One candidate for governor needs to repeat math class

By Larry Persily

Thankfully, only one of the four candidates for governor in the Nov. 3 statewide general election needs a refresher course in math. The rest know that 2 plus 2 equals 4. But Republican Bernadette Wilson, running for her first elected public office, is proving to voters that numbers don’t need to add up when you want to win bad enough.

Wilson, who garnered a mathematically unremarkable 10% of the votes in the August primary election, which was good enough to make the Final Four, is campaigning for governor on the promise of a bigger Permanent Fund dividend than Alaskans have ever seen.

Even better than just a fat check next year, she wants the state treasury to send out “back pay” for the past 10 years when the Legislature and governor appropriated for the annual PFD what the treasury could afford rather than taking money out of savings, raising taxes or cutting funding for schools or public services to pay a larger dividend.

“Alaskans are owed thousands of dollars that has been unlawfully withheld from them,” she proudly and loudly proclaims on her campaign website, neglecting to say where the state would get the billions of dollars that would be needed to cover the checks.

The only thing she gets right is that the 1982 formula in state law for calculating the PFD should be changed. But until elected officials summon the political will to make the change, the dividend is subject to the same annual budget process as any other spending. The Alaska Supreme Court almost a decade ago said that’s the law, and Wilson’s campaign promises can’t change that.

Regardless, she doesn’t let legal or fiscal reality get in the way of a campaign-promise-supersize PFD that would cost maybe $2.5 billion a year. She said she will veto “everything out of that damn budget” until legislators get her message and “figure out how they’re going to pay out your Permanent Fund Dividend.”

She neglects the math that a dividend payout that large would be about double what the state contributes to K-12 education. Her easy answer at a candidates' forum in Anchorage is that legislators are lying about the budget, as if there were some double-secret stash of cash, hidden from the public.

As for her own financial management skills, Wilson, an Anchorage business owner, has a record of bad debts, including the garnishment of two of her Permanent Fund dividends to satisfy a judgment.

Though weak at finances, she is keenly observant of politics. She saw that promising voters a big dividend was a winning strategy for Mike Dunleavy’s run for governor in 2018 and reelection campaign in 2022. If it worked twice, maybe it would work a third time. Worth a try, she figures. Sure beats campaigning on honesty.

Even her two Republican opponents in November are honest enough not to promise a bigger PFD than is affordable. That itself is a small victory. It’s about time that most candidates told the dividend truth rather than a dividend lie.

To Wrangell’s credit, voters here did not fall for Wilson’s poor math in the August primary. She placed sixth among Wrangell voters, with just 8% of the votes.

Hopefully, voters in November will stick with candidates who can add value, not dishonesty, to the political equation.

• Larry Persily is the publisher of the Wrangell Sentinel, which first published this column.