New independent group, 'Build the Damn Roads!', will support Alaska GOP governor candidate Wilson
The super PAC-type group hasn’t reported any fundraising yet, but it’s working with professional political operatives.
Bernadette Wilson, one of the top GOP candidates in a field of 18 people running to be the next governor of Alaska, is poised for a boost from a newly formed political group that plans to support her campaign.
The group, “Build the Damn Roads!” registered this week with state campaign finance regulators, and its disclosure lists contacts at a national law firm as well as two experienced, out-of-state political operatives.
Build the Damn Roads formed as an independent expenditure group, the state-level equivalent to the big-spending super PACs in federal elections, and said its work will go toward supporting Wilson.
The independent expenditure designation allows the group to raise and spend unlimited sums as long as it doesn’t coordinate with Wilson’s campaign.
The group has not yet disclosed any fundraising. But its chairman, Doug Glenn, acknowledged in a brief phone interview Wednesday that its spending would run into six figures.
Support from groups like Glenn’s acts as a tailwind to candidates’ campaigns — boosting overall spending on television and radio ads, as well as sometimes launching additional attacks on opponents. Wilson’s own campaign said it raised $300,000 as of its first disclosure in February, meaning that the scale of support from Build the Damn Roads would be significant.
Build the Damn Roads is the second independent expenditure group formed recently whose officials say they expect to raise significant cash in support of gubernatorial hopefuls — after the creation of a union-affiliated group that's boosting Republican candidate Click Bishop.
Nathaniel Herz
Bishop, a former state senator from Fairbanks, is running as a labor-aligned centrist, with an independent, Greta Schuerch, on his ticket as the candidate for lieutenant governor.
Wilson, a longtime activist who’s worked for the anti-tax group Americans for Prosperity, is one of the most conservative candidates in the race; Republican former state Sen. Mike Shower is her running mate. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Glenn, the chair of Build the Damn Roads, is a pilot and member of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Planning Commission who said he’s “tired of politicians,” adding that Wilson “is not one.” He described himself as a figurehead for the new group, recruited by others who wanted “somebody with a clean nose to help them.”
He declined to identify others involved in the group. On its formal disclosure, the group lists its treasurer as Karl Melton, a New Mexico county treasurer whose online professional profile includes stints with the national conservative groups Club for Growth and the Heritage Foundation. Melton also declined to comment when reached by phone.
Once Build the Damn Roads begins collecting contributions, it will have to publicly disclose them with Alaska campaign finance regulators.
In its own disclosure filed this week, the group supporting Bishop — Pick Click and Greta for Alaska — said it had raised $225,000 from the political arm of a union of heavy equipment operators, Local 302. Bishop, who worked on construction of the trans-Alaska pipeline system in the 1970s, is a member of that union.
The pro-Bishop group’s budget will be at least twice what it’s reported so far, given another expected contribution from a separate union of carpenters, said Chris Dimond, a labor official who serves as Pick Click and Greta for Alaska’s co-chair.
The group has committed $200,000 to its first wave of pro-Bishop advertisements, it said in its disclosure this week.
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