Alaska Democrats ask Anchorage court to strike Tagle from November ballot

The Alaska Democratic Party is back in court trying to knock a Republican off the November ballot, after Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom certified him over the objection of the state's own campaign-finance regulators.

The party asked Anchorage Superior Court on Tuesday to remove Jose Tagle, the Republican in House District 22, arguing the Division of Elections ignored both an August court ruling and a later finding by the Alaska Public Offices Commission that Tagle missed the state's financial-disclosure deadline. The party filed what the docket calls a "Motion to Enforce Decision on Appeal," and asked the court to move fast. Judge Josie Garton agreed Thursday to an expedited schedule, but that decision was about timing, not the merits. As of Thursday afternoon no ruling had come down, and the Division of Elections still lists Tagle as certified.

The party's account of the earlier ruling needs a caveat, though. In her Aug. 12 decision, Garton actually sided with the Division, throwing out the party's first challenge on the ground that the Division didn't have to investigate Tagle's disclosure before APOC weighed in, because the commission gets first say on whether a candidate complied. But the same order laid out the rule the party is now leaning on: state law bars certification if a candidate doesn't substantially comply with the disclosure law within 30 days of the deadline, and a candidate who misses that standard, Garton wrote, forfeits both nomination and election.

Then APOC answered the question the court had left to it. On Aug. 26, the commission voted 5-0 that Tagle's disclosure did not substantially comply within the 30 days, and urged Dahlstrom not to certify him.

What Tagle left out was everything. His initial June 1 filing reported no income, no business interests, no loans, no debts, no leases. State corporate records in the APOC case file list him as president, director and 40% owner of Stardust Limited Liability Corporation. He amended the filing Aug. 8 to add the financial information, including his stake in Stardust. "When initially filed, there was a glitch in all my saved history was not submitted," he wrote.

So the fight isn't over whether he eventually filed the information. It's whether his original filing met the law by the deadline, and what power the lieutenant governor had left once APOC found it didn't.

Dahlstrom had said no to Tagle once already. On Aug. 31 she announced she would certify neither him nor Republican gubernatorial candidate Treg Taylor, both the subject of APOC recommendations. Four days later she reversed and certified both.

Her reason was a wider one. A Department of Law review, she said, had turned up numerous possible discrepancies between candidates' disclosures and other public records across the field, and she could not withhold certification on recommendations she couldn't "apply with confidence" to everyone. The department handed that review to APOC as a working draft just before the certification deadline, and the commission never revisited the Tagle or Taylor cases before the ballot was set.

The party's answer is that a broad review of the whole field can't erase a specific finding against one candidate. That, it argues, is exactly the consequence Garton's order spelled out. The state and Tagle had not responded in the docket as of Thursday afternoon.

Tagle stays on the ballot against Democrat Ted Eischeid unless the court says otherwise. The expedited schedule means the question gets answered soon. It says nothing about how it will be answered.