The campaign to recall Gov. Mike Dunleavy has ended

Residents gather on Saturday, February 29, 2020 at a kickoff event for organizers of an effort to Recall Gov. Mike Dunleavy in Juneau, Alaska. (Photo by Rashah McChesney/KTOO)

Recall Dunleavy Chair Meda DeWitt announced the decision to end the campaign in an opinion article in the Anchorage Daily News.

DeWitt wrote that the campaign protected Alaska and Alaskans from Dunleavy.

She’s hopeful that those who supported the recall will form a long-lasting movement that cuts across political affiliations.

“They have the power. And that’s the beauty of having a democracy,” she said. “They reached out and they talked to their friends and their neighbors and family members and met people they never knew who were aligned.”

She says it no longer made sense to spend money to hold a special election when another election for governor is next year.

She also linked the decision to Dunleavy filing for re-election. She wrote that as a result of Dunleavy’s filing, the recall campaign would have to treat donor data differently, as well as that of people who signed the recall petition.

“Dunleavy’s administration has a history of vengeful and illegal retaliation,” she wrote. “We believe that a new submission of signatures would put even more civil servants and dedicated Alaskans’ service at risk.”

She says other candidates for governor can build on the recall effort.

“They have all of this information that has been collected and put through the courts and written about in articles that they can use,” she said. “And we can still keep people safe from Dunleavy.”

She also said that ending the campaign would end the governor’s ability to raise funds for a group opposing the recall, which she said amounted to supporting his re-election campaign.

She said the campaign created pressure on the administration that protected state services from budget cuts.

DeWitt said the campaign gathered 62,373 signatures. It needed roughly 9,000 more to hold a recall election. She expressed confidence that Dunleavy would have been recalled if it wasn’t for the COVID-19 pandemic. The campaign gathered more than 30,000 signatures in its opening month, between late February and late March 2020. It took another 17 months to gather the next 30,000.

Dunleavy supporters said the recall was doomed to fail.

“I’m a little bit surprised it took so long for them to realize, as we have known for a long time, that a recall vote would have failed,” said Cynthia Henry, chair of Keep Dunleavy, a group backing the governor.

She laughed at DeWitt’s accusation that Dunleavy would retaliate against recall supporters. She says the recall effort is over because it failed.

“I just think they wasted a lot of time and resources on an effort that was really politically motivated,” she said. “And I think that that’s unfortunate.”

Henry emphasized that the groups opposing the recall are separate from the governor’s re-election campaign. She says the governor has broad support and won’t have a problem raising money for his campaign.

This story has been updated with comments from the groups Recall Dunleavy and Keep Dunleavy. 

Andrew Kitchenman

State Government Reporter, Alaska Public Media & KTOO

State government plays an outsized role in the life of Alaskans. As the state continues to go through the painful process of deciding what its priorities are, I bring Alaskans to the scene of a government in transition.

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