Just as Vice President Kamala Harris has been assigned to shore up the black vote for President Joe Biden by headlining events for African-American voters, Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola was stumping for the Native vote on her most recent trip back home to Alaska, in an effort to shore up support.
Flanked by her chief of staff Anton McParland, who also serves as her campaign manager, she appeared at a campaign event over the weekend in Anchorage that targeted Natives, where she has started to see wearing support. According to her slide presentation, the goal is to register more Native voters and “get them set up with absentee ballots” in August, when the Alaska primary election is held.
She doesn’t actually need cash from Alaska Natives because her campaign treasury has millions of dollars from donors primarily outside Alaska. She has over $2.5 million in available campaign cash.
But she does need to invigorate and motivate her base. According to the Alaska Federation of Natives, “Our people make up approximately 20% of the state’s general population. If we vote early (in-person or by mail) or on Election Day, we can determine the direction of Alaska.” AFN believes Natives vote as block.
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According to left-leaning polling group Data for Progress, Peltola is slipping with Native voters, thus her focus on using her Native affiliation to restore confidence. In the latest poll, conservative candidate Nick Begich is actually doing better with Native voters than Peltola, although overall, the two are in a 50-50 tie in the March poll among all Alaskans, in a ranked choice match up, with Nancy Dahlstrom eliminated in the first round.
According to the Peltola campaign, “door to door activity is the most fundamental aspect of this plan” to get Natives reengaged, including the strategy to “push youth in their households to vote with them and have more civically engaged youth assist elders in their households.”
In addition to her campaign account, Peltola has a launched political action committee called the “Cache PAC,” which has raised $100,000 so far to support her campaign. Major donors to Peltola’s Cache PAC include people like John Arnold of Texas, whose foundation was one of the main donors to the ballot initiative that brought ranked-choice voting to Alaska. Also donating to the Cache PAC is Melinda Gates, former wife of billionaire Bill Gates. Top Cache PAC donors include:
STALLINGS, NANCY ANCHORAGE, AK 99507
NOT EMPLOYED
$5,000
STALLINGS, MICHAEL ANCHORAGE, AK 99507
UAA
$5,000
WOMER, ROD NEWBURY PARK, CA 91320
Not Employed
$5,000
KARPLUS, BARBARA NEWBURY PARK, CA 91320
Tax Practitioner
$5,000
ARNOLD, JOHN HOUSTON, TX 77019
Not Employed
$5,000
PUYALLUP TRIBE OF INDIANS TACOMA, WA 98404
$5,000
DUNCAN, RONALD ANCHORAGE, AK 99503
GCI
$5,000
CHAPADOS, GREGORY ANCHORAGE, AK 99501
GCI
$5,000
FRENCH GATES, MELINDA REDMOND, WA 98052
Pivotal Ventures
$1,000
PAWLOWSKI, MICHAEL ANCHORAGE, AK 99504
NOT EMPLOYED
$500
HALL, JOELLE EAGLE RIVER, AK 99577
NOT EMPLOYED
$500
CARTER, PATRICK ANCHORAGE, AK 99515
CONSULTANT
$500
JOULE, REGINALD KOTZEBUE, AK 99752
J AND H CONSULTING
$500
The Cache PAC is funding a lot of the campaign airline travel and on-the-ground fundraising expenses, according to FEC reports. Some of Cache’s donated funds went to the Treasure Island Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. United Airlines, American Airlines, and the Alaska Democratic Party were the biggest recipients of the Cache PAC payments since the leadership PAC was launched.
Peltola has also received over $20,000 from the Fair Shot PAC, an East Coast political action committee that supports congressional Democrats exclusively. Some of the major donors to that PAC include John Donahue of Arabella Advisors, one of the dark money groups that has been changing the political landscape of Alaska, and billionaire Bill Gates.
The board of directors for the Alaska Women’s Hall of Fame encourages all Alaskans to nominate a woman who has made a significant contribution to our state. She must be 65 years old by June 1 of this year or deceased.
Nominations are accepted through our website. Go to alaskawomenshalloffame. org and click the Nominate button. The easy-to-follow instructions will explain how to fill out and submit the electronic form. Please nominate one or more outstanding women by the June 1 deadline!
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— Pat Jarrett
Vice president, Alaska Women’s Hall of Fame board of directors
Anchorage
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I was excited the Alaska Legislature engaged in efforts to encourage production of Cook Inlet gas.
I was, however, very disappointed when a legislator could not move forward a bill to reduce royalty payments on Cook Inlet gas because he could find no certainty it would work to increase production.
This much is clear: It can’t work if not passed. Whether or not it would work is not the point, but that it might work is worth a try.
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Southcentral Alaska is desperate for increased production of Cook Inlet gas. I’m not sure what the other Cook Inlet gas bills that died would have done, had they passed, but I will do more research to understand the driving force behind the reluctance to get on board for energy security in Alaska.
Carbon sequestration is something possibly useful for gasification of coal or some other energy process, so it could be a beneficial tool for our state’s energy tool box. Simply storing someone else’s CO2 does not excite me, but if it can bring in some money while we figure out just what our energy policy needs to be — green or hydrocarbon — it’s worth a try.
House Bill 307 was greatly modified from the original submission on Feb. 2, especially modified on the last day of session, May 15. I remain concerned much of the text may contain hidden landmines that could be used to deviate from the original intent and force more renewable sources to the system, even if the system is not ready for more variable sources.
The ERO (Electrical Reliability Organization) and the RTO (Railbelt Transmission Organization) discussed in H.B. 307 seem patterned after similar organizations in other states for the sole purpose of forcing wind and solar expansion to local utilities. We could have done better in Alaska to plan for altering our electrical power system to match the severity of our winters, thus ensuring we all survive the cold and dark.
Long-term planning with step-by-step engineering is needed for the long-duration energy storage necessary, and to make sure we have the means to capture excess variable energy produced, so we have it when we need it most. Mandating is not the solution.
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I am also concerned that with H.B. 307, additional power generation from hydrocarbon fuel could be denied and there is no provision or recommendation for planning for the Railbelt system.
As I have been stating for eight years, for wind and solar distributed resources to be successful, we need energy storage means, such as pumped hydro, which would allow all excess solar and wind generation to be captured for use during the cold and dark months.
I was certain that the Railbelt Transmission Organization would not be fully implemented until the new transmission line was designed and being installed. It may be quite difficult to identify portions of the system which are transmission line within some of the utilities and for them to be given over to the RTO.
The key to the healthy growth of the Railbelt power system is continued production of Cook Inlet gas, which will provide time for the development of whatever wind and solar might be added, inclusion of pumped hydro or other energy storage and any other less variable sources such as geo thermal or Cook Inlet tidal. One major goal is to develop our system to produce more and cheaper energy to support refining processes for the ore produced in Alaska, so we can build whatever our future economy will be driven by.
The Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference is this week. I look forward to hearing more about viable solutions to Alaska’s energy needs.
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My next commentary will address the claim that Alaska is warming two to four times faster than the rest of the planet. It doesn’t feel like it to me, so I dug into the data.
Robert Seitz is a professionally licensed electrical engineer and lifelong Alaskan.
An Alaska man’s attempt to take pictures of two newborn moose calves turned fatal Sunday morning, when the calves’ mother attacked the 70-year-old, killing him. Dale Chorman of Homer was with a second unidentified man when they came upon the animals in the brush, a spokesperson for the state’s Department of Public Safety says. Chorman was attacked as the two were running away, the AP reports. The cow moose charged the men and kicked Chorman, according to an official statement. He died on the scene, the Anchorage Daily News reports. The moose left the area, and the investigation is ongoing.
About 737,000 humans and 200,000 moose live in Alaska, and the animals can be aggressive if provoked—especially moms with babies. A 71-year-old man was stomped to death in 1995 after students reportedly harassed a moose and its calf for hours on the University of Alaska Anchorage campus; the man then tried to walk past the animals to enter a building. “Calving season for moose is the time when you definitely want to give them extra space,” the public safety spokesperson says. “Cow moose with calves are going to be some of the more aggressive moose you’re going to come in contact with.” (More Alaska stories.)
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