Colver calls collaboration charges unfounded

WASILLA — Alaska Republican Party District 9 leaders have issued a reprimand to Mat-Su Rep. Jim Colver for “close collaboration” with members of the House minority.

Colver says the claims are completely unfounded.

"They’re using their party office to put out a press release to say I’m not a team player," Colver said in a Friday interview. "Well I’m on the team of the folks back home."

According to the letter signed by district chair Carol Carman, Colver is a known Democratic collaborator who has a “pattern of voting with the House minority caucus.”

“ARP District 9 officers have been alerted that you are collaborating in the creating of a future caucus/coalition with Democrats in order to form a bipartisan House majority,” reads the letter. “This action, if true, is a violation of our party rules, which could subject you to stiff sanctions from both your home district as well as from the Alaska Republican Party Central Committee.”

Colver said he's an award-winning conservative who's been honored by the American Conservative Union for his commitment to conservative values. The letter's charges, he said, are baseless.

"Those are all false," Colver said. "I'm a Republican with a conservative voting record."

Colver said the letter was sent for purely political reasons by those seeking to oppose him in the next election.

"I've broken no party rules," he said.

Alaska Republican Party communications director Suzanne Downing said Colver drew the rebuke because he broke party rules, which state incumbents can be sanctioned by the party for doing things “of substantial detriment to the Republican Party or to Republican values and goals, such as forming a coalition in which Democrats hold the majority when a Republican majority has been elected.”

Downing said it was “grass-roots activists” within the party who called for the reprimand against Colver.

In an email sent Monday, Downing said one example of Colver’s failure to vote with the House majority came when he opposed HB 298, which would have deleted two triggers that allow school districts to develop and implement a layoff plan. Those triggers include a decrease in student population or a 3 percent decrease in the Basic Need of a district. The National Education Association was against the bill, which Downing said was supported by the Mat-Su Borough School District. Colver’s vote, Downing said, kept it from moving out of the House Education Committee.

Other charges include that Colver was “an aggressor on the municipal tax-local choice bill,” that he voted to stop several of the majority’s education initiatives and had voted with the minority against a bill that adds legislators as nonvoting members of the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation board.

The charges against Colver also include allegations he has been working with Democrats behind the scenes to form a new bipartisan coalition.

“Your actions on all cited evidence coincides with the position of the Democrat minority, not the position of the Republican majority,” reads the letter. “We highly recommend you explain your recent actions in working closely with the opposition party to form a bipartisan coalition as well as the four incidents listed above (we may decide to expand the list as necessary).”

Colver said that's simply untrue.

"There's no way I'm doing that, there's no conspiracy," he said.

Downing said there must be consequences when legislators break with the majority.

“This is how they’re held accountable,” she said.

She said members of the Republican majority have a responsibility to work with members of their own party rather than voting with the opposition.

“That wouldn’t be democracy if we just let people go to Juneau and do what they want,” she said.

When asked to clarify, Downing said voters and party activists need to be able to send a clear message to representatives in Juneau if they’re unhappy with legislators' actions during the session.

“Democracy is an ongoing process, it doesn’t just happen during elections,” she said.

In Carman’s letter to Colver, the district chair said the group is planning to hold a special executive meeting before the state Republican convention to discuss the representative’s actions.

If he's guilty of anything, Colver said, it's working too hard for his constituents.

"Granted, sometimes I ruffle feathers representing Palmer," he said. "But I understand how each and every matter before us affects the people back home."

Colver said it's the duty of every elected official to do what they feel is right for their constituents — not party officials.

"We are free to vote our conscience, and that's what people generally do," he said.