Recall Rivera May Have Some Explaining to Do

Campaign reporting in Alaska is all at once arcane and byzantine, no question, but there are some fundamentals that really don’t change, year in and year out.

You can raise money. You can spend money. But you have to disclose where you got the money, how you spent it and you must do this in a timely manner.

Recall Rivera is a ballot group for the purposes of state law. Ballot groups must submit regular reports, including 30-day, 7-day, and 24 hour reports up to election day. In addition, Independent Expenditure (IE) reports are required to be submitted with some degree of frequency and certain donors must also submit required disclosure forms in a timely manner.

It’s a heck of a job keeping track of it all.

The group's largest expense reported so far is $15,750 for polling supposedly conducted on March 30th. An interesting feature of the Independent Expenditure reporting requirements is that you must provide a detailed report within 10 days of encumbering the expense, not when invoiced nor when paid.

As you might remember, The Blue Alaskan wrote about residents who reported receiving push-polls back in February. These calls (polls) seem to have largely focused on the Recall Rivera race and it is reasonable to infer — the polls are likely related to the IE.

The listed date of March 30th on the Independent Expenditure is well beyond the 10 days the polls were first reported in the field.

Another interesting aspect of the expenditures is that it appears that the Recall Rivera campaign may have spent their wad of cash having perhaps a few thousand dollars left on hand according to both their IE and 7 day report.

Well, maybe…

There seem to be at least two concerns about unreported expenses. I have been made aware of two mailers that were first reported on social media on or around March 24th, three days before the close of the 7-day reporting period.

Once APOC has had a look, it seems likely, although not certain — that a disclosure may be required for these expenses in the 7-day report which was submitted on March 30th. I see no apparent sign of those mailers in any disclosure that I could find.

Also of note, the Recall Rivera mailers have been spotted as far as Mat-Su and Fairbanks.

Lastly, for ballot groups there is a unique reporting requirement. APOC requires every donor who contributes $500 or more to file a form 15-5 Statement of Contribution Report in MyAlaska. These are due 30 days after the contribution and so far, none are available from high dollar donors to the Recall Rivera campaign. Their first reported contribution was $1,000 on February 23.

It looks like Recall Rivera may have to spend some time with APOC sorting through the details, invoices, and other records to establish when polling was run — if in fact run by the group, who was paid for mailers and when, and who has and hasn’t filed required reports.

April 8, 2021

In response to an Alaska Landmine article regarding mailers seen in Fairbanks, Reclaim Midtown posted to Facebook:

"Yes, this happened in Fairbanks House district 4, and was also corrected with a refund. The correct mailers also went out to Midtown district 4."