A major incident in the waning days of the 2010 campaign was the handcuffing of reporter Tony Hopfinger following a town hall meeting in Anchorage. In spite of the misinformation swirling around the situation (by all accounts other than that of his employer, the Alaska Dispatch), the security detail didn’t do anything inappropriate from a law enforcement perspective. But this wasn’t a law enforcement situation. It was a political event.
In time, there were various media accounts of what happened, most of them following the Dispatch line, and a few following Halcro and Murkowski’s lead in suggesting that Joe himself had ordered the arrest. The media wasn’t too interested in our perspective. They liked the persecuted journalist line, replete with First Amendment champion being handcuffed for asking Joe Miller questions. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
On that particular occasion, I happened to be home observing Sabbath as is my habit. But when I found out about the goings on I was appalled. My perspective was that there was no need to protect Joe Miller from anyone, unless we believed that his life was in danger, or he was at risk of great bodily harm. As cynical as it may sound, with apologies to Joe, I thought that nothing could have been better for our cause than for Joe Miller to have been roughed up.
My frustration led to a decision to launch my own investigation into what happened in order to find out just how the Drop Zone had wound up at the event in the first place, and why they had thought it necessary to do what they did. The Drop Zone was the security detail who handcuffed Hopfinger.
In the days leading up to the incident, our Events Coordinator, Adele Morgan, at the behest of the school district, was contractually required to have a security plan. So she called Dirk Moffatt and asked him to round up some folks who could carry out the required security plan. Dirk, in turn, began recruiting a few Joe Miller supporters and volunteers to stand by at the town hall in case they were needed. One of the folks he contacted was former local radio talk show host, and Republican candidate for Lt. Governor, Eddie Burke. When Dirk asked him to work security at the town hall event, he offered he could probably do one better. He would call Bill Fulton (who was later determined to be an FBI informant) over at Drop Zone and ask him to volunteer his guys for the event. Bill agreed to provide security on a volunteer basis, though we later paid him to avoid an FEC complaint when the donation-in-kind wasn’t reported in FEC filings.
When they arrived, according to Robert Campbell, they were told to be as inconspicuous as possible. He didn’t want any confrontations. Robert reportedly told them they weren’t to do anything. They just needed to be there as a presence.
However, the whole thing apparently got off on the wrong foot when Hopfinger followed Joe into the bathroom before the town hall began. When Tony began questioning Joe in the bathroom, it did not go over very well. A guy should at least be given enough room to do his business in private.
The town hall was said to have gone off without a hitch. Our folks were happy with the standing-room only turnout, and I was told Joe did a stellar job. Interestingly enough, Hopfinger never even attempted to ask a question during the open mic segment.
However, when the event was over Hopfinger decided it was time for a personal question-and-answer session while the candidate while he was trying to exit the building. According to several eyewitnesses, he cut Joe off in the hall and began sticking a microphone in his face, bumping into Joe and badgering him with questions. Joe turned and headed for another exit. As he did, the security detail blocked the hall so he could not be followed. Tony became irate and began to act out. Security tried to calm him down, and asked him to leave the premises. He refused. After a back and forth or two, Hopfinger tried to push his way through, at one point putting both hands on the chest of a bystander and shoving him up against a locker hard enough that the gentleman’s head slammed against the locker. Bill ordered him handcuffed, and the police were called.
Campaign Manager Robert Campbell witnessed the whole thing, calling his reticence to just step in and let Hopfinger go his “biggest mistake of the campaign.” But Campbell was also a former police officer and State prosecutor. He said from a law enforcement perspective, it was a slam dunk that Hopfinger’s behavior was a classical assault. But in retrospect, he also knew that the incident was a public relations nightmare that probably cost us a lot of votes. And in a race so close that losing five thousand votes to Murkowski was a game-changer, ballot issues notwithstanding, it probably was a major factor in the final outcome.
In my investigation of the incident, however, I came on to other information that is curious, if not outright suspicious. Anchorage talk radio host Glen Biegel recounted the next day seeing nine members of the Dispatch staff (or associates) at the event. This presence was unprecedented, as the Dispatch typically sent one or, at most, two reporters to any given event. The owner of the Dispatch even showed up for the festivities. Why would a putative statewide media outlet have virtually their whole staff at one event? And why would they not ask Miller questions while there was an open microphone on the floor if what they really wanted was information? I am convinced it was a staged event.
Before realizing what had gone on out in the hall with the handcuffing, Senior Adviser Walter Campbell remembered overhearing a young man he could not identify bragging that “this couldn’t have worked out any better for us.” He said at the time the comment struck him as strange. He didn’t know what the kid was talking about, but it all came into focus when he found out about the handcuffing.
When the police arrived on the scene, Mr. Hopfinger’s wife was overheard complaining that Miller security had taken a camera and erased the recording of the event. According to multiple witnesses, that never happened. And Mrs. Hopfinger (aka Amanda Coyne) declined an offer from APD, who overheard the conversation, to take the camera to the crime lab for recovery. They assured her that they could recover anything that might have been erased. We never heard another word about the allegation. Apparently, it was just a case of political theater gone bad. In truth, they knew what had happened and weren’t interested in video tape of the incident coming out.
Contrary to the narrative that went viral, Joe Miller did not himself hire Drop Zone, direct anyone else to hire them, or otherwise direct them to do any of the things that they did. In fact, he didn’t even know they were going to be there until he arrived. And by the time the handcuffing incident happened, Joe was already out of the building, or in the process of exiting the building, on the way to his next stop. He didn’t even witness the event. It was completely out of his control. The only thing he could have done differently was to throw Bill Fulton and the boys under the bus. Undoubtedly that would have been beneficial to Joe politically. But it wouldn’t have been right and Joe refused to do it.
In a riotous twist of irony, months after the campaign, multiple members of the Alaska Dispatch staff began peddling the theory of a federal conspiracy against Joe Miller to influence the outcome of the election. After Drop Zone Security Chief Bill Fulton disappeared and was named as a FBI informant in the case of a Fairbanks militia leader, Dispatch reporter Jill Burke openly speculated (as did the LA Times) about Bill’s possible role in a Federal conspiracy to bring about the handcuffing incident and therefore destroy Joe Miller’s electoral chances. Sounds like paranoia to me, but truth is stranger than fiction. And knowing what I know, I can only say that if such a thing did indeed happen, chances are, the Dispatch was in on it.
