US Senate Candidate Joe Miller warned today of dire consequences should Alaskans reward powerful outside special interests by cooperating with their designs to buy Alaska’s senate seat.  

“It is instructive to look at where the money is coming from,” Miller said. “If money talks, as they say, Alaskans should be concerned. Any time you have powerful outside special interests lining up to give millions of dollars to candidates who claim to disagree with them, there ought to be some red flags going up.”

Both Democrat Mark Begich and Republican Dan Sullivan have donors and Independent Expenditure groups supporting them that have policy objectives contradicting the candidates’ rhetoric.

Dan Sullivan is running as a small-government fiscal and social conservative. In fact, last Friday on Anchorage talk radio, he went so far as to claim an allegiance to Tea Party principles. Yet many of his most prominent donors are card-carrying members of the Republican Establishment and long-time advocates of big government crony capitalism and socially liberal policies. 

For instance: 

•    Dan Sullivan has claimed to support traditional family values, yet his campaign is funded by Paul Singer and Friends for an American Majority to the tune of more than $150K to date. Singer has openly pushed for fundamental changes to the Republican Party, to include embracing gay marriage and amnesty for illegal aliens. He is reported to have funded LGBT efforts with more than 10 million dollars in recent years. In addition, three of the corporate executives numbered among Sullivan’s personal donors put their names to an amicus brief submitted in a February case before the Supreme Court advocating for gay marriage. Are we to believe that these folks are supporting Sullivan because he will be an advocate for traditional family values?
•    Sullivan claims to stand firmly against the Surveillance State, yet one of its architects is a personal donor – John Negroponte, George W. Bush’s first National Intelligence Director, who oversaw the integration of all sixteen intelligence agencies (both military and civilian, foreign and domestic), inclusive of the modern-day NSA.
•    Sullivan claims to be aligned with the Tea Party, yet he is endorsed by the US Chamber of Commerce that has pledged no less than 50 million dollars to defeat Tea Party candidates across the country. He is also backed by Karl Rove’s American Crossroads SuperPAC, and has the strong backing of Lindsey Graham and John McCain’s Political Action Committees. In Alaska, he counts among his supporters infamous former ARP Chair Randy Ruedrich and current Party Vice-Chair Frank McQueary, both of whom have been at war with the conservative wing of the state party for years. 

•    Sullivan claims to be a fiscal conservative, yet counts among his personal donors many of the architects of the bailouts – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Big Banks, Wall Street and the IMF – and numerous other magnates of international finance. These include: former President of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick; President and CEO of the Institute of International Finance, Timothy Adams; Goldman Sachs Executive, Faryar Shizad; former Chairman of the Board of the New York Federal Reserve, Stephan Friedman; Rockefeller and Co. CEO, Reuben Jeffrey III; the wife of former Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson; and former Bush Chief of Staff Josh Bolton of Rock Creek Global. 
•    Sullivan claims to want to “fight for Alaska,” but his campaign is funded in large part by lobbyists, attorneys and executives from multinational corporations such as General Electric, Time Warner Cable, Facebook, Abercrombie and Fitch, Exxon Mobile, BP, Rio Tinto, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, The World Bank, The Institute of International Finance, JH Whitney and Co., Boeing, Microsoft, IMB, and more. When tough choices come regarding America’s financial future, who do you think he’ll listen to?

Senator Mark Begich, on the other hand, is circulating a petition on social media decrying the effects of the Citizens United decision on politics. 

However, just this week “Put Alaska First PAC,” a “dark money” group working for Begich’s re-election, transacted a $4 million media buy, a unprecedented amount for a small market like Alaska. The very next day, the Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee announced that it had bought $3.5 million in advertising. When combined with Begich’s reported $2.8 million on hand, the junior senator already has more than $10 million dollars committed to his re-election.

Mark Begich’s hypocrisy in this regard is staggering. 

He has taken millions in PAC money from multinational corporations and big labor already, and it’s only May. Undoubtedly there will be more independent expenditures to come, as Barack Obama and Harry Reid pull out all the stops in an attempt to hold a Democrat Majority in the US Senate.

Joe Miller concluded, “There’s a lot of cognitive dissonance out there. But at the end of the day, whether one is propped up by big multinational corporations, big government crony capitalists, big labor, or other Washington special interests, what Alaskans want to know is who will stand and fight for their Constitutional liberties. It is apparent that the big-monied Washington interests believe they can buy Alaska’s senate seat. The consequences of that would be catastrophic. I don’t believe Alaskans will cooperate.”