Bob Bird: The reported death of the Alaskan Independence Party has been premature

By BOB BIRD

 The reported demise of the AIP is somewhat premature. Pat Buchanan had asked some of us prolife conservatives to help him gain control of the national Reform Party in 2000. When the local organizers of the Reform Party had decided that their devotion to Ross Perot had expired, they easily turned over the Alaskan party’s chapter to supporters of Buchanan.

We held a small convention after advertising it in local papers. With this as a template, the revival of the Alaskan Independence Party need only follow the protocols of the Division of Elections by calling a convention, restore the purpose and name of the party, and resume its mission.

Former AIP chair challenges party dissolution, questions authority and process

Permit me to say that the Alaskan Independence Party has always been respected as close to the hearts of many conservatives and libertarians — yet have never joined it. There have been good reasons why, and I have never faulted them. The best reason not to, prior to RCV and the 2024 Fairbanks Coup, was that the voter would not be able to vote in the important Republican primary. As a “recovering Republican”, it was tough for me, too. I became chairman when RCV ended that excuse, and tried to convince sympathetic voters that if the AIP and Alaska was in their heart, “Home is where the heart is.”

The unfortunate, surprise and back-stabbing Fairbanks Coup in 2024 was as crass an example of a sucker punch that can be imagined. It also was a symptom of what plagues us as Alaskans: its vast distances. It prevents us from meeting face to face except on rare occasions. Zoom meetings do not permit us to look a person in the eye, which is the window to the soul.

I had patiently been networking throughout the road system, looking for younger Alaskans. I crafted a presentation of the AIP’s history in a power point, which I was invited to give, even by Republicans at some of their political gatherings. One of them included a 2022 presentation for the need of voting “Yes” for the constitutional convention vote, killed by Outside money from liberals and globalists. It included the violations of the US and state constitutions and the utterly illegitimate statehood compact.

The most memorable occurred at Land’s End in Homer, where I was the “warm-up act” for Kelly Tschibaka and a host of candidates and elected legislators on hand. It was packed to the rafters. People were amazed to learn that Article I, Sec. 8, Cl. 17 limited the federal government to ownership of the District of Columbia, and “forts, arsenals, magazines, dock-yards and other needful buildings.”

When one slide showed the discrepancy of federal properties between states east and west of the Mississippi, a palpable gasp swept the room. Many had never even thought of it! And also explained that Alaska was owed four options at statehood, not just two, and that we really weren’t a “secession party”. Rather, we were merely hoping to be given the same respect that Puerto Rico and Guam still enjoy — remain a territory, join the union, become a commonwealth, or vote for independence.

This was guaranteed to all “Non-Self-Governing Territories” [NSGT] throughout the world, and it was fulfilled. Witness Dutch Indonesia, French West Africa, British East Africa, British Guiana, British Honduras, the Philippines. All became independent. Puerto Rico opted for commonwealth and Guam to remain a territory.

 It is not arguable that Alaska and Hawaii were crassly denied these U.N.-sanctioned rights. They were considered too strategically important during the Cold War, but they were indeed listed as an NSGT. If the Republican Party had made this part of their non-negotiable platform, the AIP would have dissolved naturally.

I hate to name names, but the take-over of the AIP into the hands of those who have destroyed it, belongs to one young man: Arthur Serkov. He had written a number of essays extolling the virtue of gold and silver standard. They were well thought out and demonstrated a complete understanding of why we need specie-backed currency. On my radio show he was also impressive, and after I met him face to face, I asked him to accept the position of Vice-Chairman/North.

Let me say that he retrieved a certain amount of honor by admitting his error to me personally, just last summer. He then resigned as Vice-Chairman/North, and suggested that I resume leadership, but John Wayne Howe — supposedly a devoted acolyte of the late, great Joe Vogler, refused to consider it.

But Serkov and Howe also made a disasterous appointment for VC/South, but I will not go into his name or any specific details. His appointment immediately relegated the AIP into a true “fringe party”, saddled with an officer that possessed a vile temperament and pie-in-the-sky ideas, ones that fit the same unrealistic ones held by the new leadership.

Despite the fact that I constantly included both Serkov and Howe in Zoom conferences, and held meetings, always at my own expense, in Anchorage, the Kenai Peninsula, Fairbanks, the Mat Valley and even Talkeetna, they worked behind my back, to back-stab me and the small cadre of AIP veterans at the 2024 Fairbanks convention.

They knew they could control the convention, because almost anyone can be convinced to join the AIP and become an instant delegate if they are willing to invest a day — without driving six hundred to a thousand miles round trip. These were NOT liberals, these were young conservatives that I had been trusting and grooming for future leadership. They KNEW I was intending to turn over the party to them, and soon. But instead, they gambled: for a short term “victory” and a long-term defeat for the very party they thought they could do better things with.

As far as I can tell, the alienation came when Serkov suggested, as VC/North, that we ought to do a direct mailing appeal. Such tactics were good for the 1980s, but I knew were now an expensive dead-end. I instead suggested online ads might be better use of our funds.

Serkov, who is bi-lingual and whose parents were Soviet-era refugees, returned to central Asia to work, yet he orchestrated the coup from a distance.

Serkov needed to explain his actions and errors in a column, which I suggested that he do for the sake of the party, but whatever honor he regained by his personal apology to me, was not followed up. He still could do it.

When I took over the AIP in 2020, I knew that I could chloroform the party with the death of Lynette Clark. However, I told myself that I would not go down in the state’s history as the man who destroyed the AIP. Even Howe admitted that I had saved it. And now, rather than keep the party alive, he has attempted to kill it.

As the man who once said that if I remained chairman, the AIP would become Alaska’s majority party in 150 years, he has killed it in two.

I now await the opinion of the Division of Elections to find the best course. As Shelley Hughes just recently wrote, the ideals of the AIP must never be allowed to die. Perhaps, if I can pull the party once again out of the fire, Shelley will discover that “Home is where the heart is.”

Conservative talk radio host Bob Bird anchors the “Talk of the Kenai” show for KSRM, and was named the 2025 Broadcaster of the Year by the Alaska Broadcasters Association.