Some Reasons Why The 2 Eagle River House Districts Should Be Paired And The East Anchorage/Muldoon Districts Should Be Paired

 The Alaska Redistricting Board is on the verge of NOT pairing the two Eagle River house districts into one senate districts, and not pair the Muldoon east Anchorage districts into a senate district.  Instead, when the got a sense of the Board, it was 3 (Marcum, Binkley, and Simpson) - 2 (Bahnke and Borromeo) to pair one ER district with JBER and the other with the northeast Muldoon district.  Here are a list of reasons why that's a bad idea.

1. The key argument made for pairing the two ER house districts with JBER and Muldoon was the common Socio-economic Integration (SEI is one of the state criteria for districts)  of having active and retired military in those areas.  There were no numbers provided - just “a lot”.  In fact, there are retired military and veterans all over Anchorage.  There are other SEI factors like income, ethnicity,  and lot and house size that shows these districts are not SEI.  

2. There is no shortage of support for the military in Alaska. They have discounts at most retail outlets.  They have discounts at the DMV, at the University of Alaska.   There's Veterans Preference for jobs,  tax credits for employers who hire vets, and discounts for fishing and hunting licenses.  Discounts at state parks and on the state ferries for disabled Vets,  and discounts for all vets on the Alaska Railroad.  They have a special lounge at the airport.  Everyone loves veterans.  

3.  20% of the Senate is made up of people who have served in the military, though veterans make up 11.9% of the adult population. There are  at least four more in the House.  And there are committees for Veterans Affairs in the House and  Senate.  Plus there is a State Department of Military and Veteran Affairs.  There is no shortage of support for veterans.

4.  There are no Hmong, Samoan, Latino,  Somali, Korean Senators or representatives in the Alaska Senate or House.  These are the people who suffer the most discrimination and are more likely to be in lower income levels.  Their voice is diminished by these pairings, while the military is already one of the most favored populations in Alaska.

5. Although the ER-East Anchorage pairing might seem contiguous, the vast majority of people in the ER district live eight or more miles from Muldoon, while the two Muldoon districts are small enough together to walk across in a couple of hours.  And the populated areas of the two ER districts are far more compact than the ER-Muldoon district.  It seems that some Board members emphasize compactness when that favors their interests, deviation when that does.  They tell us that all of Anchorage is SEI so it doesn’t matter within the Anchorage Borough.  But now their key argument for these Senate pairings is SEI of the military population.  And they even said out loud that this would create two ER Senate seats.  And we all know ER is far more Republican than East Anchorage.  Eagle River's two Assembly members are much more conservative than the East Anchorage Assembly members.  [SEI = Socio-Economic Integration, one of the State requirements for districts.]

6.  While the point was made that ER and JBER folks shop in Muldoon, Muldoon folks are far less likely to go to ER or the Base to shop. And if they aren’t connected to the military, getting on base is a hassle.  

7.  East Anchorage, along Muldoon has a bustling and diverse community that works together.  There are many people of color and immigrants in that area.  Splitting them up and pairing them with the predominantly white ER weakens their representation and violates the spirit if not the letter of the VRA.  

9.  Last redistricting round, the Board paired an East Anchorage district with an Eagle River district for the Senate pairing.  The result was that the only African-American state Senator lost her next election.  This was not an accident.  And it appears the same sort of gerrymandering is being attempted with these ER and East Anchorage districts again to the detriment of very underrepresented populations.   

Please pair the two ER districts together and the East Anchorage districts together. 

The Alaska Redistricting Board's Dramatic Pleas For Military Voters And JBER's 3.5% Voter Turnout [Updated 8/31/22]

The Republican majority of the Alaska Redistricting Board created elaborate stories to justify pairing a Muldoon house district with Eagle River.  When that was rejected by the Alaska Supreme Court, they made even more passionate pleas to keep JBER with Chugiak in a state senate district.   It was mostly about the military connections,  and how the holy soldiers would be deprived of their representation if paired with the unholy (read: Democratic) downtown. 

Simpson:  "The most partisan is the proposed pairing of JBER and downtown.  This would diminish the voice of our valued military personal.  I can’t accept that.  I will vote for 3B."

Simpson: "I find the pairing of 23 and 24 ER and Chugiak the more compelling solution.  Pairing JBER with downtown overlooks a conflict of interest and opens us to a challenge to that constituency.  Chugiak has developed as a bedroom community for the military families.  They send their kids to middle school and high school there.  That testimony was compelling to that pairing."

Marcum:  "I’m very uncomfortable with Option 2 because it moves JBER and links it with D17.  It makes the least sense for any possible pairings.  Downtown is the arts and tourism, not what makes up JBER.  It is used to wake up the military community.  Choosing option 2 is an intentional intent to break up that natural pairing.  JBER should be with Chugiak" [note, these were my notes and I suspect I missed some words, but I did get the tone and intent correct.] 

Marcum:  "I would like say on behalf of our military.  Implications for military will be major.  Dominated by downtown voters.  JBER voice will be lost.  Ironic that those who have sacrificed the most."

You can see each of them and Member Binkley on the video on this blog post.   

[UPDATED August 31, 2022:  I knew I had their comments and my responses somewhere, but couldn't find them when I wrote this.  They're in this post - at the end.  My comments are in red which should make that section easier to find.]

So, let's look at that lost voice.  .   Here are the results from House District 18 for August 16 primary election.  Those brave soldiers barely whispered

 

Note that the JBER precinct has 7,528 registered voters out of 12,157 voters total.  That means they comprise about 60% of the voters in the district.  Yet only 277 JBER precinct voters actually voted out of 1184 total votes.  Although they are 60% of the total voters, they were only 23% of the people who actually voted.  The State's chart shows that only 3.68% of JBER voters voted!

The military tend not to vote.  All the candidates with parts of their district on base know this.  The fact that campaigning on base is difficult - candidates aren't allowed to go door to door for example - doesn't bother candidates too much because the military tend not to vote in large numbers.  Particularly for state offices.  (I haven't found the precinct by precinct stats for the US Senate or House races which might have gotten a slightly higher percent of JBER voters.)

So all the theatrics by Budd Simpson, Bethany Marcum, and to a lesser extent John Binkley about how JBER needed to be paired with Chugiak so they could be fairly represented and not, God forbid, with downtown, was just that - an act to capture one more Republican state senate seat.  

Fortunately, the Alaska Supreme Court saw through the dramatics, thanks, in large part to minority Redistricting Board members Melanie Bahnke and Nicole Borromeo.  

Board Approves Senate Pairings

Continued from the previous post on the Monday afternoon session.  NOTE: All the district numbers they used are subject to change as they try to make the numbers go in some sort of sequential order around the state.

2.  They made their Senate pairings (that is they decided which house districts were to be paired as Senate districts.

Southeast Senate Districts:

Double click to enlarge

Districts 3 and 4.  They decided it made sense that the two districts that have Juneau in them should be one Senate district.   So districts 3 and 4 (I think 3 is downtown Juneau and south of Juneau and 4 is the Mendenhall Glacier area and north.) {Egan}

Districts 1 and 2.  With Juneau paired, you have only one other pairing left.  They mentioned that this pairs incumbent  Senators Kookesh (D) and Stedman (R), but this is unavoidable because they had already put them in the same House district.







Fairbanks Senate Districts

Fairbanks
Board member Holm:

It's a little better if you click on it

7&9 {Pairs Democrats Paskvan and Thomas}
8&12  {empty?}
10&11 {Coghill}

From my written notes:
Holm: Overwhelming reason for two pairings: 10&11 both have military contingent
7 goes out to Bush area, a little different from 9, but fits together well - people in Farmers’ Loop area.
8 really doesn’t have any connection with anyone down the valley, so it makes sense to put it with 12 - (the Valdez district)
Adding 2500 people to Fairbanks changes things. Used to be split.
Still have five districts - 8 connected to 12
Doubles up Thomas, I think, is in seven. Not sure where 8 goes. I think Paskvan is in 9
Coghill is in 11, nobody in 10.
No one in house district 8. Whose the Sen from Delta?
Torgerson: Coghill - 12 and 8 will be a new Senator.
Essentially, two truncated. How did that work.
Torgerson: I’ll point out, 12 is the Valdez district. A little outside of Fairbanks.
Holm: They’ve been paired for a long time.
Brody: We voted not to consider Senators in our discussion. What are the plus and minuses of having a vacant district or each one having a district. [No one picked up this discussion.]
5-0 yes adopted.

Double click to enlarge

Matsu Senate Districts
Matsu
3:57
Torgerson:  Testimony was to put Wasilla and Palmer separate.
15 goes with Anchorage 19 - split district with Anchorage
14&17 - Palmer to rural Matsu
13&16 - Wasilla/Big Lake/Pt. McKenzie
If they want to be separate - overwhelmingly. 
Brody:  Bothers me with the odd numbers above and below Anchorage.  Rational way to hook odd number of Kenai to Matsu?
Torgerson: If rational no.  If a way?  yes.

I'm not sure how this affects incumbent Senators. [Update June 7:  Phil Munger in a comment below says Menard is in 17 and Huggins is in 14.]



Kenai Senate Districts
I'm not completely sure about the Kenai districts.  The maps aren't too helpful.
5 and 6  are paired.  I believe this is Kenai and Soldotna going on down to Homer. {Wagoner}
34 (North Kenai Peninsula and the road all the way to Seward) & 33 (South Anchorage) {Giesel}
I don't know how this affects incumbents.

Anchorage Senate Districts

My understanding is that Chair Torgerson worked on these with the staff.  Using AFFR's map with Anchorage incumbent locations, I'm guessing at the incumbents in each district.  Don't bet on the incumbents, that's speculation.

• 21/18 Majority of Muldoon with Eagle River (dark green) {Davis - ER possibly Dyson?UPDATE: No, I'm told there is no pairing here, just Davis.}

  

  Click to enlarge - names are community councils

• 20/23 - Russian Jack/ Elmendorf  (yellow) {Wielechoski?}
• 22/32 (Abbot Loop Mid Hillside, Huffman/O’Malley (puke green) {Meyer?}
• 24/25 - downtown (blue){Ellis}
• 26/27 Midtown/UMed/Campbell Park (Brown){empty?}
• 28/29 SandLake/Lake Turnagain (pinkish - north and south of the airport){ French?}
• 31/30Taku and Bayshore/Klatt (burnt orangish){McGuire?}
• 33/34 (Hillside-South Anchorage/Kenai Peninsula to Seward) {Giesel}

Native Senate Districts 

39/40 Nome/North Slope {Olson}
37/38  Aleutians West-Bethel/Wade Hampton-Matsu-Denali-Fairbanks {Hoffman}
35/36  Kodiak/Bethel-Dillingham {Stevens}



Here's some speculation on the Senate incumbents who I think are paired:

Southeast:  This one appears unavoidable, at least given the House districts they created. Stedman and Kookesh live in the same district - though people say that Stedman has two houses each in a different district.  With the loss of a House district, this is hard.  Since Kookesh is Native, it may raise issues with the Department of Justice.





Fairbanks:  They've paired two Democratic Senators while there is a vacant Senate seat nearby.  Seems they could have figured a way to work this out if they had wanted to.

Anchorage:  Bettye Davis, a Democrat and the only African-American in the Legislature has been paired with the Eagle River district.  [UPDATE June 7:  I've promoted Stoltz from the House to the Senate - sorry, it was late last night when I finished this - and I was told today that Dyson lives the current 19, so there was no pairing of Sen. Bettye Davis with another incumbent] in I don't know where the Eagle River/Chugiak Senators live, but since Tom Stoltz is from Chugiak, I'm guessing he's in the district paired with Matsu and that Davis is paired with Fred Dyson (R.)  Eagle River has been a pretty safe Republican area.  There is an open Senate district not far from Davis' Anchorage district, though the lines would have had to have been drawn differently to make them contiguous.  I'm assuming the two Eagle River districts were not paired because each has a Republican Senator. 

A lot of Republicans would like to see an end to the even split in the Senate that has led to a coalition majority there.  (For that matter Democrats would too, but the other way.)  These Senate pairings would seem to make it a little harder for Democrats to maintain their ten seats.

Legislative Stats Update: House 420:40 Senate 308:26 Both 728:66

	HOUSE		SENATE		TOTALS
	INTRO	PASSED BOTH	INTRO	PASSED BOTH	INTRO	PASSED BOTH
Bills	420	40	308	26	728	66
Joint Res.	53	16	29	6	82	22
Concurrent Res.	22	6	16	5	38	11
Resolutions	15	10	10	6	25	16
Special Con. Res.	0	0	0	0	0	0

[These numbers come from BASIS bills statistics, Wednesday afternoon, March 24.]

So we still have an 11 to 1 ratio between bills introduced and bills that have passed both houses.

Let's compare with two weeks ago:
March 24: House 420:40  Senate 308:26  Both 728:66
March   8: House 412:38  Senate 302:26  Both 714:64


You can click on the committee links to see which bills they have to hear.  
[These numbers come from BASIS-Bills-Bills in Committee]

Finance - has 80 House Bills to deal with (plus 17 more resolutions and Senate bills)
[On 3/9 they had 72 bills]
Resources -39 [3/8 - 38]
Health and Social Services - 34 [41]
Labor and Commerce - 33 [35]
State Affairs -32 [37]
Rules - 25 (plus 15 more resolutions and senate bills) [21] (Note: Rules is the last stop before going to the House Floor)
Judiciary - 21 [28]
Transportation -18 [25]
Education - 16 (also not counting Senate Bills) [20]
Community and Regional Affairs 14 [19]

Energy -13 [15]
Fisheries -11 [15]
Military & Veterans' Affairs -1 [1]
Econ. Development, Trade & Tourism - [1]



I've learned that it usually helps to check things out before jumping to conclusions.  So while I often conjecture, I try to leave the conclusions open ended.  I did talk to the House State Affairs staff and the chair briefly to see why they have 27 bills, but Thursday they are only going to start at 9:30am (instead of the regular 8am) and they will only hear one bill, Sen. Menard's SB 43 to add a second verse to the Alaska State Song.

The answer was interesting.   Two common reasons bills are never heard - at least in State Affairs - are

1. The sponsor hasn't asked that they be heard.  They may have 27 House bills, but for most of them, the sponsors haven't requested that they be heard.  Chair Rep. Lynn says he won't hear a bill unless the sponsor requests it.  
2. There may be several bills on the same topic.  For example, there were three House bills on campaign expenditures in response to the US Supreme Court decision on Citizens United, and one from the Senate.  The bill that passes in its body's chamber first is the one that goes on through the other house. So, if the Senate version of a bill passes the Senate before the House version passes the House, the House bill gets dropped and the Senate version is the one that goes on.  And the Senate bill's sponsor gets credit if it becomes law. 

That got into a long discussion of why people introduce bills, a discussion that I'll save for later.  But the point here is that State Affairs is pretty much up to date. The key point though, in some cases there are good reasons why a committee may have a lot of unheard bills, or that a lot more bills are filed than are passed.

That's not to say that sometimes Chairs simply sit on bills they don't like to kill them and other such things. But there are also valid reasons.

Was Fairbanks Gerrymandered? Riley Challenge to Alaska Redistricting Board's 2013 Plan Part 1

[I started on this a couple of weeks ago, when I got a copy of the Riley challenge to the Redistricting Board's newest plan.  Since then the Board has also issued a response which you can see here.  Basically it affirms that the earth revolves around the sun, but denies most everything else. I'm not going to discuss the Board's response in this post.  I got it late and the post is already too long.  My point is to help people understand the challenges, but not decide the case.]

In this post I'm going to list some of the key allegation made by the plaintiffs about the redistricting plan along with their complete filing.  In this post I'm focusing just on the Fairbanks part of the challenges. In the end I left some things out and some in though they are speculative. 

1. The specific problems with the Fairbanks districts listed in the Riley court challenge.
2. Explanations of the terms (in red) 
3. Fairbanks maps so you can see the districts
4. Discussion of the claims made by Riley, though I'm leaving the truncation issue to a later post. 
5. The complete court document

1.    Specific Problems  (I'm quoting here from the Riley challenge; I've added the red.)

"FAIRBANKS HOUSE DISTRICT 3

14.  The Third Final Plan establishes the boundaries of House Districts [sic] 3 which fail to comply with Article VI, Section 8 of the Alaska Constitution in that it is not relatively compact.

FAIRBANKS HOUSE DISTRICTS

15.  The Third Final Plan establishes House Districts 4 and 5, which unnecessarily divides the campus of the University of Alaska and fails to comply with Article VI, Section 8 of the Alaska Constitution by drawing a boundary that unnecessarily divides an area that comprises an integrated socio-economic area. 

16.  The Third Final Plan fails to comply with Article VI, Section 8 of the Alaska Constitution by establishing House Districts 1-5 with unnecessarily higher deviations from the ideal district population and do not contain populations as near as practicable to the quotient obtained by dividing the population of the state by forty. 

FAIRBANKS SENATE DISTRICTS

17.  The Third Final Plan establishes Senate District B which is  unnecessarily non-contiguous and non-compact territory as required by prior Alaska Supreme Court cases.

18.  The Third Final Plan fails to comply with Article VI, Section 8 of the Alaska Constitution by drawing boundaries with unnecessarily higher deviations from the ideal district population and violates equal protection of voters rights to an equally weighted vote and the right to fair and effective representation.

TRUNCATION

25.  The Board's Truncation Plan for Senate Districts improperly considered improper factors (a) substantial changes from an unconstitutional Interim Plan as opposed to the prior Final Plan in effect for the 2010, b) incumbency protection relative to Senate District B; and (c) previously considered partisan voting patterns of persons within the Ester/Goldstream Area. 

2.  Explanations of Terms

What does this mean?  The US and Alaska constitutions require one-person-one-vote, thus there should be minimal deviation between districts.  The Alaska Constitution requires that house districts be compact, contiguous (all connected, not separated), and socio-economically integrated.

Deviation - The one-person-one-vote principle means that every district should be equal in population.  The 2010 Alaska Census counted 710,200 Alaskans.  There are 40 House districts.  Dividing the population by 40 yields 17,755 people per district as the ideal.  Deviation is the number (or percentage) of people in a district above or below that ideal number.  In the urban areas the goal is to keep deviations at or below 1% (177 people).  In the rural areas, in the first rounds of this process, when the Voting Rights Act required pre-clearance from the Department of Justice, the Board followed a rule that 10% was an absolute maximum allowable (but to be avoided if possible) total deviation in the state from the district with the highest positive deviation to one with the lowest negative deviation.

The general rule is that deviations should be as low as possible to achieve the other goals.

Compact - Districts should be as small and concentrated in area as possible.   One problem in achieving this in Alaska is that we have a lot of land and relatively few people.  Since all the districts need the same number of people, where there are lots of people (urban areas) it's easier to draw compact districts.  In rural areas it is harder to find 17,755 people and also keep the district compact.  It could get larger and/or have strange protrusions to capture villages here and there to get the population up.

Here's a table to show what this means more visually.

Examples of District Maps	House Districts	Senate Districts
	6 imaginary districts, each compact and contiguous	Made up of two house districts. Ideal options = 1&2      1&2     1&3 3&4      4&6     5&6 5&6      3&5     2&4   (The Board wanted the Senate districts to be made up of House districts in numerical order - 1&2, 3&4, etc.) Technically, 1&4 could be contiguous, but would be questionable and then 2 & 6 would be isolated.
	6 is the only  compact district. 3 & 5 have those extensions. 1, 4, & 2 are ridiculous. 1 and 4 are not contiguous. 3 is iffy.	The pairings would have to be as compact and contiguous as possible.  But I think the House districts are so bad, it would be impossible to create constitutional Senate districts.

Contiguous - Basically the districts should be one area without any breaks. In the squiggly map in the table, districts 4 and 1 are not contiguous, because there are areas not connected to the rest of the district.

In Alaska, there are islands connected to other land over water. They called this contiguous over water.  But the islands were too small to be a whole district.  See House District 32 in the new plan.  HD 32 connects Kodiak to Cordova and Yakutat.   When the Board decided to use the AFFER Matsu map instead of the Calista map, they were troubled that the Calista map connected north Anchorage to the rest of the district (Valdez and the pipeline corridor) over glaciers and uninhabited mountains. 

These two criteria are relatively easy to determine.  If you start with a squarish district, you may need to stretch it or have protrusions off the square to get a pocket of population here and there.  The question down the line will be whether those deviations from a tight compact district were necessary to meet other criteria, reflect geographic features (like a meandering river), reflect quirks in the census blocks,  or are done to include or exclude particular people or groups of people. 

Socio-economic integration - This is a little harder and more abstract.  In Alaska, keeping political units together is important.  A city, like Anchorage, or borough like the North Star Fairbanks Borough, is considered socio-economically integrated.  So combining Muldoon and Eagle River is considered ok since both neighborhoods are in Anchorage, even if they are economically different.  (They were combined in the previous plan, but not this one.)

The Board's job was to create equal  districts (minimal deviation) while balancing compactness, contiguity, and socio-economic integration.  When judging that, the Court has to determine if anomalies were due to the geography and population distribution or attempts to gerrymander.

Truncation:   Senate terms are for four years, while house terms are for only two.  Senate seats are also staggered.  Half (10) are voted on in one election and the other half (10) in the next election two years later.  If redistricting significantly changes the constituency of a senate seat, then a large number of the voters of the new district are represented by someone they didn't vote for.  Thus, senate seats with significant changes are subject to truncation.  This means that regardless of when the term is up for the sitting senator, the population should be able to participate in choosing their senator in the next election.

So, all the new districts whose terms expire in 2016 with a significant change will be up for election in the next election (2014).  Those up for election in 2014 will be up again anyway so they don't need to truncate.  But this messes up the staggered terms, so some have to be designated as two year terms and others as four year terms to get ten up for election one year and the other ten the next election. The 2012 election used a new redistricting plan in which all but one of the seats were truncated and then the Board assigned two or four year terms to them. And now they have to do that again. 

3.  Looking at Fairbanks

Click for bigger and clearer map

The numbers indicate the House District and the letters indicate the Senate District.  Two contiguous house districts make up one senate seat.  



The map shows districts 1, 2, and 3 completely and parts of districts 4, 5, and 6. In fact, HD 5 is large, and HD 6 is huge.  Here's a map that shows all of 4, 5, and 6.

Unfortunately the colors switch from map to map.  Fairbanks is in the center.  You can see 3B, 4B, and 5C.  (1A and 2A are too small to see in this map.)  House District 6 is that huge sea of blue along the Canadian border, around Fairbanks and back down the other side.  You might also note 9E.  It goes from Fishhook Road near Wasilla, to Valdez and then up the pipeline corridor to the edges of Fairbanks. 

4.  The Riley Challenges regarding Fairbanks

The Riley challenge's first complaint (14 in the court document) is that "House Districts [sic] 3 is not compact."  While it doesn't look all that big, HD 3 is long and stretched out, so they are claiming that people are further from each other than is necessary.  If this were the only available population in the area, this might be unavoidable, but I'm told there were plenty of people available to make a more compact district.

Yellow is HD 5 and dark blue is HD 4

The second complaint (15)  is that the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) is unnecessarily split between two house districts (4 and 5).  Political units are supposed to be kept intact if possible, but I'm not sure that the university campus qualifies.  Yet, common sense would keep the campus together unless there was a compelling reason to split it.  College campuses tend to vote more liberally than the general population.  I was told that the two precincts  (in the new 5) that voted Democratic in the 2012 election have been disrupted. One was put completely in the already Democratic leaning District 4 and the other (the University) was split between 4 and 5 . I don't know Fairbanks and I had trouble matching up the Board's maps to University maps, but I think the map gives a reasonably close approximation of where the University is.

I don't know where the dorms are and how they are split up, if at all.  And I don't know how many students register with their University address rather than their home address.  So I don't know how many actual voters are affected.



The third issue (16) raised is that districts 1-5 have unnecessarily high deviations.   Let's look at the Fairbanks deviations.  I've included HD 6.

House District	Senate District	Total Population	Percent Deviation From Ideal (17,755)	# Deviation
1		17,726	-0.16%	-29
2		17,738	-0.10%	-17
	A	35,464	-0.13%	-46
3		17,673	-0.46%	-82
4		17,786	0.17%	+31
	B	35,459	-0.14%	-51
5		17,837	0.46%	+82
6		17,807	0.29%	+52
	C	35,644	0.38%	134

The individual districts are all well under one percent deviation.  The total deviation from the lowest (-0.46%) to the highest (+0.46%) does come to 0.92%.  But that is still under one percent.  Anchorage, the biggest urban area (it's easier to have lower deviations where there are more people,)  has higher deviations.  On the face of it, I think these deviations should be fine.  UNLESS, it's clear that they could easily have been made lower, combined with other issues like compactness or contiguity or gerrymandering.    But gerrymandering hasn't been raised. (Well, not exactly true.  The word wasn't used but the truncation challenges suggest political intent.) And showing intent is pretty hard. 

The next two issues apply to Senate districts.

The fourth (17) is that Senate district B is unnecessarily non-contiguous.  HD 4 is a pretty large district (the first map above only shows part of it) and it's only connected to HD 3 at one little 2.5 mile spot that doesn't appear to have much population.

2.5 mile connection between HD 3 and 4

In contrast, much of HD 4 is connected in a long swath to HD 5 and they have the University split between them.  As it is, HD 5 is a strangely drawn district.  Most of it - I'm told all of it below the river - is uninhabited military bombing range.  Nearly all of the populated area is west of the City of Fairbanks.  There's a tiny jigsaw piece to the east of the City.  It doesn't appear to have much population.  And it looks like it's only contiguous with the rest because of the bombing range.  But I don't think one could drive to the main part of the district without going outside the district.

I understand that the courts have said contiguity doesn't require that people are able to drive from one part of the district to another.  But I suspect that ruling refers to rural districts with villages not connected to the road systems where it's hard to find enough population for a district.  Downtown Fairbanks is an entirely different situation.  

Here's the map of District 5. In the larger scale, the map's cut off on the left.  The inset has the whole map but it's tiny. (If they can't make a map with the whole district, does it mean it isn't compact?)

The Fairbanks News Miner has editorialized that the board should have paired HD 4 and HD 5 into one senate district  and HD 3 and HD 6 into another.

As I look at this, it seems like a reasonable idea.

• There's a long border between HD  5 and  HD 4 with connected neighborhoods.
• Pairing 4 and 5 would  reunite the university in a single senate district.  (Light blue circle.)
• Most of HD 5 is uninhabited bombing range and essentially the eastern part of HD 5 (big red circle on the lower right) is NOT contiguous with the west part in any real sense.  I don't think you can drive from one side to the other without going out of the district.  (Maybe you can go by boat along the river.)
• The real border between the populated area of HD 5 and HD 6 is a tiny little corridor. See the circle in red in the inset with an arrow pointing to where it would be if they showed the whole district on the map.  

And if you look at the deviation table, you'll see that HD 5 has 82 too many people and HD 3 has 82 too few people.  I wondered how many people lived in the east pocket of HD 5 and whether just giving that pocket to HD 3 would balance them.  Well, I was told there are about 500.  Too many. But having watched the Board move around population on the computer to find better borders, I'm convinced that there's a way to make some adjustments to get rid of this de facto non-contiguous pocket of voters.

But as it stands Senate district B (3&4) has a deviation of -51.
Senate district C (5&6) has a deviation of 134.

If you paired 3&6, the new senate district deviation would be +30.
The deviation for new senate district of 4&5 would be +113

Combined, the deviations would be lowered by 42 people.  That by itself is not much, but combined with all the other issues, it seems like these two senate seats were mispaired.

It also appears that  a senate pairing of HD4 & HD5 would have a greater chance of electing a Democratic senator than the way the Board paired them, which would be a good reason for some on the Board to prefer the HD3 & HD 4 and HD 5 & HD 6 pairings. 


TRUNCATION

There was one more Fairbanks related issue, truncation.  I think this post is already long and confusing enough without adding the truncation piece.  While the topics here are all very closely related, truncation is really a different issue and can be handled separately.  I'll do that in another post. You'll see that the Board was pretty spacy by that time.  I did post on the truncation Board meeting already for those who can't sleep without knowing more about this charge.  And that post links to a post two years earlier where I tried to explain truncation when it came up with the first plan. 

Below is a copy of the Riley challenge to the Board's most recent final plan.  As I mentioned at the beginning, the Board has replied to this challenge point by point and you can read that here.


Riley Challenge To July 2013 Alaska Redistricting Plan

PART II on Truncation is here.

Hoping For A Short, Boring Redistricting Board Meeting Monday - Here's Why

Quick Take:  The Board's job Monday is to either accept the Interim Plan as the Permanent Plan OR to 'show cause' why it shouldn't be the Permanent Plan.  

What does "show cause" mean?  Basically, it means they need to give good legal and/or factual reasons why, in this case, the Interim Plan, shouldn't be adopted.  

If the Board Monday has no good reasons to object to adopting the Interim Plan as the Permanent Plan until the next redistricting process in ten years (eight years now), it will be a short meeting.

If Board members feel the need to change the Interim Plan, I expect they will consult with the Board's attorney on how to do this and whether it is likely to succeed. Some, of that discussion, if not all of it, will (but not necessarily should) be held in Executive Session.  (The courts felt they overdid the Executive Session leading up the the Interim Plan.)

If they decide that they want to "show cause"  I expect they will either discuss their reasons, and/or adjourn to work on those reasons.  They may just ask the attorney to write up their response to be voted on at a later meeting.  This will then be sent to the Superior Court for consideration.  

At least, that's how I understand this.  

Background:  I don't like to repeat myself, but this opening is a quick background for people who haven't watched this saga too closely.  If you know this pretty well, just skip on down.  

Back in May 2022 the Alaska Supreme Court said the plan the Alaska Redistricting Board had approved (the vote was 3-2) was unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering.  They sent it back to the Board through the Superior Court, ordering the Board to approve the Option 2 plan that the Board considered, but had not approved.  This, then would be the Interim Plan for the November 2022 election.  Given the looming deadline for candidates to file for office, the Supreme Court just couldn't wait for the Board to come up with a new plan on their own.  More recently, the Supreme Court completed its Opinion - a long document that looks at all the issues it had raised regarding the Board's original plan (thrown out by the Court), and its second plan (which was also thrown out.)  

Actually, that's an oversimplification.  The first plan, with a couple of changes, was essentially approved WITH THE EXCEPTION of some Senate seats in Anchorage.  So, the Interim plan for all 40 House seats, as understand this, is settled. 

Purpose of Monday's Meeting From The Supreme Court's Opinion

The Supreme Court's Opinion ended this way:

"IX. FINAL REMEDY

After the second remand, the Board adopted the Option 2 proclamation plan as the 2022 elections interim plan.240 The question of a final redistricting plan for the

[I've cut out footnotes]

decade remains. Having concluded that the Board engaged in unconstitutional gerrymandering in its initial final redistricting plan and that the Board then did so again in its amended final redistricting plan, our remanding for yet another redistricting plan may be questioned. Indeed, by clear implication article VI, section 11 authorizes courts to mandate a redistricting plan when, after a remand, the Board develops a new plan that is declared invalid.241 But we will remand out of respect for the Board’s constitutional role in redistricting.

Given that the Board adopted the current interim redistricting plan for its final plan deliberations — confirming the Board’s belief that the interim plan is constitutional — and given that Alaska’s voters have not had a chance to raise challenges to that plan in the superior court:

We REMAND for the superior court to order that the Board shall have 90 days to show cause why the interim redistricting plan should not be the Board’s final redistricting plan for the 2020 redistricting cycle:

A. Upon a showing by the Board of good cause for a remand, the superior court shall REMAND to the Board for another round of redistricting efforts; or

B. Absent a showing by the Board of good cause for a remand, the superior court shall direct the Board to approve the interim redistricting plan as its final redistricting plan, allowing any legal challenges to that plan to be filed in superior court in the normal course."  [Red emphasis added.]

Basically the court said:

1. You had two final options last year - Option 3A (which you adopted, but we found unconstitutional) and Option 2.
2. We told you to adopt Option 2 as the Interim Plan.  
3. You approved Option 2, thus implying you thought it was a constitutional plan.  [Though some Board members might say they had no choice given the time constraints.  If they hadn't approved it, I suspect the Court would have imposed it anyway.]
4. You now have 90 days to give a good reason why the Interim Plan should NOT be the final plan. (The Opinion was dated April 21, 2023.  So 90 days is just about July 21, 2023.)
5. If the Superior Court deems your objection to be a worthy objection, then that Court will remand (give back) to the Board, the task of further changes to the map.  
6. If you do not 'show good cause' for making further changes, the Interim Plan becomes the Permanent Plan
7. If you show cause but the Superior, and then the Supreme Court, reject your argument, the Interim Plan becomes the Permanent Plan.  
8. Once the Permanent Plan is in place, the public will have one more opportunity to challenge the plan.  My understanding of the various court rulings and the Board's public musings, all the 40 House seats and all but a few Anchorage Senate seats are already fixed. The period to challenge them was within 30 days of the original Proclamation Plan.  There were challenges to some other parts of the map and there were other parts of the map that no one challenged.  The only parts of the map that were still in dispute in May 2022 were a few Anchorage area Senate seats.  

Reading The Rules Carefully Is Always A Good Idea

When I was writing this post in my head, I was thinking the Board, on Monday, could either agree to leave things as they are (the Interim Plan becomes the Permanent Plan) or try to tinker with the map.  But rereading the Court's Final Remedy section of the Opinion, the first step is to 'show cause' and get the courts to agree there is cause before anyone is authorized to adjust any Anchorage Senate seats.  

What Cause Might The Board Show?

I don't see any cause that the Board could put forth.  But I'm not an attorney and there are always undetected cards they seem to be able to pull out of forgotten statutes and old cases upon which to make a claim.  

Here's how I see it:

1. The Superior and Supreme Courts have both agreed that the Interim Plan was Constitutional.
2. The Board, by approving the Interim Plan last May, implied they saw it as Constitutional. (They aren't supposed to approve a plan they don't think is constitutional.)

So the Board would be hard pressed to argue the plan isn't constitutional.

At that point, what else could they argue?  That it's constitutional, but they have a better plan?  I think it's too late for that.  

In its rulings about the Eagle River and Skagway Senate pairings, the supreme court discussed the concept of 'taking a hard look' at public testimony.  It ruled with the superior court and against the Board on this ground in Eagle River because the Board violated another constitutional requirement of districts

"specifically for unconstitutional political gerrymandering." (Court Opinion, p. 43)

However, in the Skagway case it ruled against the superior court ruling on 'taking a hard look' at public testimony, because

". . .if public comments merely reflect preferences for district boundaries without implicating substantive redistricting requirements, drawing district boundaries based on demonstrated substantive redistricting requirements and not the “weight of public comment” likely would not violate the hard look requirement. We nonetheless note that a Board’s failure to follow a clear majority preference between two otherwise equally constitutional legislative districts under article VI, section 6 may be evidence supporting a gerrymandering claim."

But the court ruled that House Districts 3 and 4 were unconstitutional based solely on its “weight of public testimony” approach to the hard look analysis. Because the court otherwise agreed substantive redistricting requirements were satisfied and no salient problems were raised that the Board failed to consider, we reverse the court’s invalidation of House Districts 3 and 4 and its accompanying remand to the Board." (Opinion, p. 43-44)

It would seem that same logic would be applicable here.  Just because some Board members might prefer different pairings, that's not good enough to tamper with an already constitutional map.  The Board isn't exactly 'the public.'  However, in this situation, if the Board wants to protest against Senate pairings that the courts and the Board have already agreed are constitutional, it would seem to be up against a similar obstacle the public is up against if it "merely reflects preferences for district boundaries without implicating substantive redistricting requirements."

Furthermore, the only (true) reasons the Board majority might want to make changes, as I see it, would be to try to give Republicans some advantage they don't have with the current plan, or to mess with the Democrats, by creating new Senate pairings which would force Democratic incumbents to run against each other.    

Why do I say that?  

1.  There are only a few districts, as I understand this, that are still in play.  

1. At this point, all 40 House districts are set.  They've been approved and the time for the public to challenge them is over.
2. The only districts that could be in play now are a couple of northeast Anchorage Senate seats.  I posted the map below and incumbent lists in my previous post, but it's worth looking at again.  

I've circled the Senate seats that could possibly be in play.  The House seats can't be changed, 

they can only be paired differently to create different Senate seats.  Below are the incumbents 

of the House and Senate seats.  I'd note these are the district numbers in the Interim Plan.  

House Seats	Senate Seats
17 - Zack Fields - Democrat	I - Loki Tobin - Democrat
18 - Cliff Groh - Democrat	J - Forrest Dunbar - Democrat
19 - Genevieve Mina - Democrat	K - Bill Wielechowski - Democrat
20 - Andrew Gray - Democrat
21 - Donna Mears - Democrat
22 - Stanley Wright - Republican

2.  Why are these the only ones in play?  Because the rest of the map was approved.  The only changes were to pair the two Eagle River house districts into one Senate district.  That left district 18 an orphan and it was paired with downtown district 17. And an orphan South Anchorage district. If they do any changes it would be to the Senate pairings in the circle - and maybe with a ripple effect beyond - because everything else was locked down and approved.  (District 9 was also an orphan district, when the two Eagle River districts were paired, but I haven't even considered that the Board might want to mess around with that district.) (Actually, my description suggests the court changed Map 3B.  In fact, they adopted Map 2, the map the Board did not choose.  So these were the pairings on that map.)

3.  As you can see, the Senate seats in this area are held by Democrats.  And the six key House seats are held by five Democrats and one Republican.  

4.  The Board majority argued long and loud, but short of actual facts or data, that JBER, the military base shouldn't be paired with 'liberal' downtown. 

"The Board cited no evidence, aside from its own speculation, that JBER is a community of interest; in any case, there was no showing that the House district encompassing the populated portion of the military base as a whole would tend to share political preferences more closely with an Eagle River House district than with the downtown Anchorage House district. We thus reject the Board’s argument that concerns about JBER justify splitting Eagle River."  (Opinion p. 105)

In fact, the Board had already put  JBER in a house district with much more liberal Government Hill and other north and northeast Anchorage neighborhoods.  

Edited from Elections page to fit in one image

Note:  This was a ranked choice vote.  Most, if not all of Franks' votes had Groh as second choice.  Also, only 6% of the registered voters on JBER even voted.  

In the 2022 House District 18 house election, the Democrats got 55% of the vote and the Republican got 44%.  HD 18 voted for Democrat Mary Peltola for US House and for Democrat Zak Fields for state Senate.  

So all the arguments that Board members Marcum and Simpson made about how terrible it would be to combine the JBER district (as they called District 18) with liberal downtown was hot air.  They'd already put JBER into a House district that was more liberal than the Base.  And that elected a Democrat.  

5.  But they may think that pairing House District 22, which did elect a Republican to the state House, with their so called JBER district (18) would result in a Republican Senate seat.  And so they may want to try to do that.  This would also mean finding other Senate pairings for the orphaned House seats - 18 and 21, which aren't contiguous, so it would force even more changes.  

6.  But the District 22 Republican only won by 72 votes out of 3700 votes.  Not really a GOP stronghold.  And with the electoral reality of District 18 (the one including JBER) as a strong Democratic district.  The resultant Senate seat would still be held by a Democrat. 

7.  But the other new Senate pairings that pairing 18 with 22 would force, they could force a two or more Democratic Senate incumbents to run against each other.  

8.  But this would all be so transparently partisan gerrymandering again that neither the superior nor the supreme court would accept it.  

9.  They only reason the Board majority might do something like this would be brazen shamelessness.  After all with Trump and Santos and DeSantis as models and the rest of the Republicans either supporting them or at least staying quiet, this would not be a big step for the Alaskan GOP to take.  

It wouldn't cost them anything, and there's the possibility it would work.  

10.  But I think it's just too obvious.  Even if Marcum and Simpson were willing to try this, I suspect the third Republican on the board, Chair John Binkley has more integrity than that.  He's had time to think this over and see it would merely waste even more public funds.  While he went along the first rounds, now it's pretty clear that the courts won't support this.  

11.  And their 'cause' also needs to show why any new plan is worth the disruption to voters and elected officials having to adjust themselves to new electoral districts.

12.  I'd also draw your attention to these words in the court's "Final Remedy" quoted above:  

"Indeed, by clear implication article VI, section 11 authorizes courts to mandate a redistricting plan when, after a remand, the Board develops a new plan that is declared invalid.241 But we will remand out of respect for the Board’s constitutional role in redistricting."

The court is saying, "We have the power to simply mandate a plan.  But out of respect for the institution of the Board (not necessarily for this particular Board) we'll give the Board one more shot to do this right."

That's my take on what will happen Monday.  There could be some other scheme Randy Ruederich has hatched for the Board to try.  But ultimately, the courts will be looking very carefully and I don't see any justifications the Board could make to oppose making the Interim Plan the Permanent Plan that the courts would accept.  

But even if the Board votes to make the Interim Plan the Permanent Plan, the public will still have thirty days to challenge it in court.  But this wouldn't be on the State's dime, and with the Board joining the superior and supreme courts, it would take some ingenious soul to find a loophole here.  

 

Politics Not As Usual - Murkowski Votes To End Don't Ask Don't Tell

Sen. Lisa Murkowski was among eight Republicans to vote to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT), staying consistent with comments she made a couple of weeks ago that she thought it was time to end the policy.   But this must have been a pretty hard decision for her, harder than probably any other of the Republicans who voted against their party position. 

Murkowski lost the Republican primary.  This vote on DADT  ensures that the rabid right of the Alaska Republican party will work hard to defeat her again in the 2016 primary.  While her write-in re-election (close to being settled now in the Alaska Supreme Court) required the support of lots of Democrats and Independents who believe she owes them votes on some critical issues, she didn't have to break ranks with most of the Republicans here.  Perhaps she believes that in six years gays in the military will be a non-issue.  A likely US Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of California's Prop. 7 is likely to keep GLBT issues hot for the 2012 Presidential election and possibly beyond.

Plus Alaska has not been friendly to GLBT issues.  Alaskan voters amended the State Constitution to make explicit that marriage means one man and one woman.  

Can Murkowski win her next Republican primary?  At this point, I would expect her to have some heavy opposition.  Would she run in the primary as an independent?  Six years is a long time in politics, but she must have been thinking about these things when she voted to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell. 

I don't see this as anything but a principled vote for what she believed was the best policy, in the face of her party's general opposition.

Looking at all eight Republicans who voted for repeal, on the surface there seem to be three key factors:

• State support of same-sex marriage or civil unions
• Collins and Snowe of Maine, Scott Brown of Massachusetts
• Gender 
• The only woman of 17 in the Senate not voting for repeal was  Kay Baily Hutchinson (R TX.)  The other three Republican women - Collins, Snowe, and Murkowski - voted for repeal.
• Age
•  Of the male Republicans who voted for repeal all but one were among the 20 youngest Senators.  The exception, George Voinovich, is retiring. 

Here's a bit more on the:

• other seven Republicans who voted to repeal DADT
• three Republicans who were absent
• one Democrat who was absent (no Democrats voted against it)

Republicans who voted for repeal


Scott Brown  (51) (R-Mass.)

Brown won the right to finish Ted Kennedy's term as US Senator, is up for reelection in the first US state to allow same-sex marriage.   


Richard M. Burr (55)  (R NC)

The National Review writes:

Burr said it was not a difficult vote to cast, despite his state’s being home to Camp Lejeune, the largest Marine Corps base on the East Coast. Gen. James Amos, commandant of the Marine Corps, had been one of the most high-profile opponents of repeal. “Hopefully we all think independently here and we listen; we don’t have to be lobbied or influenced,” he said.

Burr told reporters that he supported repeal because “this is a policy that generationally is right,” but said he “didn’t necessarily agree” with those who have characterized the issue as a civil-rights struggle.

“A majority of Americans have grown up at a time [when] they don’t think exclusion is the right thing for the United States to do,” Burr said. “It’s not the accepted practice anywhere else in our society, and it only makes sense.”

I don't know enough about North Carolina politics to know how his vote compares to Murkowski's.  He has the largest Marine Corps base in the US in his state and the Marines were the of branch of the military most strongly opposed to repealing DADT.  On the other hand he did well in the 2010 election according to Wikipedia:

Burr defeated North Carolina Secretary of State Elaine Marshall (D) on November 2nd, 2010 with 55% of the vote. He is the first Republican since Jesse Helms to be re-elected to the United States Senate from North Carolina and garnered the largest percentage of votes of any Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in North Carolina history.

Susan Collins (R-Maine) (58) and Olympia Snowe (63) (R-Maine)

Collins has been the leading Republican Senator in support of repealing DADT.  She was the only Republican Senator who voted in favor the Defense Bill that had DADT attached earlier in December.  Olympia Snowe joined her when DADT was a stand alone bill.  Both Maine's Representatives (both Democrats) in the House voted for the bill.  I haven't checked, but this is the only state I know of where the whole Congressional delegation voted for repeal.  Maine allows domestic partnerships.

Same-sex marriage in Maine was a divisive issue in 2009: a bill to allow same-sex marriages in Maine was signed into law on May 6, 2009, by Governor Baldacci following legislative approval, but opponents successfully petitioned for a referendum on the issue, putting the law on hold before it came into effect before going on to win the referendum by 300,848 to 267,828 on November 3, 2009. Maine's domestic partnership law remains in effect. [Wikipedia]

John Ensign (52) R Nevada

I'm stretching here, but Nevada seems a little looser on moral issues with long time legalized gambling and prostitution.  Liberace was an institution in Las Vegas.  

The National Review wrote: 

Before the vote, Ensign said the choice for him was a struggle between what he personally thought was the right thing to do, and the circumstantial concerns of various military chiefs.

That’s why, he explained, he had voted against taking up the measure.

But in the end, once the question on the table, it appeared personal conviction won out over political circumstance. “My personal feeling is that it should be repealed,” he’d said before the 65-to-31 vote.

Ensign left the Senate chamber quickly and quietly . . .

Mark Kirk (51) (R-Ill.)

Kirk, a Naval Reserve Officer, moved up to the Senate from the House in a special election to finish out Obama's Senate seat and start his own six year term in January.  In the House he voted "against   Constitutional marriage amendments, he supported ending job discrimination based on sexual orientation and received a favorable 75 percent rating from the Human Rights Campaign on gay rights issues."  [Huffington Post]

From The Examiner.com in Chicago

Is Sen. Kirk really in favor of allowing gays to serve openly in the military?  His past history suggests otherwise.  As a member of the House Armed Services Committee Kirk voted against a measure to repeal DADT as recently as last May.  One suspects that his slim margin of victory in November's senatorial contest may have sensitized Sen. Kirk to the realities of representing the entire state of Illinois, not just the 10th congressional district.  Once Governor Pat Quinn gets around to signing the Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act already sitting on his desk, the state of Illinois will recognize civil unions. A "no" vote on DADT would have put Mark Kirk at odds with a very large bloc of Illinois voters.  It also would have provided potent ammunition for the next Democratic challenger for his senate seat.

George Voinovich (74) (R-Ohio)

Voinovich is retiring from the Senate.  






Republicans who didn't vote

Jim Bunning (79) (R KY)

Bunning, who barely won his last election in 2004, and was named by Time Magazine as one of the five worst Senators, is retiring at the end of this term.



Judd Gregg (63)  (R (NH)

Same sex marriage became legal in New Hampshire in January 2010.

Gregg is retiring at the end of this term.


Orrin G. Hatch (76) (R UT)

Polygamy has a history in Utah, but the Mormon church has been strongly opposed to same-sex marriage and Hatch is an institution in Utah who doesn't have to worry that his absence would harm him in any way. 

The Salt Lake City Tribune reports:

Sen. Orrin Hatch was absent for the vote but registered his dissent from afar. He said November’s election should have shown that voters want Congress to focus on the economy — not try to appeal to their liberal supporters.

“Rather than take part in this cynical exercise in political charades, I am honoring a long-standing commitment I made more than a year ago to attend my grandson’s graduation in Missouri,” Hatch said.

Democrat who didn't vote

Joe Manchin III (63) (D WV) 

It appears that Manchin, newly elected to fill the seat of Sen. Robert Byrd is trying to figure out which way the wind is blowing. He's up for election again in 2012. He skipped this vote and the vote on the Dream Act. He's the only Democrat who didn't vote for repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

Trump Undermining Military Order - Firing His Own Appointee, Navy Secretary Spencer [Updated]

The president of the United States has intervened in military justice and fired the Secretary of Navy, a person he himself appointed over a Naval justice system case with which he disagreed.  Here's a little background that I haven't heard on the news blurbs I'm hearing at NPR.  Ultimately, this is one more sep onTrump's part to weaken the US internationally, by weakening the US military.  How many rogue military will disobey their officers with the hope of support from the president?

Eddie Gallagher had become, apparently, a right wing cause.  He'd been found innocent of murdering prisoners of war, but guilty of taking a picture with a dead prisoner.  There were problems in the case according to the Navy Times and the LA Times. 

[UPDATED Nov 25, 2019 11:57am] However, other Seals testified against Gallagher - something I suspect is uncommon - though ultimately their testimony wasn't convincing because they didn't actually see him pull the trigger.  Here's description of that testimony.

I tried to find some of the Free Eddie Gallagher websites, but several had been corrupted.

Forged a website aimed at veterans has a t-shirt for Gallagher with this description:

"Chief Eddie Gallagher is a highly decorated Navy SEAL with over 19 years of honorable service to our country. On September 11, 2018, he was separated from his wife and children, and locked up in pre-trial confinement in the military brig. On July 2nd, Chief Gallagher was found NOT GUILTY of all charges, except unlawfully taking a picture with a dead ISIS fighter. Although Chief Gallagher is free, his battle is not yet over. He and his legal team are still fighting for his right to retire with a full pension and benefits.

#FREEEDDIE features the Forged Frogbones, one of our classic designs which has always been, and will forever remain deeply rooted in the Navy SEAL Brotherhood.

Please join us in our fight to #FREEEDDIE! Chief Gallagher deserves justice.
*All proceeds will be donated to the Navy SEALs Fund - Brotherhood Beyond Battlefield (501c3) Justice for Eddie Gallagher Support Fund"

Navy Secretary Spencer is a marine veteran and was appointed by Trump.  Defying the president is a major action here and clearly suggests a serious breach between Trump and the US military.  That's pretty serious.  And one more move that helps Putin by weakening the morale of the US military.

Here's from Wikipedia's post on Richard V. Spencer:

"In June 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Spencer to serve as the 76th United States Secretary of the Navy Spencer was confirmed by the United States Senate on August 1, 2017. He was sworn in on August 3, 2017 and served until November 24, 2019.
On July 15, 2019, he assumed the duties of acting Secretary of Defense and expected "to continue to serve in this role until a Secretary of Defense nominee is confirmed by the Senate and assumes office. At that time, I will continue to serve as Secretary of the Navy." He assumed the duties of Deputy Secretary of Defense on July 23, 2019.
Born in 1954 in Waterbury, Connecticut, Spencer attended Rollins College as an undergraduate, majoring in economics. After graduating, he joined the United States Marine Corps, serving as a Marine Aviator from 1976 to 1981.
After leaving the Marines as a captain, he worked on Wall Street for 15 years, holding positions at Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, A. G. Becker, Paine Webber and Merrill Lynch. Spencer served on the Defense Business Board, a Pentagon advisory panel, from 2009 to 2015 and on the Chief of Naval OperationsExecutive Panel. During his time on the Defense Business Board, he proposed shutting down domestic military commissaries in favor of negotiated military discounts at public retailers.