The Gloves Are Off As Marcum Seems To Be Working Hard To Get Her Libertarian Philosophy A Boost In Juneau (Corrected)

[Note:  Board will meet in their office at University Mall.  9am. You can Zoom in (and it's a better view than the teleconferencing at the LIO, at Zoom link as the work sessions: https://zoom.us/j/9074062894?pwd=VWxjem42YUloTnBFcTlpVWZVS0wwZz09

Zoom Meeting ID: 907 406 2894  Passcode: MoreMaps]

 I stayed home today and watched the meeting via Zoom.  In some ways you get a better view than you would in the audience at the Legislative Information Office.  But without the detailed maps online so you can zoom in and see exactly what's going on.  How many incumbents are paired?  How many incumbentless districts are there?  But you can see what's been done to the Muldoon are of East Anchorage.  The community - one made up of lots of diverse folks including a many of Anchorage's Hmong population - has been sliced and diced and connected on one end, it appears, to Eagle River, despite lots of testimony from both Muldoon and from Eagle River that ER should be its own district.  And the other end looks like it is paired with the hillside - connected over parkland, but not directly by roads.  

This is the Anchorage map Marcum presented today.  East Anchorage is twisted this way and that.  Part of it seems to go to ER.  Part to JBER.  Part to Hillside.  

This is a fairly high res image, so click to enlarge and focus

There's a great similarity to Marcum's very first map - Board Map v1 - which was roundly criticized by everyone because it paired lots of Democrats and linked East Anchorage to Eagle River.  Nicole Borromeo tried to improve it overnight and came up with v2.  But it's hard to start from a bad mad and make it a good map overnight.  Both v1 and v2 were so criticized that the Board tossed them in favor of v3 and v4.  Below is the Anchorage area map v1, listed on the Board's website under Obsolete Plans    

From  bottom left of this page

Well, the obsolete plan - see below - has been resurrected.

Board v1 map go to link for better view

For the most part, I try to report this factually.  I only slide into interpretation when I think the facts pointing toward my interpretation are pretty straightforward.  

Early on I was concerned about Bethany Marcum.  She's the executive director of the Alaska Policy Forum.  From Source Watch:

"APF is an affiliate member of the State Policy Network. SPN is a web of right-wing “think tanks” and tax-exempt organizations in 50 states, Washington, D.C., Canada, and the United Kingdom. As of January 2021, SPN's membership totals 163. Today's SPN is the tip of the spear of far-right, nationally funded policy agenda in the states that undergirds extremists in the Republican Party. SPN Executive Director Tracie Sharp told the Wall Street Journal in 2017 that the revenue of the combined groups was some $80 million, but a 2019 analysis of SPN's main members IRS filings by the Center for Media and Democracy shows that the combined revenue is over $120 million.[8] Although SPN's member organizations claim to be nonpartisan and independent, the Center for Media and Democracy's in-depth investigation, "EXPOSED: The State Policy Network -- The Powerful Right-Wing Network Helping to Hijack State Politics and Government," reveals that SPN and its member think tanks are major drivers of the right-wing, American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)-backed corporate agenda in state houses nationwide, with deep ties to the Koch brothers and the national right-wing network of funders.[9]"

From the Alaska Policy Forum's website we can see their Vision, Mission, and Goals.

VISION

Our vision is an Alaska that continuously grows prosperity by maximizing individual opportunities and freedom.

MISSION

Our mission is to empower and educate Alaskans and policymakers by promoting policies that grow freedom for all.

SEVEN PRINCIPLES OF SOUND PUBLIC POLICY

1. Free people are not equal, and equal people are not free.
2. What belongs to you, you tend to take care of; what belongs to no one or everyone tends to fall into disrepair.
3. Sound policy requires that we consider long-run effects and all people, not simply short-run effects and a few people.
4. If you encourage something, you will get more of it; if you discourage something, you will get less of it.
5. Nobody spends someone else’s money as carefully as he spends his own.
6. Government has nothing to give anybody except what it first takes from somebody, and a government that’s big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have.
7. Liberty makes all the difference in the world.

While taken totally out of context, these might seem like things many would embrace, this is a strongly anti-government, pro-Libertarian agenda.  What does #1 mean?  The Constitution doesn't say all people should be equal, but merely they should have the same opportunities and that they are equal before the law.  And with all the anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers calming their liberty is being violated, well, this is one part of the Conservative far right agenda to push individuals and to ignore collective responsibilities.  

But my basic point is that Marcum's job, what she gets paid to do when she's not on the Board, is to push Libertarian, anti-government values and legislation.  And it would be naive to believe that Dunleavy didn't know that when he appointed her to the Board.  And it is totally natural for her to be doing that on the Board.  And it appears that map v1 and the latest map she presented Thursday were intended to help shape a legislature that will be amenable to the Alaska Policy Forum's model legislation.  

I don't fault her for that.  But it is up to the rest of the Board to fight for maps that don't have a strong pro-far right bias.  So far, Board member Nicole Borromeo has been the one to strongly challenge Marcum.  

Marcum left and Borromeo right

Isn't it odd that after spending time making the first maps and getting maps from four other groups, that the Board is working from scratch to create an Anchorage map.  There are lots of examples of how to fairly redistrict the state.  There are reasonable Anchorage maps with low deviations and decent compactness, socio-economic integration.  There were weeks of traveling around the state to get feedback from the public, and Marcum has offered us a map at the last minute that looks a lot like the rejected v1 over all those other maps.  I'm guessing those that got her onto the Board are leaning on her to produce  better maps for them.  It's just a guess, but she was fighting hard today for  "an obsolete plan."

It's late.  There are other examples of things Marcum has pushed on the Board that show her moving in this direction.  But tomorrow the meeting starts again.  They'll be back at the Board's office at the University Mall, not the Legislative Information Office as originally scheduled.  At 9am.  

And here's someone else I don't know at all who seems to see the same things that I see.

PLEASE PLEASE TESTIFY tomorrow for redistricting! Please support Nicole's map because it is more compact, respects individual neighborhood boundaries, and does not split up East Anchorage into Eagle River and South Anchorage districts. pic.twitter.com/8uCLoGfvr8

— AKroadweed (@AKroadweed) November 5, 2021

It's my understanding that all redistricting plans have been challenged in the courts.  So we can expect the same this time.  This time the process has been more open than in the past and the general public has had phone and online access to all the Board meetings.  And there's been a lot more coverage by the mainstream media and social media than in the past.  And the third party groups were much more prepared.  

Season One - "The Board Approves A Plan" ends next week - by Nov 10.  Then comes Season Two - In the Courts.  There will be a bit of a break, but the courts don't dilly dally with redistricting challenges because if the maps aren't finalized by around June 1, the division of elections won't have time for candidates to know what districts they're in.  {Correction:  So the old map, in that case, would be in place until 2024.  [The challenged map will be the map used in 2022, not the old map.] Thanks to TB for catching that error.)