Alaska's Election Challenges and the Growing Affordability Crisis

0:00 Speaker 1 Well let’s go to alaska and uh what is today is governor mike dunleavy and he’s the governor of alaska and everybody’s confused how the election system is working in alaska and who’s going to be the next u.s senator in alaska well governor dunleavy uh give us the pulse of the situation.

0:21 Speaker 2 Well as as people know you know we got quite a quite an issue up here with uh the decoy Dan situation in which the Democrats found an individual with the same last name as the incumbent U.S. Senator. And then we questioned that issue back in June because the individual petitioned our division of elections and wanted to be

0:42 put on the ballot as Dan S. Sullivan, when in fact the man, the decoy Dan, as people call him, really goes by Daniel Sullivan with a totally different initial. Dan S. Sullivan is actually our incumbent. So that kind of opened our eyes, and we began an investigation back there, the Division of Elections did, to determine if this was

1:05 a legitimate candidacy. And the Division of Elections at that time found that it was not and did not put him on the ballot. Then there was a court case, and the Supreme Court in the end ruled against the Division of Elections in Alaska and said he must go on the ballot. So then when the New York Times

1:21 article came out, we already knew a lot of what was happening there, but there was more revelations in that article. And as a result of that, we began another investigation up here in Alaska, and the Department of Justice did the same. So you have this investigation going on right in the middle of an election. So here’s kind of

1:39 where we are right now with the election. It’s very close, the numbers. On November 13th, which, you know, next week, another big batch of votes will come in. It’s a slow system up here in Alaska. A big batch of votes will come in. That’ll really determine, you know, who’s going to have the lead there. Because right now, Mary Patola,

2:01 candidate Patola, is up by just, I think, a couple hundred votes. There are not very many votes. Then on the 15th of November, there’ll be a smaller batch of things like question ballots and polls. other mail-in ballots and so forth. And then once that’s done, November 25th is when the final count happens. And that’s when, if nobody

2:22 reaches 50%, that’s when they go through the ranking process in which the other candidates, the ones that have the least votes, they fall off and then their votes are redistributed in a manner by which people rank them. And so in Alaska, you could rank all four candidates that were in the general, and when they fall off, the

2:45 ones that have the least number of votes, the other votes go to the top vote-getter. So it is very confusing. That was also on the ballot to actually repeal that voting scheme that was put in place here just a couple years ago. And so it’s confusing, John, 100%. We’re still in the process of bringing in votes and counting votes,

3:07 and we are in the midst of investigations as to if determine if there was any wrongdoing, especially anything that might resemble perjury or a misrepresentation of individuals’ intent on how they wanted their candidacy to be placed on the ballot.

3:24 Speaker 1 You know, President Trump has been up to Alaska many, many times, and he was hoping for a better victory in Alaska. And I guess between the two biggest states in volume-wise, Alaska and Texas— I guess the Republicans went against President Trump.

3:45 Speaker 2 Yeah, you know, Texas is an interesting case, right? It’s almost, what is it, almost 30 million people. Alaska is 740,000 people. Alaska is an interesting state in that we have voted red for presidents every cycle since we came into the union in 1959, with the exception of 64 when there was a landslide for Johnson after the assassination of Kennedy.

4:08 But other than that, All of the individuals we voted for president have been Republicans. Most of our state elected officials have been Republicans. We have a bit of a libertarian overlay up here. We’re not quite the Wyoming red that Wyoming is. So the big surprise, I think, for me was Texas, because all the way down, starting with

4:29 Governor Abbott, all the way through, they pretty much got wiped out. In Alaska, Nick Begich, who’s our lone congressman right now, is winning, and we anticipate that he will win. So that’ll be a Republican that goes back. And of course, the senior senator, Lisa Murkowski, is a registered Republican. So it kind of was a mixed bag, John. But I

4:49 would say that, you know, for a lot of folks, I mean, that have spoken to me, a lot of it was the issue of affordability. You know, you’ve got kids now. And this is this didn’t just happen under President Trump’s watch, but you have kids. In their 20s and 30s, I call them kids, they’re really adults, but

5:06 living with their parents, some of them can’t afford a home, or at least they don’t believe they can, car payments, all that stuff. So that and just other things just conspire to make this a brutal beating for Republicans nationwide.

5:20 Speaker 1 Understood. Anything else you want to tell the American people while we’re on?

5:25 Speaker 2 Well, you know, the system is a great system, even though sometimes the outcomes are incredibly disappointing. But it gives us another opportunity here in just a couple years to right the ship, make sure that we are able to message the people of America, especially a lot of those folks that really don’t care about some of the– the

5:44 issues that extreme folks on each side of the spectrum care about, but about things such as safe roads, public safety, schools, that sort of thing, to really get back to ensuring that we’re connected with the people, because this is pretty obvious that we weren’t Republicans in this particular cycle.

6:03 Speaker 1 Well, Governor Mike Dunleavy from the great state of Alaska, and I’d love to play your song, North to Alaska, because I really enjoy that song. And thank you so much for coming on, and let’s hope we come with a common-sense solution.

6:20 Speaker 2 We’ll keep you updated. Come up and visit us, John. It’s a little warmer, okay?

6:23 Speaker 1 I will definitely do that. Thank you so much.