As it currently stands, there are five seats that currently have no challengers: Anchorage’s House Districts 16 and 21, Bethel’s House District 38, North Slope’s House District 40 and Fairbanks’ Senate District P.
Off to the June 1 candidate filing deadline.
The Alaska Supreme Court didn’t need to hear oral arguments in the Alaska Redistricting Board’s second appearance before them to find the board “again engaged in unconstitutional political gerrymandering to increase one group’s voting power at the expense of others.”
The party-line votes weren’t at all surprising, but what was surprising was the amount of dirty laundry that members Borromeo and Bahnke aired against their conservative colleagues.
Dahlstrom is generally viewed as one of the more competent Republican officials in Dunleavy’s orbit and should have some centrist appeal.
Borromeo takes aim at the board’s Litigation Committee and board counsel Matt Singer, arguing they were only supposed to handle day-to-day business and were “not intended to usurp the board’s governance powers.”
The budget links $650 of the payment to a critical vote that has been impossible to secure in recent years: accessing the constitutional budget reserve.
The ruling came down to the board’s decision to treat the JBER/Eagle River Senate district as sacrosanct simply because they believed both were conservative.
“The new question for the court to answer is does remand cure a gerrymander?” asked Eva Gardner, the attorney for the Girdwood plaintiffs. “Could a board launder its illegitimate business through the courts? The answer has to be no.”
Girdwood plaintiffs: ‘These board members do not deserve the benefit of the doubt’