Dark money beat: The minimum wage campaign in 2024 was fueled by maximum DC dollars. Here’s how it went down

By SUZANNE DOWNING

For a place that prides itself on minding its own business, Alaska has a lot of outsiders calling the shots in our state.

Nowhere was that clearer than with Alaska’s 2024 Ballot Measure 1, the “local” plan to increase the minimum wage and mandate sick leave for all employers. Supporters tried to sell it as something Alaskans were demanding.

Yet it was not Alaskans who actually paid to put it on the ballot.

Alaska’s 2024 minimum wage and sick leave ballot initiative, which attacked small business owners the hardest, fits a broader pattern that watchdogs like the Alaska Influence Pipeline have documented: The Sixteen Thirty Fund uses ballot initiatives in states that are easy targets, like Alaska with our large population of “undeclared” and “nonpartisan” registered voters and low media costs, where a few million dollars can shift public opinion quickly.

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Independent research conducted by the Alaska Influence Pipeline found that almost every dollar behind the $2.6 million campaign came straight out of Washington, DC The Fairness Project is a DC-based political nonprofit that grew out of the Service Employee International Union (SEIU), which has been supported by the Open Society network and aims to pass progressive ballot initiatives in states where legislatures won’t. The Fairness Project poured approximately $1.67 million into the campaign, with the Sixteen Thirty Fund contributing another $900,000. That degree of outside involvement should make Alaskans think twice.

As a key part of the Arabella Advisors network (now called Sunflower Strategies), the Sixteen Thirty Fund is a huge political and financial operation. Created by Democratic strategists with deep ties to the Obama and Clinton political circles, the group’s spending skyrocketed from just over $350,000 in 2012 to $140 million in 2023. The organization has poured millions into national political battles, including a $3 million contribution to President Biden’s PAC. The group was also heavily involved in the fight against Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination. We’re up against a well-funded, well-coordinated political machine.

At the center of that network sits the Hopewell Fund. In 2023, Hopewell distributed over $156 million to progressive causes. Just before the Alaska minimum wage and mandatory sick leave campaign geared up, Hopewell sent $1.93 million to the Fairness Project. Interestingly, these groups share addresses, donors, vendors and staff. What they do not share is any meaningful connection to Alaska.

That presents itself in the policy. A statewide $15 minimum wage may sound straightforward in an ad, but Alaska’s economy isn’t. The cost of living looks one way in Anchorage and another entirely in rural Alaska, where housing, energy and shipping prices are enormous and jobs are few. A wage floor that barely registers in Midtown Anchorage can crush a village store trying to keep fuel tanks full through winter.

Seasonal industries know well what is on the line. Fishing crews, tourism operators, and small construction firms told legislators and regulators that mandatory wage hikes mean shorter seasons, smaller crews, or abandoning the chance to hire teenagers and first-time workers. Many Alaskans also rely on flexible, part-time work to supplement subsistence life. When employers must raise wages uniformly, these low-intensity positions are often the first to disappear.

Meanwhile, major industries already pay far above $15  an hour. Oil, mining, logging, and most construction jobs far exceed that wage floor. So, the burden lands squarely on small businesses, not large corporations.

Supporters claim that approximately 12,000 Alaskans would get a raise. But as we know, jobs could be lost, hours cut, and rural opportunities reduced, and their concerns echo findings from the Congressional Budget Office and state-level studies showing that wage mandates often reduce hiring for teens and low-skill workers. And don’t forget about artificial intelligence and robotics taking these jobs, if humans get too expensive.

The debates are normal but the sheer volume of outside money steering the conversation is extraordinary and cannot be ignored. This campaign was bankrolled and orchestrated almost entirely by national political groups using Alaska as a testing ground.

Alaskans value transparency and self-determination. When nearly every dollar behind a ballot measure comes from groups headquartered 4,000 miles away, it is difficult to believe they are acting out of concern for Alaskans. Everything in the filings and reporting points to something else: a political experiment being run in a state far from where the donors live.

Whether Alaskans supported or opposed Ballot Measure 1 in 2024, they deserve to know who paid for the campaign, who designed the strategy, and what those groups expected to gain from winning here time and again.

The folks steering Alaska’s political future have never lived here, worked here, or paid for heating oil in a bitter-cold December.

Suzanne Downing moved to Alaska in 1969 and is editor of The Alaska Story.

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