A former Mat-Su Borough Assembly Member has filed suit to disqualify Representative David Eastman from holding elected office based on his membership in the Oath Keepers organization.
Near the end of July, Randall Kowalke filed a lawsuit against Representative David Eastman, the Alaska Division of Elections, and the division’s director, Gail Fenumiai. The suit seeks to disqualify Eastman from serving as a legislator and remove him from the November general election ballot.
The suit centers on Eastman’s membership in the Oath Keepers, a group that has been a focus of investigations into the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. Kowalke says Eastman’s continued membership in the group violates the Alaska Constitution’s loyalty clause.
“We have a constitution that identifies sedition as a disqualifying factor—belonging to that type of organization. We have a representative who, I think the phrase that was used, has doubled down on his Oath Keepers membership. And I don’t think it can be both ways.”
The clause in the Alaska Constitution prohibits anyone who advocates, or who belongs to a group who advocates, the violent overthrow of the state for federal government from holding office. Kowalke and his attorneys from the Northern Justice Project say Eastman’s membership in the Oath Keepers meets that criteria.
Kowalke and others filed complaints with the Alaska Division of Elections to have Representative Eastman disqualified from running for re-election. His suit says the response from DOE did not meet the agency’s requirement to uphold the constitution, and that’s why it and its director, Gail Fenumiai are also named as defendants.
“I guess there were like twenty-five or twenty-six of us who sent letters in. And as I understand it, we all received the same form letter back, ‘Yeah, he’s an Oath Keeper, but that’s not a problem.’”
Representative Eastman says the lawsuit is being used as a means to target a political opponent.
“This isn’t an academic question: ‘Well, gee, there’s this thing the Constitution included back in 1956. I wonder if we can make it apply to our events today and somehow use that to attack our political opponents or candidates we don’t agree with.’”
Kowalke says he considers himself a conservative and was a long-time member of the Republican Party before switching his affiliation to Non-Partisan.
While Eastman says the violence on January 6th should not have taken place, he finds value in the founding principles of the Oath Keepers.
“I think it’s extremely important that all of our public officials, all our former law enforcement and military, do take that oath seriously and continue on behalf of the country that they have been serving to follow and honor, support, and defend that constitution.”
Eastman was in Washington, D.C. on January 6th of last year, but says he was only there to hear the speech by then-President Donald Trump and did not enter the U.S. Capitol. Eleven members of the Oath Keepers have been charged with seditious conspiracy as a result of the attack on the Capitol, and two have plead guilty.
Kowalke says Eastman’s insistence is not enough.
“I’ve had a couple people tell me, ‘Well yeah, he was in D.C., but he didn’t do anything. If him saying that is proof, then I’d like to see some proof that that’s the truth.”
The Alaska Division of Elections is represented by the Department of Law in suits like these. Patty Sullivan, spokesperson for the Department of Law says in an e-mail responding to a request for comment that the Department of Law’s position is that the DOE and Director Fenumiai followed the appropriate process in responding to complaints about Eastman. The Department of Law intends to ask that the DOE and Director Fenumiai be dismissed as defendants in the case.
The target date for the state to begin mailing absentee ballots for the November 8th general election is October 14th.
No court dates have been set in the suit as of this Monday.
