Dunleavy's support group pulls out of court challenge, but state will still fight recall

Gov. Mike Dunleavy created a support group to defend himself called “Stand Tall With Mike.”

In his interviews with groups Outside, Dunleavy uses the first person plural to describe his support group, which is free to raise unlimited amounts of money from anyone who is a U.S. national or any U.S. company.

Under the same loophole in state campaign finance laws, the recall committee can do the same.

But Dunleavy is a sitting governor, which gives him an advantage, especially Outside, where he has made numerous appearances and given lots of interviews comparing his plight to that of President Trump, victimized by “leftists.”

During an interview with the far-right website Breitbart last fall, Dunleavy was asked how people could help him.

“They can go to our website. We just put the website up, Stand with, Stand Tall With Mike dot com,” he said on Oct. 6.

Take him at his word, it’s his support group. He’s made the same comment elsewhere.

In that interview he said he had made the “fatal error” of trying to help Alaskans instead of “kow-towing to special interests.” His fatal error led to the recall, he claims.

Mike is the central figure in Stand Tall With Mike and it is impossible to believe that Stand Tall With Mike would withdraw from the Supreme Court recall challenge without Mike’s approval.

Bob Griffin, appointed by Dunleavy to the state school board, is treasurer of Stand Tall With Mike, while Curtis Thayer, appointed by Dunleavy to the Alaska Energy Authority is a deputy treasurer, along with Cheryl Frasca, who has handled such campaign tasks for Dunleavy in the past. Lindsay Williams is the chair.

During his appearance Tuesday on the public radio show, Talk of Alaska, Dunleavy tried to sell the idea that no one named Mike has any control over Stand Tall With Mike.

He pretended not to know the details on a press release in which Stand Tall With Mike announced plans to withdraw from the Supreme Court challenge to stop the recall.

He abandoned the first person plural in talking about his group.

“The group that was supporting me, and I had heard rumblings here about this just a day or so ago, that the belief was that it was pointless to continue with the legal approach to this,” Dunleavy said.

He heard rumblings. It’s not his group. Sure.

The group that is not his group is going to gear up for a campaign.

The court challenge will continue. It’s just that the state will pay the legal bills to push a losing case before the Alaska Supreme Court, while Dunleavy’s support group will avoid that expense.

Dunleavy complained on the radio that he doesn’t know if the Alaska Supreme Court is “going to give my case a fair shake.”

Whoever wrote the press release for Dunleavy’s group was willing to be more explicit, attacking Chief Justice Joel Bolger for not recusing himself and claiming the court is being unfair to Stand Tall With Mike.

All of the reporting I’ve seen on this press release simply mentioned that the “group” said this or that in the press release, without pointing out the bizarre nature of the document—no one from Stand Tall With Mike was willing to be named on the press release.

So who said all those nasty things about the Alaska Supreme Court?

I suspect that lawyers Craig Richards or Brewster Jamieson did, given the legal lingo and the claim that being forced to have oral arguments on March 25 qualifies as an unnecessary “blistering pace.”

Perhaps the attorneys felt free to take cheap shots at the Supreme Court under a cloak of anonymity.

I think that because Richards, the former attorney general, is also chairman of the Permanent Fund board of trustees, he should either resign that position or disavow the comments in the press release questioning the integrity of the chief justice and the Supreme Court.

As for Dunleavy, he should have put his name on his own press release, with its myriad of bogus complaints about unfair treatment.