Friday in the Sun!!! (April 1)

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Forum Faux Pas (Part 1) — During the Rotary candidates forum this week Chugiak/Eagle River Assembly candidate Nicholas Begich admitted he voted for Ethan Berkowitz for Mayor in the mayoral run-off election last May. That may not seem like a big deal as the 21-point victory by Berkowitz over Begich’s opponent Amy Demboski shows that many Republicans must have voted for Berkowitz, but Begich has been trying to prove he is a real Republican and not just a Democrat plant of his uncle Mark Begich. Admitting he voted for true blue liberal Berkowitz can’t help that cause.

Forum Faux Pas (Part 2) — During the West Anchorage candidates forum held by an array of westside community councils, Adam Trombley dropped an interesting bomb no one in the mainstream media picked up on. When challenged by Eric Croft about why the assembly cut off public testimony on Mayor Sullivan’s labor ordinance in 2013, Trombley said it the city’s labor unions who had in fact broken a secret agreement between the assembly and labor unions:  

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I couldn’t find anyone from the assembly or Mayor Sullivan’s administration who would back up that statement,either on or off the record, that such a deal existed with unions as to how much public testimony was appropriate. It is also odd that neither at the time the testimony occurred or in the time since anyone has mentioned such duplicity on the unions’ part.

AFL-CIO bigman Vince Beltrami was quick to make clear how they felt, however:

Forum Faux Pas (Part 3) — At the same candidates’ forum, Trombley made reference to attending community council meetings. That came as news to the many members of community councils from around the district who were present since they were, you know, sponsoring the event. Community council folks tend to a proud and loud bunch—you definitely do not want to claim you are going to their meetings if you are not. Even the conservative ones, who I suspect are prone to voting for Trombley, aren’t hiding their irritation. The issue even popped up in the KAKM Running Debate:

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Midnight Sun On The Air!!!!  — Master of Morning Radio Rick Rydell (AM 650 KENI) has asked us to come on every week and share Friday in the Sun with his audience. So listen for our inside scoop every Friday morning at 7:35.

GOP Backing — The folks in Juneau aren’t just working hard to buy themselves shiny new offices and craft budget solutions that don’t solve anything—some, including Sen. John Coghill and Rep. Charisse Millett, are actually crafting valuable legislation like SB91/HB205, the criminal justice reform bill. The effort would seem to have gotten another boost this week when the NAACP and the Alaska GOP, two organizations rarely linked on anything, agree in a joint resolution on the need for such reform.

So much for the days when Alaska Republicans would just bellow out catch phrases like “soft on crime.” Now it would appear they may be moving toward having adult conversations and crafting real solutions.

West Anchorage Goes Negative — The West Anchorage Assembly race is going negative.  This week Eric Croft sent these mailers attacking Adam Trombley to West Anchorage Republican mailboxes. Normally the person going negative is the one behind, but in this case it might just be the odd dynamics of a three-way race and the fact Croft has raised over $100K, so he has money to do whatever he wants.

At least Croft can afford separate mailers for his positive and negative messages—Ira! Perman has the unique challenge of packing attacks on all three of his opponents and then topping them off with a positive message for himself into one radio ad. Let’s see how that works:

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It’s actually a good ad considering how much is going on in it.

On-Air Revamp — Conservative radio talk show host Michael Dukes (AM 700 KBYR, 6-9 am weekday mornings) is reformatting his show. Instead of doing the standard four segments of about 10 minutes per hour, he is going to three segments longer segments of 15 minutes per hour. Dukes hopes the longer segments will allow the show to get deeper into issues with guests, kind of like a conservative NPR. The other advantage to the change will be that Dukes will be on the air with content when other radio show take their normal commercial breaks at :15, :30, and :45 past the hour. So he’s hoping to get some commercial channel surfers to land on his show and sample what is an excellent product.

An Alaska Political Cartoon —

Fly Into The Sun — If you have morsels you’d like shared in this column please email me at [email protected].