Tshibaka contracts with $68-an-hour political operative to bypass 'hostile' media

The state Department of Administration does not need to be spending $88,400 to put a right-wing political campaign operative in place as a “communication specialist” for the next year.

Administration Commissioner Kelly Tshibaka, who is setting up to run for office, probably against Sen. Lisa Murkowski in 2022, should avoid any appearance that she has hired a private political aide to boost her visibility.

The Dunleavy administration already has a squad of publicity experts on the payroll and Tshibaka could borrow one if need be from the governor’s office.

But Tshibaka has hired culture warrior Zach Freeman, whose main experience is in communicating for various right-wing groups that oppose abortion, gay rights and more—the Family Action Council of Tennessee, the Family Policy Institute of Washington, Jim Minnery’s Alaska Family Council, Republicans in the state House and right-wing politicians.

On his LinkedIn page, Freeman lists himself as a “Director of Communications” for the state since December 2018 and a 2016 graduate of Liberty University.

In a sketchy proposal to Tshibaka’s department heavy on buzzwords and light on details, Freeman mentions “potentially hostile” media. He said the department has to go on “offense” to prevent “hostile opponents” from putting the state on the defensive. The state has to “ensure Alaskans can digest the information without interference from hostile sources.”

One of the state evaluators who gave him a high score praised Freeman’s writing and said he has a good grasp of “what’s coming our way.” Another liked that he “mentioned potential hostile and changing media landscape.”

This abbreviated document of his could have been written at the peak of Mount Pompous.

“It is my professional opinion,” Freeman wrote, “that defense is not an ideal orientation for a government, nor a good environment for reforms to take place.”

He sounds like the perfect guy for a hostile right-wing political campaign, paid for with private money.

We don’t need a right-wing operative running a campaign for the Department of Administration with $88,400 of state money or half that amount for six months.

The Alaska Landmine reported that Freeman was still working for Republican legislators when he applied for and landed the contract, under which he is to be paid $68 an hour, a sizable boost from the $4,400 a month he was making for communicating the wit and wisdom of former Rep. Lance Pruitt.

His contract is for $44,280 for six months, with the possibility of a six-month renewal.

One of the main parts of his business, “Imperial Independent Media,” appears to have been “TheCollegeConservative,” a volunteer organization that went out of business on July 15, 2020. A note on that website from its early years said he founded it because he “experienced extraordinary liberal bias and academic discrimination at his government-funded college” in Tennessee.

The editor’s note on a column announcing the site closing said, “Zachary Freeman is the Publisher and CEO at TheCollegeConservative.com. He previously served as the Editor-in-Chief from 2011-2016. He is a native of Nashville, Tennessee and studied at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Liberty University, and Fort Hays State University (KS). He currently lives with his wife in Seattle, Washington.”

In 2016, Freeman was working for the Family Policy Institute of Washington and confronted Washington Gov. Jay Inslee about a bathroom bill and when asked if he was a journalist, Freeman said, “I’m trying to be.” He said he was working on marriage, life and religious freedom, things he claimed that “nobody really likes to talk about.”

Freeman’s website refers to his company having multiple clients and a “robust global network of contractors and consultants,” but it’s not clear what that means. His business received an $11,603 PPP loan last May at its Seattle address, according to this account.

He is the only employee listed for the Tshibaka communication contract, according to this inadequate document, which must have taken him two minutes to complete.

That “cost proposal” doesn’t come close to the detail the state asked for in the RFP: “Cost proposals must include an itemized list of all direct and indirect costs associated with the performance of the contract, including, but not limited to, total number of hours at various hourly rates, direct expenses, payroll, supplies, overhead assigned to each person working on the project, percentage of each person's time devoted to the project, and profit.”

Freeman’s proposal also failed to reveal much about his methodology, though he offered the sage advice that “proactive communications and public relations require foresight similar to a chess match.”

One of the two unsuccessful bidders on the contract, Kathy Day, said she now believes the process was a sham with a preordained result—giving the work to Freeman. The state did not follow its procurement guidelines, she said.

According to Freeman’s bid, his renewal cost for the six-month extension would be $59,670, pushing the total to $103,870. The contract was promoted as one with a budget of less than $100,000. He didn’t qualify.

Day, owner of Kathy Day Public Relations, whose bid was under $100,000, said the state should have rejected his bid as unresponsive.

Day appealed the Tshibaka decision Jan. 8 on the grounds that Freeman had a conflict of interest as a state employee.

In his proposal, Freeman said, referring to his state job, that if awarded the contract, “I would consider revising that status.”

He resigned Jan. 4 after the got the contract. The attorney general’s office and Tshibaka’s department cleared him of a conflict of interest. It was up to the department, an employee under Tshibaka, to decide if an “appearance of impropriety” existed, the attorney general’s office said.

It was a clear and obvious conflict, Day said, not an appearance.

In her appeal, Day also said Imperial Independent Media did not meet the state qualifications and that Freeman didn’t have the time while working for legislators to run his own business providing public relations services.

Linda Polk, the procurement officer who works under Tshibaka, rejected the appeal Jan. 20.

It was only after Day’s first protest that she received the information showing the amount of the competing bids.

“Because both of the other bids were for more than $100,000, both should have been deemed non-responsive,” she wrote in her second appeal on Jan. 22.

But the administration department said her second appeal was too late and rejected that as well. In addition, while the state had said the budget would be less than $100,000 for the work, the request for proposals did not say “that offers over the budget amount would be found non-responsive.”

At the risk of being deemed hostile, this contract should never have been approved.

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