“For Sullivan, Things Got Off To A Rocky Start During the Lightning Round, Which Required Yes Or No Answers.”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 10/26/2014
ANCHORAGE — ANCHORAGE — Juneau’s KTOO reported on Dan Sullivan’s refusal to answer basic questions important to Alaska Natives and the Alaska Federation (AFN) of Natives at a Friday Alaska Senate debate.
After hearing from both candidates AFN endorsed Mark Begich, a rare step. The organization represents hundreds of Alaska Native tribes and corporations and has only previously endorsed Senator Lisa Murkowski in a U.S. Senate race.
Highlights from the story:
“From the start, delegates were overwhelmingly in support of Begich. Many waved Begich campaign signs from the audience and clapped and cheered every time the senator answered a question. For Sullivan, things got off to a rocky start during the lightning round, which required yes or no answers.”
“I get requests now from many different parts of the community of Alaska asking for more federal control in the sense of managing the subsistence rights because they believe the state is not listening,” Begich said. “An example of that was when the commercial fishing was closed and subsistence was closed and when they reopened, commercial got the opening first and subsistence did not. I wrote a strong letter to the governor about this, that subsistence rights are a fundamental right.”“At the end of his [Sullivan] answer, he defended himself to delegates for his role in representing the State of Alaska in the Katie John case, a case that AFN was involved in for 19 years. AFN saw the state’s appeals of the case as an attack on subsistence rights. “When I was attorney general I did participate in an element of the Katie John case,” Sullivan said.”
###
