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Online politicking changing local elections

The lasting story from Tuesday's municipal elections may be the involvement of a local political action committee in the borough assembly race and the resultant intervention by the Alaska Public Offices Commission.
    The group Alaska Yes campaigned for candidates in the Nikiski, Soldotna and Central Area races, placing partisan political ads online and on commercial radio attacking the eventual winners.
“I think APOC is not done investigating this. I know they're not done investigating it. And you know we'll see how how things all come out," said out-going Assemblyman Dale Bagley. "APOC will wade into this and my guess there's there will be some fines somewhere along the way.”
 Bagley talked about how the candidates promoted by Alaska Yes, Jonathan Quick, Holly Odd and Rose Henry, did not run conventional campaigns.
“You have three candidates — I don't know how else to put it — it was almost an arrogance that, ‘we don't need to do this and that we're going to get elected without doing this,’" Bagley said. "But they didn't come to a lot of the forums. They they didn't come to, they didn't want to be on the radio stations. They didn't run a lot of ads. They were very low key.”
    Bagley said the eventual victors in the three races, Jesse Bjorkman, Tyson Cox and Brent Johnson, had proven their dedication to their districts.
        “I think that if you run for office, you need to be involved in your community. The three that won are very involved in their community and very active with a lot of different stuff, and it showed in the election results," he said. "And you know, people want to know who you are.”
    Bagley made his comments on KDLL's Kenai Conversation Wednesday.

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