
Dr. Al Gross/Gross campaign
As of today – with Dr. Al Gross trailing incumbent Alaska Republic Sen. Dan Sullivan by 61,000 votes to 119,000 votes – the independent candidate needs to win about three out of every four outstanding votes to become Alaska’s new senator.
If the roughly 120,000 absentee and mail-in votes break the way the 193,000 votes cast in Tuesday’s general election did – 62.22 percent Sullivan, 32.09 percent Gross and 5.69 percent other – Gross will lose the election by a count of about 100,000 votes to Sullivan’s approximately 194,000.
But Gross is not conceding. He remains hopeful of victory. And no matter how unlikely that appears, there is always hope.
If the uncounted votes flip 180 degrees from Tuesday’s result with Gross thus landing a 62 percent share to Sullivan’s 32 percent share, the challenger would get within 21,000 votes of the incumbent.
To succeed, Gross would need to get about two-thirds of the uncounted votes and see Sullivan take well less than a third. It could happen, but it appears hugely unlikely.
So let’s talk money.
Expensive losses
If Gross gets half of the outstanding votes, he will end the race tallying about 121,000 with his campaign and its supporters having spent somewhere around $190 per vote. This is a significant amount of money.
But then American politics is largely about money.
Those figures would indicate a cost of about $170 per vote. Unless there is a Gross landslide in those uncounted ballots, the Alaskan now appears in danger of not only losing the election but becoming – on a cost-per-vote basis – the biggest loser in this year’s national elections.
Where did all this money come from for the Gross campaign?
The candidate reported raising and spending about $9 million, but the bulk came from interest groups anxious to roll Sullivan. Open Secrets reported Outside groups spent more than $14 million attacking Sullivan.
Politico called the infusion of cash a “money bomb” dropped on Alaska.
Suffice to say, there was big money trying to influence Alaskans on how to vote. It wasn’t just Gross supporters either. Open Secrets reported Outside groups backing Sullivan spent $8.8 million on bad-mouthing Gross.
The biggest spending from Gross-backing groups came from the North Star (PAC), $6.9 million, and The Lincoln Project, $4.3 million.
Big spenders
The shadowy North Star PAC was set up in October with Ryan Johnston, a staffer for state Rep. Neal Foster, as its treasures and “custodian of records.” The organization’s Federal Election Commission filing revealed nothing else, but Jim Lottsfeldt – a well-known, Democrat political operative – was widely rumored to be one of the key, behind-the-scenes players.
The Politico story quoted Lottsfelt and noted North Star’s ties to “media buyer, Waterfront Strategies, (which) is used by a handful of major Democratic groups, including Senate Majority PAC, which is run by allies of Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.”
The group took issue with Sullivan’s decision to avoid public, philosophical battles with Trump in order to win administration support for opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil drilling and continue the federal government’s inflated defense spending in the 49th state.
Defense spending accounts for 5.5 percent of the state’s gross domestic product (GDP). The state ranks fourth in per capita defense spending at $4,104 per resident, almost three times the national average. Only the states of Virginia ($5,459/resident), Hawaii ($4,544), and Connecticut ($4,170) take in more.
Along with spending a lot of money in the state, the DOD does a huge volume of business with Alaska Native Corporations running defense contracting businesses Outside. In Oklahoma, the Defense Department in 2019 reported paying $74.6 million to the Arctic Slope Regional Corp. and $44.9 million to the Afognak Native Corp.
Anchorage-based Bering Straits Technical Services, a subsidiary of the Bering Straits Native Corporation, is one of the top-10 defense contractors in Delaware. Cook Inlet Region is one of the top-10 in Iowa; Chugach Alaska in Nevada and Washington state; Chenega Integrated Mission Support (a subsidiary of the Chenega Native corporation) in New Mexico; the NANA Regional Corp. in Tennessee; and the Chenega Corp. itself in Utah
Sullivan’s wife, Julie, is an Alaska Native and Sullivan, a member of the U.S. Marine Corps, has been protective of both defense spending and the interests of state Native corporations, whose subsidiaries Outside help produce profits which pay corporate dividends to Natives living in-state.
A former Assistant Secretary of State for Economic, Energy, and Business Affair, Sullivan, according to friends, made a pragmatic decision it wasn’t in his state’s interest to be regularly picking fights with Trump over philosophical issues.
Gross supporters were hoping (and still are) that would cost Sullivan his seat while Gross was running what might have been one of the most misguided political campaigns in state history.
One almost has to wonder if the campaign didn’t choke on all the Outside money and advice. Whatever the case, its campaign strategy was to portray “Dr. Al Gross” as a bear-killing, ATV-driving, mountain-skiing, commercial-fishing man of the people.
Botched campaign
The pitch echoed the effort of failed 2016 Presidential candidate Hilary Clinton to portray herself as a shotgun-toting, duck-hunting, whiskey-drinking, woman of the people.
Gross has valid claims to being a duck hunter, skier, commercial fisherman and more. But the packaging of these personal interests as the important issues marked more of a misjudgment than Clinton’s foray into the waterfowl marshes.
One can only surmise that some highly paid consultants back on the East Coast Googled “what do Alaskans like” before coming up with the very slick and very useless Gross campaign.
If he wins now – something which appears unlikely – it will be in spite of his own advertising, which is something that can be analyzed at this time without fear of being accused of partisanship.
The election is over. This isn’t about whether anyone should vote for Gross or not. It’s about how one candidate shot himself in the foot:
Number one: “Dr. Gross.” If you’re going to be a man of the people, you don’t go around boasting about your doctorate whether it is a license to practice medicine or a Ph.D. Every time a “Dr. Al Gross” ad appeared on the TV, which was way too often, you had to wonder if he would demand to be called “Sen. Dr. Al Gross” if elected.
Pretension as to one’s importance does not score big marks in the man-of-the-people department.
And this is not Alaska circa 1920 when the local doctor was a friendly, hardworking member of the community. In much of the state today, as in parts of the Lower 48 states, doctor is a synonym for “rich.”
When part of your issue with the guy you’re running against is that he comes from a wealthy family and is out of touch with working people, why underline your own upper-class status?
Number two: Overkill. No matter how well done, most political ads get old after you’ve seen them a few times. Gross’s ads were cinematically excellent, but after seeing him on the bridge of his gillnetter for the umpteenth time they got old, very old, a pestilent interruption in the middle of any football game.
If Gross was going to spend all that money to run any ad over and over and over again, he should have stuck to the goofy “Bear Doctor” ad which at least had an entertaining jingle:
And showing him in a vest holding what could be a sport caught coho salmon was way better from a political standpoint than putting him at the helm of that commercial gillnetter.
Number three: Gillnetter, gillnetter, gillnetter.
The United Cook Inlet Drifters Association (UCIDA) – a gillnetter organization – is now in the process of trying to get the federal government to take over management of salmon in Cook Inlet in the hopes the feds will disenfranchise tens of thousands of dipnetters and anglers in the Anchorage metro area.
This, according to Labor estimates, would comprise about 55 percent of the state population. Especially in the Mat-Su, but in many places elsewhere in the state, a significant number of these people think their interests have suffered because of the political influence of the state’s commercial fishing industry, which has long punched above its weight.
Commercial fishermen are still revered in some parts of the state, and UCIDA claimed partial credit for helping get independent Alaska Gov. Bill Walker elected in 2014. It was, however, a different story come 2018.
There are no indications non-commercial fishermen are single-issue voters, but in a statewide election in Alaska in these times, identifying as a commercial fisherman comes with a downside as well as an upside.
Maybe Gross spent too much time in his old hometown of Juneau, which is the Panhandle and regularly out of touch with the politics of the rest of the state. Maybe he got sold by all-knowing advisors. Whatever it was, all that beautifully shot video of him at the helm of a pricey gillnetter surely cost him more votes than it won.
If Gross was going to play the commercial fisherman card, he should have at least borrowed a beat-up bowpicker that didn’t shout “rich guy with a boat worth more than he makes in the fishery!”
Number four: That bear.
If Gross did kill a grizzly bear in self-defense – a claim that is highly debatable – he should have followed the lead of Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, the Congressmen since almost forever.
Young has a grizzly bear hide hanging on the wall of his Washington, D.C. office filled with heads of big game he has killed. But he doesn’t brag about this on the campaign trail.
If you did it, you don’t need to brag about it. Gross’s boasting about killing a bear just made him come across as a phony.
Number five: Independent(ence).
Gross hid from the Democrat/liberal label and tried to sell himself to Alaskans as an “independent.” That just doesn’t work when you’re being embraced by California Sen. Kamala Harris, the Democrat vice-presidential candidate, and other top Democrats.
The Midnight Sun, a left-leaning Alaska website funded by Lottsfeldt, tried to help by positioning Gross as the little-bit-pregnant candidate, calling him a Democrat-backed independent.
Gross would have been better advised to embrace the Democrat label and run as one as former Sen. Mark Begich successfully did. With President Donald Trump’s well-documented problems with the truth putting honesty in the national political spotlight, it just doesn’t look good to be claiming you’re not a Democrat while acting like a Democrat.
But then the Gross campaign – no matter who was running it – never seemed to understand the lay of the land in the 49th state in 2020.
The campaign might, in fact, have outlined much of what it planned to do wrong in the five bullet points provided to the Daily Kos, a left-leaning news site in July. These were reasons pitched for why Alaskans should make Gross their next Senator:
“✔ Lifelong Alaskan. (Few care. The majority of Alaskans arrived from elsewhere. Many of them get tired of the Alaska ranking of status by how long you’ve lived here.)
“✔ Bought a commercial fishing boat at age 14. (Right. The only Alaskan teenagers who can afford the boat – let alone the necessary fishing permit – are those whose parents are stinking rich or well-connected. Gross’s late father, a former state attorney general, was the latter.)
“✔ Put himself through college and medical school. (Sort of like he bought a commercial fishing boat at age 14. Nobody believes this after the claim to being a 14-year-old, self-financed commercial fisherman.)
“✔Renowned orthopedic surgeon serving Alaskans for decades. (Except he publicly stated he quit working as a doctor to go back to school at the University of Southern California only to again go to work as a doctor in Petersburg, a Southeast community of 3,000 with a tiny hospital. Why exactly he bounced in and out of medicine was never clear, which fueled more than a few rumors.)
“✔ Killed a grizzly bear in self-defense. (Well maybe, and not the sort of thing you brag about in a political campaign even if you did it. You can be the Daniel Boone candidate or the doctor candidate, but campaigning as Dr. Daniel Boone is a tough sell unless, of course, your given name is Daniel Boone. )
Now, for Thanskgiving, let’s all give thanks the election season is over.
Categories: Commentary, Politics
I would add to the list of outside money mistakes the tin-eared attempt to flip Gross’s obvious “Democrat in Independent clothing” problem with the “Dan Sullivan claims to be independent, but voted with the Republican majority 97% of the time” ad.
Sullivan claimed to be, and has run as, a Republican. Voting with the Republican majority 97% of the time is exactly what Alaskans hired him to do, witness the grief Sen Murkowski gets for breaking ranks on Republican priorities.
3% “independence” is about right for a Republican who ran as such. With what parts of the Republican platform and policies did Gross think he should part ways?
For that matter, if we had real journalists in this state, they might have asked Gross and Galvin precisely which planks of the Dem party platform they opposed? We know both of their “I support 2nd Amendment rights” claims were fatuous, or they would have gone on record with what existing restrictions they would vote to repeal.
I completely agree! An elected republican senator voting with his party 97% of the time shows he’s CONSISTENT!!
Like the old timers would say. What a blow hard.
This has been one of the most comical races that I can remember in years.
“Your daddy has a mansion in Ohio”…But “Your daddy bought you a fishing boat”
“Well, your mansion in California is bigger than my daddy’s in Ohio”
“Buy you have over 3 million in stock from your grandfather’s business”
“Well, you have over a million in Johnson & Johnson stock”
WTF has happened to the Alaskan spirit of homesteaders, miners, and community?
The only things my father gave me to get started in AK were a 300 win mag & a dipnet!
It’s unfortunate that grow men who are millionaires still act like highschool kids in the END.
What the old timers would call a blow hard.
Craig, the following statement from you reveal how little you know about commercial fishing and more importantly how little effort you’ve made to inform yourself.
” Put himself through college and medical school. (Sort of like he bought a commercial fishing boat at age 14. Nobody believes this after the claim to being a 14-year-old, self-financed commercial fisherman.)
“ Bought a commercial fishing boat at age 14. (Right. The only Alaskan teenagers who can afford the boat – let alone the necessary fishing permit – are those whose parents are stinking rich or well-connected. Gross’s late father, a former state attorney general, was the latter.)
Back when Gross was 14 you could put together a commercial fishing operation for less than $1,000. Not sure if he started before limited entry but even after that hand troll permits were cheap.
I, and numerous others in Kodiak in the late ’70’s/80’s bought a beat up skiff and outboard for under $1,000 and profitably fished halibut, herring, even king, tanner and dungeness crab hand pulling longlines, gillnets, ring nets and smaller pots.
When I bought my salmon permit and fished out of Sandpoint I learned of high school students crewing on seiners that made more in the summer salmon season than their HS teacher made all year.
So fuck off with your predetermined conclusions.
Joe, you made some good points until your last line. Too bad you blew it.
You left out the incessant run against Pebble. There are a significant number of people in this state, likely a majority, who actually support Pebble, and rare earth independence from China. Using this as a central point in his campaign was a mistake.
The thing that make this really funny is that his former home town, Juneau is a mining district, with two currently active mines. Mining has been going on locally for over 140 years. Part of Juneau is even built on tailings. The Big Lie of the anti-Pebble crowd is that mining will destroy ALL fish in the Bristol Bay watershed for all time. Yet Juneau all by itself demonstrates that is a false charge, as Juneau also has commfish, sport fish, dipnetting, and sportfish guides. According to Gross and the anti-Pebble crowd, this is impossible. Yet it exists. Cheers –
But, but, did you know that as DNR Commissioner Dan Sullivan did his job and allowed the extant permitting process to go forward without intervening? One of gross’s ads told me that, but paraphrased oddly.
I mean, do we really want the rule of law and due process to exist, as opposed to unelected bureaucrats arbitrarily choosing winners and losers based on their personal preferences? Not in Al Gross’s Alaska we didn’t!
It is not who wins or looses, but the fact that election results are called with 44% of the vote still uncounted.
This sets a very bad precedent for Alaska as we all know how hard it is to change the media’s narrative once it starts spewing propaganda.
In reality, If I had either Dan Sullivan’s or Al’s investment portfolio…I would probably be in Key West this time of year day trading stocks.
gross me out is eagerly awaiting the cargo plane(chartered by soros & the lincoln project) filled with “harvested” votes……..
Hey, just do what they did in Virginia. “Hey, we found a flash drive with a million Biden votes on it”..
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/virginia-democrat-surges-ahead-after-thousands-overlooked-ballots-found