With campaign finance rules wiped out, Legislature must act now to set donation limits

More than a month has passed since Sen. Mike Shower claimed that he and other Alaska legislators were so busy they didn’t have time to deal with campaign finance legislation this year.

He was not telling the truth. It was just something Shower said to conceal the effort to allow unlimited campaign donations in Alaska, which is what Gov. Mike Dunleavy and others in the Republican Party want.

Shower is the chairman of the state affairs committee in the Senate, a committee that is responsible for dealing with this topic. He hasn't done anything on campaign finance and on Friday he told Alaska Public Media he doesn’t have an opinion just yet.

In the wake of the decision by the Alaska Public Offices Commission Thursday, the need for legislative action to set campaign donation limits is clear. The commission rejected a plan that would have set campaign donation limits at $1,500 per person, up from $500, The commission said it “implores” the Legislature to take action and set new limits.

As the APOC staff put it, “until the Alaska State Legislature takes action on this issue, there are no longer any individual-to-candidate; and individual-to-non-political party contributions limits for Alaska’s state and local elections.”

This means that wealthy people in Alaska or elsewhere can spend whatever they want to buy political influence in the 2022 campaigns.

The candidates for governor and Legislature need to go on the record saying what they think the spending limits should be.

Dunleavy, whose actions show that he supports unlimited contributions, will only claim through his functionaries that he is neutral.

One of his challengers in the governor’s race, former Rep. Les Gara, has been saying for months that Dunleavy has never been neutral. Dunleavy took a political position last fall by refusing to appeal a court decision or propose legislative action to replace the $500 limit.

"Governor Dunleavy carefully made Alaska's donation limits disappear through a refusal to appeal the August ruling, by refusing a court invitation to appeal that ruling, and by refusing to uphold his sworn oath to defend Alaska's laws. This, by a governor who has been appeal-happy his whole term," said Gara.

"It's a sad day when you have to ask Alaskans who care about the state to donate as much as they can, to prevent the purchase of our elections by those who donate millions out of self interest. This could have been prevented," said Gara.

In an extraordinary move on Aug. 21, one of the court judges nearly begged the state to file an appeal, suggesting that the case be reviewed by a larger group of judges.

Dunleavy, who loves nothing more than filing lawsuits, refused to defend the campaign finance law in court, claiming it would be a waste of money and that the state had no guarantee of success. Wasting money without a guarantee of success has never stopped him before.

This time the decision was not about being frugal with state resources, but about Dunleavy’s desire to have the law go away, ending the $500 limit on donations and allowing his campaign to tap directly into big-money donors, including his brother and Bob Penney, who invested hundreds of thousands in the last election through the Dunleavy shadow campaign.

“Wealthy individuals can now give unlimited amounts to candidates,” Sen. Bill Wielechowski said on Twitter this week. “There are multiple bills to fix this, and the Legislature needs to make this a priority. Elections should not be dominated by those with the most money.”

Despite the obstruction from the governor and Senate Republicans, the state House is advancing HB245 and HB 234, which could be the basis of a solution.

Those bills are now in the House Rules Committee, awaiting a floor vote.

The exact numbers on how much can be donated don’t matter as much as setting some realistic limits in state law, which the court signaled would be acceptable.

With the 2022 campaigns already running, there is no time to lose.

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