Tag: Alaska

This is the first part of a four part series about the results of the 2018 election in the US. Today we look specifically...

The Story: In this busy election season, the campaign for Governor of Alaska deserves some special attention. The hapless incumbent Governor, Bill Walker, who was...

ANCHORAGE (KTUU) — Have super PACs led to political corruption? One side of a legal case set to be argued Thursday in Anchorage says they have, and the complainants — three Alaskans represented by a lawyer from Boston-based nonprofit Equal Citizens — says the state’s campaign finance watchdog should enforce state law to reign in super PACs. The Equal Citizens case is challenging a decision by the Alaska Public Offices Commission to adopt federal law allowing super PACs — called independent expenditure groups in Alaska — to raise and spend unlimited sums on behalf of political candidates. Bill Walker and Democrat Mark Begich. While most have raised little money, Dunleavy for Alaska is backed by a small group of wealthy donors. The founder of Equal Citizens, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, has been fighting the basis for the commission ruling — the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court case Citizens United — for most of the decade. And now there’s the court case in Anchorage. The case could go to the Alaska Supreme Court after Peterson rules. But that wouldn’t be necessary to win the case against the Alaska Public Offices Commission, he said, because it was a lower court interpretation of Citizens United that led to the rejection of donation limits — an interpretation that Harrow said was too broad. They will testify that the founders of the United States were concerned about the corruptive effect of money in elections, Harrow said — and not just bribery, which the Supreme Court agreed should be illegal.

Pentagon officials say a pair of nuclear-capable Russian bomber flew near Alaska on Sept. 11, 2018 and were intercepted by U.S. warplanes. FOX News Channel (FNC) is a 24-hour all-encompassing news service dedicated to delivering breaking news as well as…

“A former state legislator referred to us as ‘the estrogen caucus,’” Jennifer Williamson, the Democratic House majority leader, recalled. Fifty-four percent of Oregon’s House Democrats now are female, a rare majority in state capitols, where men still mostly rule. “Culture change takes time,” she said. “We need to support women’s rights and women’s health and those things are important, but when you have a legislature that really just pushes that off the deep end, I think people have an issue with it,” said Ms. Gomez, who has described herself as “pro-choice” on abortion in her race against a male candidate for an open seat in the State Senate. Many women in elected office in Oregon link their progress to Barbara Roberts, the state’s first female governor, who was elected in 1990. Oregon’s Legislature is only ninth-highest in the country for the percentage of its members who are women, but it has more women in top leadership roles — including the house speaker and majority leaders of both chambers — than any other state’s, according to Kelly Dittmar, a scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Arizona, a Republican-leaning state, is among the top states for elected women overall, with 40 percent of seats in the Legislature and five statewide elected offices held by women. “When you start talking about something being taken away, it all changes, and the idea that we’re taking Democrats to the left gets no traction,” said Val Hoyle, a Democrat and former State Representative who won an election in May to replace Mr. Avakian as Labor Commissioner. In an interview, Ms. Brown said that Oregon’s recent political experience reflected a next step in a process — from the first wave of feminists in the early 1900s, seeking votes for women; through a second wave in the late 1960s and early 1970s, reaching for equality; to the present, in places like her state. But she said she struggles with questions over health care and the idea that some people cannot afford it — the central issue on which Democrats have launched their attacks on Mr. Buehler.

Alaskans are divided over President Donald Trump's plan to bring oil drilling to Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. CNN's Bill Weir reports.

The politics television station C-SPAN is sending its bus on a road trip around Alaska later this month, and residents of Juneau, Fairbanks and Anchorage will have a chance to check out its onboard television studio and take pop quizzes. C-SPAN is holding public events in Juneau on June 18 and 19, in Fairbanks on June 22 and June 23 and in Anchorage on June 25, 26 and 27. The bus is on a tour of all 50 state capitals to promote the 40-year-old station. C-SPAN broadcasts live streams of congressional proceedings and public affairs programs. Its stops in Juneau, Fairbanks and Anchorage are coordinated with GCI, the telecommunications company that broadcasts C-SPAN programs. Each stop will include several public open houses, where Alaskans can climb on board. Among the segments will be one with Mark Adams, an author from the New York City area who just published a book about traveling in Alaska called "Tip of the Iceberg." He'll be interviewed by Libby Casey, a former public radio reporter in Alaska who now works for The Washington Post. The station is also trying to schedule times with Gov. 12-1:45 p.m., Juneau Rotary – Westmark Baranof Hotel, 127 N. Franklin St. (Bus will be parked at 105 S. Seward St., in front of Sealaska Heritage Institute.)

The Story: This November, Alaskans may vote on an initiative that would disclose financial conflicts of interest of the state legislators, limit the gifts they...

The Story: This November, Alaskans may vote on an initiative that would disclose financial conflicts of interest of the state legislators, limit the gifts they...

Alaska lawmakers reportedly declined President Trump’s offer to change the name of North America's largest mountain from Denali back to Mount McKinley. Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) recalled during a speech at the Alaska Federation of Natives’ annual conference that Trump offered to reverse the Obama-era order changing the name during a meeting in March with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Alaska Dispatch News reported. "He looked at me and said, 'I heard that the big mountain in Alaska also had – also its name was changed by executive action,” Sullivan said of Trump. “Do you want us to reverse that?'" Sullivan said that he and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) “jumped over the desk, we said, ‘No! Don't want to reverse that,’” according to the Alaska Dispatch News. Sullivan said Trump was amiable to the senators’ insistence, saying "all right, we won't do that." Former President Barack Obama changed the name in an executive order in 2015, honoring the mountain’s native Athabascan name. During the early months of Trump’s presidential campaign, he promised to reverse Obama's order and change the mountain's name back to McKinley. At the time, Trump called Obama's order an “insult” to Ohio, where former President William McKinley was born.