Space Karen's Alaska Buy
A Wisconsin PAC, an Anchorage address that is really a guy's house, and $1.5 million from Space Karen. The campaign to repeal ranked-choice voting would like you to think this is homegrown.
Elon Musk gave a whopping $1.5 million to a group called Aurora Action Network, and then Aurora slid $1 million of it over to Repeal Now, the campaign asking you to vote to repeal Ranked Choice Voting.
Disgraced former Bronson official and social media racist Judy Eledge, who chairs Repeal Now, said it was hard to put into words her gratitude that titans of industry would take an interest in "our small state." 🙄 (She's from Texas and probably doesn't know...stuff.)
If you're wondering what a million and a half dollars of Elon Musk's money might buy, I've got you covered. But before you press play, two warnings. The ad uses AI to animate a carved totem pole so it appears to talk, which is an entire group of people's cultural heritage repurposed as a gag to trick you into believing the repeal effort is homegrown. And it ends by pointing at AI-generated footage of men in tutus and rainbow feathers - telling Alaskans that if you support Ranked Choice Voting, you're...a drag queen? I don't even know.
It's almost hard to believe that anti-LGBT stalwart Judy Eledge approved this message. Seriously, it's gross. I won't be offended if you don't watch. ⬇
If you see this ad on Facebook and it doesn't have the mandated AI disclosure, report it.
Aurora's other benefactors include MAGA billionaire Jeff Yass, MAGA billionaire Dick Uihlein's Restoration of America outfit, reclusive billionaire and a major financial backer of Donald Trump - Timothy Mellon, and Hilcorp's very own Jeff Hildebrand. This is a whole lot of men who could not find Bethel on a map but for reasons unknown, really want to undo the will of the voters and repeal Ranked Choice Voting.
Repeal Now's ads cheerfully inform you that their top contributor is Aurora Action Network of Anchorage, Alaska, which would land better if Aurora's treasurer weren't sitting in Wisconsin and if the Anchorage headquarters weren't reportedly a house belonging to Dunleavy's failed state board of education appointee and anti-public education confabulator Bob Griffin.
Which brings us to the actual heist. Measure 2 not only kills ranked choice voting and open primaries - it also repeals the campaign finance transparency rules Alaskans passed in 2020, meaning Space Karen is spending a million dollars to pass a law that makes the next million invisible.
And yes, the No on 2 campaign (the good guys and gals) has raised north of $5 million, a good chunk of it Outside money as well. Judy Eledge's out of state Repeal Now operation mentions this roughly every eleven seconds. But, it's not really the same thing, because nobody on the keep RCV side is asking you to vote away your own ability to see who is donating to ballot measures or candidates.
The 2024 repeal attempt lost by 743 votes out of more than 334,000. Musk fronted about two grand for every vote of that margin, which is more than plenty of Alaskans make in a week. He has promised something like $100 million across midterm states this cycle, so we are not even a real line item to him. Alaska is just the cheapest election system on the shelf, and somebody told him we're running a sale in November.
