JUNEAU — Backers of a new ballot measure proposing limits on donations to political candidates failed to make the cutoff for this year’s elections.
With the Alaska Legislature not expected to pass a bill dealing with the topic this year, there will be no limit on the amount of money that someone can give a candidate for office in this year’s state elections. Federal limits still apply to this year’s U.S. House elections.
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If the Alaska Legislature fails to pass a substantially similar bill in 2025, the 2026 elections will also take place without limits.
“We clearly did not make the deadline,” said Bruce Botelho, a former Alaska attorney general who lives in Juneau and was a co-sponsor of the ballot measure.
Two other ballot measures — one proposing an increase to the minimum wage, and another proposing the repeal of Alaska’s open primary and ranked-choice general elections — did gather enough signatures, and those are now being verified by the Alaska Division of Elections.
[Alaska House committee advances legislation to repeal ranked choice voting]
If the signatures are confirmed, those measures will be on either the primary or general election ballot, depending on when the Legislature adjourns this year.
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In order to make this year’s ballot, supporters needed to gather the signatures of 26,705 registered voters, with a minimum amount from at least 35 of the state’s 40 House districts, before Jan. 16.
That didn’t happen with the measure limiting campaign donations, largely because the measure got a late start: Supporters received their signature booklets Sept. 18 and had just four months to make the deadline.
“I think we just have not had enough volunteers collecting enough signatures, primarily in the Railbelt area,” Botelho said.
He said he knew the job would be difficult but thought it wasn’t impossible. In 2011, Botelho was part of a group that called for a vote on a coastal zone management plan. The group received their signature books four days before Christmas 2010 but still managed to make a mid-January deadline.
That measure, which didn’t pass a statewide vote, was supported by local governments, which made signature-gathering easier, Botelho said. The new effort was volunteer-driven.
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Rep. Calvin Schrage, I-Anchorage, is another co-sponsor of the effort and said that signature-gathering was “a little bit behind where we’d like to be,” but that sponsors have until September to gather enough names to make the 2026 ballot.
“We’re not going to meet the 2024 ballot deadline, but we are continuing forward,” he said.
Originally published by the Alaska Beacon, an independent, nonpartisan news organization that covers Alaska state government.
An Alaska Air National Guard HH-60W Jolly Green II helicopter, assigned to the 210th Rescue Squadron, 176th Wing, returns to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, after conducting a rescue mission for an injured snowmachiner, Feb. 21, 2026. The mission marked the first time the AKANG used the HH-60W for a rescue. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Staff Sgt. Joseph Moon)
JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska – Alaska Air National Guard personnel conducted a rescue mission Saturday, Feb. 21, after receiving a request for assistance from the Alaska State Troopers through the Alaska Rescue Coordination Center.
The mission was initiated to recover an injured snowmachiner in the Cooper Landing area, approximately 60 air miles south of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. The Alaska Air National Guard accepted the mission, located the individual, and transported them to Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage for further medical care.
The mission marked the first search and rescue operation conducted by the 210th Rescue Squadron using the HH-60W Jolly Green II, the Air Force’s newest combat rescue helicopter, which is replacing the older HH-60G Pave Hawk. Guardian Angels assigned to the 212th Rescue Squadron were also aboard the aircraft and assisted in the recovery of the injured individual.
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Good Samaritans, who were on the ground at the accident site, deployed a signal flare, that helped the helicopter crew visually locate the injured individual in the heavily wooded area. Due to the mountainous terrain, dense tree cover, and deep snow in the area, the helicopter was unable to land near the patient. The aircrew conducted a hoist insertion and extraction of the Guardian Angels and the injured snowmachiner. The patient was extracted using a rescue strop and hoisted into the aircraft.
The Alaska Air National Guard routinely conducts search and rescue operations across the state in support of civil authorities, providing life-saving assistance in some of the most remote and challenging environments in the world.
cooper landing, guard, injured, jolly-green, rescue, snowmachiner
A trapper fresh out of the Cosna River country in Interior Alaska said he can’t believe how many martens he had caught in a small area so far this winter.
Friends are talking about the house-cat size creatures visiting their wood piles and porches. Could this be a boom in the number of these handsome woodland creatures?
Probably, said wildlife education specialist Mike Taras of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Fairbanks.
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“When I was out in the (White Mountains National Recreation Area north of Fairbanks) a couple of weeks ago, I saw marten tracks everywhere,” he said. “My friend had a hare bound close towards him while he was out near Wolf Run cabin and then a marten came loping after the hare hot on its trail.”
The biologist and tracking expert doesn’t even have to leave home to see signs of marten this spring.
“I currently have a marten coming by my place at the edge of (Creamer’s Field Migratory Waterfowl Refuge) about once a week. It is great to see her tracks — though it could be a juvenile male. I have noticed more marten tracks out on Creamer’s refuge in the past few years as well.”
The Cosna River area trapper, Steve O’Brien, said he thought “more mice” were a possible reason for marten abundance this year. Taras suspected the same.
“Research shows that the number one driver of marten populations is vole numbers,” Taras said. “But I don’t think there is concrete evidence of high vole numbers this year.”
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But Taras has seen some circumstantial evidence recently.
“I have noticed multitudes of ventilation tunnel holes on top of the snow after these recent snowstorms,” Taras said. “That many holes on top of the snow shortly after the snow makes me think that there are a lot of voles out there.”
Whatever the cause for increased marten numbers, now is perhaps a good time to see these predators of the northern woods.
“One trapper aptly described them as walking stomachs,” Tom Paragi, a retired wildlife biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Fairbanks, told me 26 years ago. “They’re one of the easier animals to trap.”
Like other members of the weasel family, marten hunt and kill small animals, most often voles, though they sometimes eat snowshoe hares, young birds and blueberries.
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Marten feed on red squirrels in other parts of North America, but in Alaska biologists have seen marten sharing squirrels’ underground network of winter tunnels without killing them.
Marten aren’t afraid to tackle animals their own size, Paragi said. He once pieced together a marten drama evident by tracks left behind in the snow. He observed where a marten paused during its wandering after seeing a goshawk perched on a low tree limb.
He could tell by blood and other marks that the marten killed the goshawk, making a meal of a raptor that could have had the marten for lunch.
“They are fairly fearless,” Paragi said.
Marten are loners, roaming forests solo except for a few weeks during the breeding season. They seem to prefer mature conifer forests for birthing and raising young, and use hollow logs for dens.
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The marten is one of a few mammals able to delay part of its reproductive cycle. Marten mate in mid-summer when food is plentiful, but fertilized eggs within females don’t implant into the uterus wall until springtime, a phenomenon triggered by longer days. Marten kits are born in late March to mid-April. In August, the youngsters go their own ways, beginning solitary lives that can last up to 14 years.
Since the late 1970s, the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute has provided this column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer for the Geophysical Institute. Portions of this story appeared in 2000.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/adn/UKTA2VTJRNAPVHAM3Q4WGKJYFU.jpg?ssl=1 "Measure limiting Alaska campaign cash fails to get enough signatures for 2024 vote")
