Penney invested $350,000 in electing Dunleavy, gaining access and influence

No one in Alaska invested more in helping Mike Dunleavy become governor than Bob Penney. He spent $350,000 on the cause, providing the financial wherewithal—along with Dunleavy’s brother in Texas—to acquire name recognition and publicity for the candidate.

Two years later it’s pretty clear that the Dunleavy administration has not forgotten what Penney did for the governor.

I’m not just referring to the no-bid contract the governor’s office helped direct toward his grandson, Clark Penney, but to the marked change in the makeup of the board that sets policy for state fisheries.

Dunleavy’s appointments to the fish board have reflected clear support for the sport fishing interests long championed by Penney.

A wealthy real estate developer who has had ready access to top politicians for decades, Penney is most closely identified with the Kenai River Sport Fishing Association, a group he helped start in 1984 to promote sport fishing, especially king fishing, on the Kenai.

The House Fisheries Committee and the House Resources Committee have set a confirmation hearing for Sept. 3 at 10 a.m. in Anchorage to consider Dunleavy’s nominees for the fish board—Abe Williams of Anchorage, a fisherman and employee of the Pebble Mine project, and McKenzie Mitchell of Fairbanks, who has had seasonal jobs in fishing and hunting. Dunleavy reappointed businessman and retired fisherman John Jensen of Petersburg, who is also up for confirmation.

With Dunleavy’s latest move, the fish board will have five members from the Anchorage-Wasilla-Willow area, one member from Fairbanks and one from Petersburg.

Williams and Mitchell have yet to face confirmation votes in the Legislature. After their appointment April 1, the COVID-19 crisis disrupted the normal course of legislative review and hearings.

Had the process worked under a typical schedule, there would have been heavy testimony about the lack of regional balance on the board and the conflict of interest created by putting an employee of the Pebble project on the fish board. Dunleavy has been working behind the scenes to support the Pebble project.

Marit Carlson-Van Dort of Anchorage, appointed to the fish board last year by Dunleavy, was in public relations for Pebble until 2018.

“There are seven Board of Fish members, and John Jensen of Petersburg will be the only coastal representation,” Kodiak Rep. Louise Stutes told columnist Laine Welch of Alaska Fish Radio. “I understand that interior fisheries are important, but so are coastal fisheries. There should be a fair distribution of the resource representation, and there isn’t. It’s just wrong.”

The fish board meets in October and the Dunleavy appointees are allowed to participate, even though they won’t have been confirmed or rejected by the Legislature unless there is another special session before then.

By the end of the Dunleavy administration, Sitka Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins predicted last fall, “the Board of Fish in all likelihood will have seven members from the sport fish or charter fish community, and none from the commercial community.”

Send public comments on Williams, Mitchell or Jensen to House.Fisheries@akleg.gov.

Penney’s influence on Dunleavy administration fish policy is considerable and not just because he bankrolled the Dunleavy shadow campaign in 2018, along with Francis Dunleavy of Texas.

Brett Huber, who worked for Dunleavy in the Legislature and was Dunleavy’s campaign manager, is a former executive director of the Kenai River Sport Fishing Association.

A year ago, Fish Board member Robert Ruffner of Soldotna told the governor’s office he wanted to be reappointed and he gathered resolutions of support from various Kenai Peninsula governments and other backers.

Ruffner said he never heard back from Dunleavy’s office, but he did have a conversation with Penney in Anchorage, when they were both checking in at the Captain Cook Hotel, at which he learned that he did not have the support of the one man who really counted.

Ruffner said that Penney told him he would oppose his reappointment because Ruffner was too closely identified with commercial interests. The Kenai sport fish group had also opposed Ruffner in 2015, though he had strong support from many people and groups in the region.

In a letter published in January in Kodiak and Fairbanks, Ruffner referred to the political power wielded by Penney in the Dunleavy administration to prevent his reappointment: “By all indications from my perspective the qualified judgment for being on the board and also the commissioner, required that they go through a major campaign contributor well known in my neck of the woods for exercising undue influence,” he wrote, referring to Penney.

Undue influence is right.

Darren Platt, a commercial fisherman in Kodiak, wrote last year that Dunleavy’s ties to the Kenai River Sportfish Association “ought to draw serious scrutiny in light of his Board of Fish nominees, and the Legislature should outright reject this attempt to polarize the board by stocking it with individuals who are certain to advance the agenda of a single advocacy group.”

That political connection between Dunleavy and Penney remains largely unexamined by news organizations or the Legislature.

Commercial fishing advocates and the set net fishermen contend that the goal of KRSA is to eliminate commercial fishing in Cook Inlet. Penney told the fish board earlier this year he wants to limit set net fishing to allow more kings to escape.

“Suggest you adopt a six-word phrase for the set nets: ‘Stop killing kings or stop fishing,” he wrote.

Penney testified in favor of Dunleavy’s fish board appointments in 2019, saying he supports sport and commercial fisheries, but the "balance in Cook Inlet between sport fishing and commercial has to be turned around. It's unfair. There are 60 licensed anglers in Southcentral Alaska for one commercial license."

But the balance over who gets to catch what is changing. Veteran Alaska outdoors writer Craig Medred summed it up this way in February: “A significant shift in fisheries management aimed at putting more salmon in Cook Inlet streams and rivers surrounding Alaska’s urban core is coming, and commercial fishermen have been left dazed, panicky and angry.”

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