary general of the Council of Europe for a decade between October 2009 and September 2019. Jagland met Putin on May 20, 2013, according to the Kremlin’s website, and returned to Sochi in 2014 for the opening of the Olympics.

On May 8, 2013, Epstein asked Jagland to secure him an audience with the Russian leader. “I know you are going to meet putin on the 20th, He is desperate to engage western investment in his country,” the financier wrote. “I have his solution. He needs to securitize russian investment, that means the govt takes the first loss.”

Epstein went on: “I recoginize that there are human rights issues that are at the forefront of your trip howver, if it is helpful to you, I would be happy to meet with him sometime in June and explain the solution to his top prioirty, I think this would be good for your goals. exchange somehting he really wants. for someting you want.”

In a further exchange a few days later, Jagland told Epstein “all this is not easy for me to explain to Putin. You have to do it. My job is to get a meeting with him.”

Epstein replied that Putin “is in a unique position to do something grand, like sputnik did for the space race.” He added: “I would be happy to meet with him , but for a minimum of two to three hours, not shorter.”

Apparently, a counter-offer came from Moscow that failed to enthuse Epstein. On May 21, he claimed in a message to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak that Putin had proposed a meeting during the annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum the following month.

“I told him no,” Epstein wrote to Barak. “If he wants to meet he will need to set aside real time and privacy, lets see what happens.”

Days earlier, on May 9, referring to Putin, Epstein admitted to the Israeli politician that “I never met him.”

Two years later, in 2015, Barak wrote to thank Epstein for arranging his own participation at the St. Petersburg forum, where he said he held meetings with Bank of Russia Governor Elvira Nabiullina and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as well as the heads of the country’s two largest banks, Herman Gref of Sberbank and VTB Bank’s Andrey Kostin.

Thousands of Australians are still likely in the dark about losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in their retirement savings. Authorities are still waiting for victims to come forward after more than a $1 billion was quietly lost from superannuation funds of workers across the country.

Social media ads and aggressive sales tactics were used to lure in regular working Australians. That was the case for Queensland woman Claire* who was encouraged to move her superannuation into a new fund and ultimately lost $165,000 when she later learned it had disappeared.

Claire only realised something was wrong when she received a strange email from “equity trustees” which in the moment didn’t mean anything to her at all.

“I was just lucky that I clicked on it,” she told Yahoo Finance.

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Claire, who works in education, admits she isn’t a sophisticated investor. She paid almost no attention to her superannuation but came across an ad while “doomscrolling” Facebook that caught her eye.

“It was along the lines of nine out of 10 super funds are underperforming. Is your’s one of them?” she recalled. “It wasn’t dodgy looking.”

She clicked to find out if her super fund was on the list.

“To get the article you had to put your name and your phone number and your email in, or something like that.”

However when she did, she didn’t get an article. Instead she got a call from a business on the Gold Coast.

Claire was urged to send through her latest superannuation statement, which she did, and that’s when the “constant” calls started.

Despite her reservations and skepticisms – and repeatedly declining their overtures – the pushy tactics from financial advisors on the other end of the line eventually wore her down and she was convinced to move her superannuation from industry fund QSuper to a fund she couldn’t actually find anything about on Google, called NQ Super.

“They essentially had an answer for everything and made it sound safe as houses, and if I didn’t do this I’m an absolute idiot… They sort of played on my naivety and my lack of knowledge of the super system,” she said.

In her late 30s, Claire was promised much higher returns by the time she retired if she switched.

In a subsequent statement of advice put together by an advisory firm called Venture Egg, and seen by Yahoo Finance, she was told the money would be put into mostly standard investments such as the Betashares Nasdaq ETF and Vanguard ETF funds for Australian and international stocks – common, low risk products that track broad sections of the stock market.

Against her better judgement, she moved her fund over in 2023. But the following year she received a “random” significant event notice in her inbox about an investment fund she’d never heard of.

Claire eventually discovered she had actually been moved into something called the Shield Master Fund which had since collapsed.

Claire is one of about 12,000 Aussies who lost an estimated $1.1 billion when Shield and, later, the First Guardian Master Fund imploded.

“I could have easily just deleted that email – it wasn’t a familiar name to me – but I read it, and I think that’s what the problem is,” Claire said.

A majority of people in those two funds have still not made an official complaint with the appropriate financial ombudsman, with corporate regulator ASIC believing many are still unaware they have been impacted.

Do you have a story? Nick.whigham@yahooinc.com

ASIC sent out correspondence to victims earlier this month, but there are still more than 9,000 people who have not lodged their complaint to receive compensation.

Melinda Kee is another victim and has been working with ASIC as well as the federal government as it works through the ongoing fallout and looks to shore up rules to prevent similar disasters in the future. She runs a Facebook group for victims and has built a website for anyone affected to find vital information about the advisory groups involved.

“I stepped up because it came down to who else was going to? These people are distraught… I’ve had 65-year-old men crying,” she told Yahoo Finance.

She is desperate to reach the thousands of Aussies – some of whom she believes are overseas – who appear unaware that at least some of their retirement savings have been lost.

Melinda has a lot of experience is financial markets and used to be a day trader. She was looking to shift her superannuation savings after the fund she was in at the time had gone backwards by $28,000 over the previous year.

During a period she was off sick from work, she used iSelect to change a number of bills including, gas, electricity and health and pet insurance. It was shortly after that when she began receiving cold calls about switching her retirement savings as well.

“This wasn’t a case of investors chasing speculative returns outside the system. This happened within the regulated superannuation and financial advice framework, overseen by licensed professionals and trustees with legal fiduciary obligations,” she said.

If you moved your superannuation and think you might be impacted, you can check to see a list of trustees and super platforms that funnelled money into the collapsed funds, which might be more familiar to most victims, and for which deadlines for seeking compensation are fast approaching.

Some victims have only until March 31, 2026, to seek compensation.

While some early decisions have been made for a select number of victims who were moved into the collapsed funds, a vast majority, like Claire, are still waiting for their claim to be worked through.

Melinda is advocating for ‘Pay Now Recover Later’ as the government taps the broader superannuation sector to help fund compensation for victims.

“It is not about rewarding risk-taking, it’s about restoring confidence, fairness, and accountability in a system Australians are required by law to rely on for their retirement,” she said.

This week, ASIC launched a fresh review into the practice of using lead generators to lure in superannuation investors, with more than 40 groups called out.

Lead generation is the process of identifying someone as a potential sales target and may offer a free ‘super health check’ or offer to find your lost super. They are often paid “marketing fees” by licensed financial advisers.

Super Consumers Australia is calling for a ban on lead generation for super and financial advice, along with closing the loophole that allows cold calling to offer financial advice.

The group said predatory super switching schemes had been fuelled by lead generators who had been using social media to collect people’s contact details and sell them on to third parties.

“These schemes are highly effective, they prey on people who are just looking to do the right thing and get on top of their super,” Super Consumer Australia CEO Xavier O’Halloran said.

*Claire is a pseudonym to protect her identity

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