Dunleavy refuses to answer written questions from news organizations

Gov. Mike Dunleavy refuses to answer written questionnaires from Alaska news organizations, claiming he has such a long public record that news organizations can look up the answers online.

If you do that, you’ll find a long public record of evasion, deflection and political dodgeball.

He proposed getting rid of the Power Cost Equalization endowment, then he claimed to be the world’s biggest champion of the program. He suggested he may fire Dr. Anne Zink, then he claimed to be her biggest champion. He promised no cuts to the ferry system, then he talked of selling ferries and cutting the budget by 75 percent. He pledged no cuts to education, then he proposed the largest cuts in state history.

Dunleavy’s record is an exercise in analyzing inkblots. He has a long public record of never giving straight answers to difficult questions and telling audiences what he thinks they want to hear at that moment.

Dunleavy’s re-election campaign consists of his perennial pledge for bigger dividends, lower spending, no new taxes, no real service cuts, higher oil production, and the ever-lasting prayer for high oil prices.

The hallmark of his time in office, following the Donna Arduin debacle, is distancing himself from difficult questions and deflecting blame onto someone else.

After Dunleavy announced that he would not fill out questionnaires from the Alaska Beacon and the Anchorage Daily News, former Gov. Bill Walker and former Rep. Les Gara, the other two major candidates for governor, called out the incumbent for trying to hide.

I’ve asked Walker’s campaign for his answers and will post them here when I receive them.

Here are Gara’s answers to the Alaska Beacon questions. He submitted a follow-up document pointing out the confusion created by reducing a complex Permanent Fund question about unrealized earnings to a simple yes/no answer. Here is his revised version.

And here is what Gara said to the Anchorage Daily News.

Walker and Gara issued a joint statement about Dunleavy’s cloaked approach to campaigning. He has skipped every debate so far and is running his campaign out of the governor’s office with public funds.

Dunleavy spokesman Andrew Jensen, the state employee who works as the “volunteer” spokesman for candidate Dunleavy, said that news organizations that want answers from Dunleavy can always request an interview with Dunleavy.

There are serious pitfalls with news coverage based on questionnaires, but they are an important part of political communication when it comes to comparing and contrasting candidates. Dunleavy is shortchanging the public.

There are also pitfalls in news coverage based on interviews in which Dunleavy is allowed to practice the art of evasion and deflection. As a former school administrator accustomed to captive audiences, one of his techniques is to go on at great length without saying much, stringing together mind-numbing talking points in filibuster fashion.

One thing that has become clear during Dunleavy’s time in public office is that if questions are not repeated and repeated, Dunleavy ducks. As is obvious from the Dunleavy news coverage, most reporters do not repeat questions when Dunleavy fails to give a direct answer.

Gara sized him up correctly when he said that Dunleavy will respond to a question about whether he supports the Pebble Mine by going on at length and concluding that he “likes puppies.”

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