Dunleavy's imaginary ‘Alaska Office of Family & Life’ may be reborn under new state contract
Gov. Mike Dunleavy has already used state funds to build a website—one that the public was never allowed to see—that opposes abortion, encourages people to have children and portrays his vision of Alaska as the most pro-life state in the nation.
The imaginary “Alaska Office of Family & Life” that Dunleavy promoted last spring —before dropping all mention of it in the wake of the Jeremy Cubas debacle—may be reborn as a new website, “Strong Families—Strong Alaskans.”
What’s not imaginary is that Dunleavy has just hired an Idaho company at $120 an hour to create a website, at a cost of up to $10,000, the Northern Journal newsletter reports.
Dunleavy has also hired Dunleavy supporter and pollster Matt Larkin for $21,500 to poll 400 people about the “considerations, motivations and barriers” of having more kids.
As for confirmation that the new website is the Alaska Office of Family & Life reborn or something else, we’ll have to wait and see.
“A Dunleavy spokesman, Jeff Turner, declined to comment on the new contracts,” Northern Journal notes.
Last spring Dunleavy invented a new $110,000 state job for Cubas, who had been the Dunleavy photographer, and paid him to set up a website to oppose abortion and encourage people to have more children. This was the so-called “office.”
Dunleavy wants to “change the culture in order to change the politics,” said Cubas. The “Office of Family & Life is a pro-life, pro-family, pro-marriage, pro-children and pro-people office.”
After reporter Nat Herz wrote about the radical beliefs of Cubas, who claims Hitler has been misunderstood, rape didn’t become a real problem until the rise of feminism and MLK was a loser, Dunleavy allowed Cubas to resign. All talk of the alleged Alaska Office of Family & Life ended.
Dunleavy’s staff claimed Dunleavy didn’t know what Cubas believed.
Earlier, Dunleavy had recorded a video for Minnery’s right-wing group about the work he had assigned to Cubas.
“Without families and children, there is no North to the Future because everything we do should be about supporting our families and our children,” Dunleavy said.
“The Office of Family & Life will research the best practices, programs and approaches to support families, especially young families and children in all stages of life,” Dunleavy said, the latter words spoken over the image of a pregnant woman.
Cubas was far more explicit about the anti-abortion theme at the heart of the Office of Family & Life.
“The governor wants to offer a counter narrative to that, a true narrative grounded in reality. He wants to change the culture in order to change the politics,” said Cubas.
“The governor has appointed me to build the website and head the office for now,” Cubas said in his video.
Minnery said the Office of Family & Life was a “first in the nation” and an “idea whose time has come.”
He said Dunleavy’s goal was to “change the hearts and minds of society so that abortion should not be considered a necessary option for women/couples who believe a child would be a burden” and to “lift up the reality that spouses, families and children are a gift of the highest value and not seen as a hardship.”
In addition, Dunleavy’s office would “educate the public that without more children, society, civilization, the economy and our very existence are threatened,” according to Minnery.
In his State of the State speech, Dunleavy said women in Alaska need to have more children and that he wanted Alaska to be the most pro-life state in the nation.
Dunleavy set up strawman arguments that some people don’t want babies and don’t want families and don’t like people and are anti-child and don’t see children as the future, but that he is a people person and we need more people in Alaska. “Kids are a blessing. They shouldn’t be viewed as a burden.”
“I know this may sound strange, but we have to make it OK again to have kids,” he said, and “we need to be a place where families want to be.”
“We’ve been fed a false narrative that you can have it all, as long as you don’t have children and a family. This doesn’t have to be. I reject that narrative. And you’ll see policies come forth that reject that narrative as well.”
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The website Dunleavy announced in May was never made public. The state has hired an Idaho company to create a new website under a contract worth up to $10,000.