Alaska Dems seek to boot incarcerated House hopeful from November ballot

In a congressional election cycle that has already been marked with highly unusual developments and realignments, Democrats in Alaska are now suing to boot a declared contender from within their own ranks off the ballot.

As the Washington Examiner reports, the Alaska Democratic Party filed suit last week against the Alaska Division of Elections in a bid to keep incarcerated House hopeful Eric Hafner from appearing on the ballot come November.

Election season upheaval continues

As KRBD in Ketchikan, Alaska, explains, the race to unseat Democratic Congresswoman Mary Peltola has been a somewhat tumultuous one, and it now features three remaining candidates out of a pool of 11 who threw their hats in the ring prior to the primary.

GOP hopefuls Nancy Dahlstrom and Matthew Salisbury recently withdrew from the race ahead of the deadline, leaving Republican Nick Begich, Alaskan Independence Party member John Wayne Howe, and Democrat Eric Hafner to contend this fall.

However, Hafner is no ordinary political candidate, in that he has never even set foot in Alaska and -- perhaps more importantly -- he is currently serving a 20-year term in federal prison in New York.

In a bizarre turn of events back in June, Hafter declared his candidacy in the form of a photocopied prison ID card bearing his photo and the scrawled message, “Eric Hafner, Democrat, running for US Congress from federal prison!”

Convicted and sentenced on charges related to threats made to politicians, police officers, judges, and others while living abroad, Hafner maintains his innocence but also points to former President Donald Trump's felony convictions to support the notion that he should not be disqualified from contention.

Democrats sue to end Hafner's bid

Hoping to bring about an abrupt judicial end to Hafner's political vision for Alaska. however, is the state Democratic Party, whose executive director explained, “This is about someone who is incarcerated, an unqualified candidate that shouldn't have been moved onto the ballot.”

The plaintiff Democrats assert that Hafner's run stands in violation of the Constitution's residency clause and must be brought to a swift end via an emergency expedited hearing schedule ahead of critical ballot printing and mailing deadlines.

However, though he believes Hafner's foes have a solid argument to make for his removal, Alaska election law expert Scott Kendall has raised doubts about whether an answer to the Democrats' plea will arrive in a timely fashion, musing, “I would say if they don't have an answer a week from today, I don't think they're getting an answer.”

Hafner's hopes spring eternal

Hafner's colorful past includes two prior congressional runs, one in Hawaii in 2016 and another in Oregon in 2018, times when he was not even living in the United States.

When asked why he chose to run for a seat in Alaska this time around, Hafner said, “Alaska is a very unique place with the climate change issues, with the Indigenous issues that are in Alaska, but also the very vast opportunity for positive development and progress.”

Though he has roughly 15 years left to serve on his federal sentence, Hafner suggests that an electoral victory would solve that problem straight away.

“Ultimately, if I'm elected, I expect to be released immediately at that point. There's a federal statute under compassionate release that says you could be released for extraordinary compelling reasons,” he noted. “And by golly, if I'm going to DC to represent the people of Alaska, I think that's a very extraordinary and compelling reason.”