Alaska Democrats ask APOC to recommend removing House District 22 candidate from ballot

Whether a Northeast Anchorage House candidate stays on the November ballot now rests with the Alaska Public Offices Commission, after a dispute over a financial disclosure he initially filed blank — one the state's election division has already declined to act on, and a court has passed along.

The candidate, Republican Jose Roel Antonio Tagle Jr., is one of two certified candidates in House District 22, along with Democrat Ted J. Eischeid. When Tagle filed for office June 1, he submitted the required Public Official Financial Disclosure with essentially nothing on it — no income, business interests, debts or economic associations beyond his and his spouse's names and his two children. The Alaska Democratic Party, which is pressing the challenge, says the form also omitted business holdings, a lodging operation, and a child-support lien and judgment that public records show.

The Division of Elections flagged the filing itself: a program manager emailed the commission days later noting the disclosure appeared blank online. But the division declined to remove Tagle. Director Carol Beecher concluded the substance of the disclosure was "beyond the scope" of the division's review — a matter for the commission, not elections officials — and that Tagle had at least filed on time. In the party's subsequent court appeal, an assistant attorney general representing the division argued that submitting the form satisfies the legal requirement even if it's left blank, that state law allows a window to correct it, and that any review of the contents belongs to the commission.

Tagle amended his disclosure on Aug. 8, more than two months after the deadline. The updated version reported Permanent Fund dividends, spouse self-employment income at an Anchorage inn, an interest in a company called Stardust Limited, and child support owed. He attributed the original blank filing to a technical problem: "When initially filed, there was a glitch in all my saved history was not submitted." The party counters that the correction came too late to cure the omission.

The party took the division to Superior Court, where Judge Josie Garton heard argument Aug. 7 and issued a decision Aug. 12 that closed the case. The court's docket records only that an appeal decision was issued and does not state who prevailed or what was ordered; the party said the court left the underlying question to the commission. "The Division of Elections has decided it wants to keep its head in the sand, and the court concluded that it is up to APOC to clean this mess up," said Jenny-Marie Stryker, the party's executive director and a named appellant.

The commission determines compliance and can recommend removal, but under its own policy it does not strike a candidate itself — that would fall to the Division of Elections. The party is asking the commission to recommend removing Tagle from the Nov. 3 general election ballot, not the Aug. 18 primary. With both ballot certification and the general-election withdrawal deadline falling Aug. 31, the commission has 13 days after the primary to weigh in.