By electing Michael Dunleavy to the governor’s mansion, Alaska unknowingly ushered in a Trojan horse.
Elected during a recession, Dunleavy made reassuring campaign promises about helping our economy, supporting our university, improving educational systems, doing positive things for transportation, and jobs. He claimed to be dead-set against taxing Alaskans. Mostly, he stressed that he was tall.
After his election, Dunleavy’s initial budget — created by the imported Outsider Donna Arduin — proposed crippling cuts to the ferry system, grievous injury to the university, unaffordable increases in fees for elders in Pioneer Homes, damaging cuts to Medicaid reimbursement, and shifted cost burdens to municipalities around the state, rerouting local monies into the state’s coffers.
Dunleavy was a last-minute no-show for a fisheries debate during his campaign in October 2018. Once elected, Dunleavy tried to route 50% of the state’s fisheries tax — that had previously gone back to the communities that collect it — into the state’s budget, undermining local economies. Protests by fishermen erupted; his no-show for that debate began to make sense. His budget went so far as pulling $400 million of revenue from the North Slope Borough.
Having professed concern over the finances of individual Alaskans and the economy that their good jobs support, his cuts have cost many their jobs. We are all familiar with the reduction of the Alaska Marine Highway after Dunleavy had said he had “no plan to hack, cut or destroy” the ferry system, and now just one of 11 vessels is running, leaving communities in Southeast with unreliable access to food, basic supplies, and safe transportation into the larger towns. Hundreds have lost good jobs.
In many 2018 interviews, Dunleavy repeated that he wanted to start a “dialogue” with his budget. While legislators held town halls all over the state to hear from Alaskans, Dunleavy failed to show.
After announcing his budget, Dunleavy held several controlled-entry, closed-door “public” events to explain his budget, often meaning he had to sneak in through a side door to avoid the protesters out front. Dunleavy’s behavior of evading the public has continued: When Dunleavy had a news conference to announce his proposed 2020 budget, he took limited questions and then departed the room. And on Jan. 14, he was a no-show for a “Talk of Alaska” radio show, leading some to dub him “Duck ‘n’ Runleavy.”
Dunleavy has been able to make it to Outside conservative news media sites, claiming he is just trying to implement policies to support average Alaskans, the ones he can’t face up to in person. Contrary to his claim that the Recall Dunleavy campaign was run by leftists out to change the outcome of his election, Dunleavy has never acknowledged the huge list of business owners, including Republicans and even previous supporters of his, who came out early in opposition to his proposed budget. These were Alaska business owners, myself among them, who have lived and intend to die here, who look to those in Juneau to manage state revenues and expenditures wisely, in a stable fashion, and in support of not just the physical infrastructure but also the human infrastructure of our great state.
Having argued that taking money out of the hands of individual Alaskans was a bad idea, he is now using more than a half-million dollars of state money to sue the public employees’ union, intending to undermine good jobs and take money out of the hands of regular Alaskans.
The list of Dunleavy’s offenses against Alaskans in service to outside interests is long, and those mentioned above are only a few. In the areas of medicine (Medicaid reimbursement), the administration of Alaska Psychiatric Institute, teaching, the judicial system, homelessness, senior care, preservation of our environment, energy and public safety support for Native communities, and directing that sole-source contracts be given to a financial contributor’s family member, Alaska deserves better than a tall man who simply puts on a kuspuk and claims to support Alaskans.
We deserve a true leader, who can help lead Alaska out of this recession and into a changing future. We do not need a governor who will turn our state into another West Virginia by selling off our assets to Outside bidders. For Alaska’s future, please support the Recall Dunleavy campaign and vote this Trojan horse out of office.
Tina Tomsen, M.D., is a physician practicing in Anchorage. She graduated from Dimond High School in 1973 and returned in 1986 after completing her schooling at Rice University, the University of Oklahoma, Dartmouth and Baylor.
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