Readers may have received mailers promoting Carol Hafner as a progressive Democrat for the U.S. Senate in Alaska and attacking candidate Mary Peltola as a “MAGA lite.”
Trouble is, Hafner has never visited or lived in Alaska. A quick search online reveals that she has made other longshot forays into politics in both Alaska and Wyoming, taking about 14% in the Democratic primaries there. It’s also a family affair: her son Eric is simultaneously running for a U.S. House seat for Alaska while serving a 20-year sentence in federal prison for making bomb threats and threats to public officials.
It just doesn’t get any better than this, folks!
Or, does it. Witness a quasi-official campaign financially supported and promoted by a Republican super PAC that is spending roughly $180,000 for mailers and media on her behalf “with the apparent goal of boosting her onto the general election ballot” (Alaska Beacon). Meanwhile, the false and misleading attacks on Mary Peltola serve to sow division and dilute votes for a legitimate candidate in a ranked choice election. Interestingly, it is just this sort of dark money corrupting our elections that ranked choice voting seeks to prevent. It seems they’ve found a way around it.
Larry Larson