(Former Attorney General Treg Taylor, his wife Jodi, and their five children – photo From His Campaign Website)
Yesterday, Alaska certified the the results of the August 18th primary election. Former Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor received 11,928 votes for governor, a winning number to make it into this year’s top-4 run-off for governor. However, Lieutenant Governor Dahlstrom announced on Friday that none of the 11,928 votes Taylor received for governor will count this year. So, if you voted for any other candidate your voted counted, but if you were one of the conservatives who voted for Taylor, you’re SOL.
This is what the raw exercise of political power looks like, choosing which ballots will count, and which ones won’t, based on which candidate the voter chose. This year, there was a concerted effort to keep Treg’s name off the ballot, even at the expense of disenfranchising nearly 12,000 conservative voters. That is not a small thing. It’s also not the first time.
In 2022, I faced a similar concerted effort to disenfranchise the majority of Wasilla voters who voted for me in the general election. Even after the election, my opponent was still demanding that votes for me not be counted and that one of the candidates who received far fewer votes should be elected.
I did not endorse Treg Taylor, but there is nothing American about counting ballots for establishment-backed candidates and throwing ballots in the trashcan when a voter casts a vote that the status quo doesn’t like.
My hat is off to Treg for running, and for being enough of a threat to the political establishment for them to go after him like this in a very public way. Conservative candidates are required to jump over hurdles that no other candidate would be required to in the same situation. In Treg’s case it came down to his efforts to protect the privacy of his more than 300 rental tenants. He provided the amount of income he receives from his rental properties on his financial disclosure. Other candidates have omitted that information entirely and still been permitted to be on the ballot. Not Treg.
He came back with an offer to provide the first name and last initial of every single tenant, and more information if it would not be put online, but that was deemed unacceptable. In a world of AI, where a person’s name and physical address going online can subject them to unwanted attention and worse from former spouses, past boyfriends, and political critics of your landlord, there should be protections in place to keep that from happening. Treg stood in the gap on behalf of his tenants and they used that against him.
None of Treg’s more than 300 tenants chose to run for office. Their privacy should not be restricted because someone else decided to, especially when other, less conservative, candidates have been treated far differently.
Unfortunately, the more conservative you are, the more hurdles are likely to be put in your way when it comes time to run for office. In the 2022 election, I was required to spend nearly the entire campaign in the courtroom and digging through documents from over a decade ago. The fix was supposed to be in. In the middle of the campaign, I was required to dig up and turn over more than 30,000 pages of personal documents to my political opponent. After the two-week trial, my family and I were forced to get a second mortgage on our 3-bedroom home just to pay for the legal costs of serving in public office. For us, this is the cost of my being a conservative figure in the public square today. Others who have come before us have paid far more dearly. My former classmate Charlie Kirk paid with his life.
I would very much like to vote for Treg in November. I happen to think he was the most electable Republican in the field this year (which is likely why he became such a target early on in the campaign). Alaska looks just a little less American when our state officials are involved in disenfranchising tens of thousands of Alaska voters in such a brazen fashion.
Candidates who mouth conservative talking points are a dime a dozen. The Republican Party is full of them. Those who actually fight to keep Alaska from turning blue are far more rare. You can know them by the amount of fire they draw from the political establishment in both parties. It’s not hard to draw fire in this state, just maintain a conservative voting record as a legislator. To hold such a record is to draw fire. There are no exceptions to this in Juneau.
Conservatives, voters and candidates alike, shouldn’t have to jump over extra hurdles just to get to the finish line and have their votes counted, but that is the political reality we live in today. More power to the few, like Treg, Joe Miller and Lora Reinbold, who have been willing to pay a public price for the sake of the next generation. For me, that next generation has names and faces, some of whom I kiss and tuck in at night. They are worth it. Keep fighting the good fight.
