EDITOR'S COLUMN: Dems out of bounds in calling Eastman a liar

The Alaska Democratic Party thinks it can take back the State House next month, but to pull it off will need to just about run the table on every winnable race.

In August, the ADP honed in on the District 10 House Seat after primary winner Christian Hartley bowed out to focus on getting the job as fire chief in Houston, which he later did. They replaced him with Patricia Faye-Brazel, a longtime community activist, who used to roll with Sen. Bernie Sanders back in the 1990s in her home state of Vermont, and who drove the grassroots Bernie push here in Alaska.

Though the district, north Wasilla and areas north of that, tends to be some of the most conservative real estate in the Mat-Su Borough, the Dems figured they had a shot against newcomer, 35-year-old David Eastman, a Wasilla firefighter who jumped up to knock off incumbent Wes Keller in the primary.

They armed Faye-Brazel with a campaign manager in Jeffery Eide, and got to knocking on doors in Willow and Talkeetna, doors that probably have seldom been knocked on by politicians before. Behind those doors are voters who probably could care less whether a candidate’s got an R or a D next to his or her name, and the Dems must have thought they were getting within striking distance and needed to make a big play.

What else could explain the press release they sent out on Thursday accusing Eastman of ‘lying’ in his Official Election Pamphlet, which includes the following credential: “University of Oxford, Graduate Fellowship, 2009, Law-Jurisprudence.”

Alaska GOP Chairman Tuckerman Babcock countered that the Dems’ claims were ‘spurious,’ that the program Eastman was part of — Summit Ministries — provided him a fellowship at New College, one of the many colleges under the umbrella of the University of Oxford, arguably the most distinguished and prestigious learning institution in the world.

Eastman’s pamphlet avoids this New College or Summit Ministries distinction entirely.

But does that make him a liar? I don’t think so.

I’m pretty certain we all have little such embellishments, or maybe better put — convenient omissions of detail on our resumés and in our life stories.

To use a term as strong as ‘lying’ to describe this seems patently unfair.

In fact, I would assume the whole selling feature of such programs is to be able to tell people you studied at Oxford, even if the fine print at the bottom runs and hides from any direct affiliation.

Babcock said that in their Freedom of Information Act request to the University, Alaska Democrats worded their question so precisely as to trap Oxford into giving a response that came off especially unfavorable toward Eastman.

I’m sure he’s right that that was their intention, but the problem is, they used Eastman’s words, as they appear on his resumé.

You can almost hear the quintessentially British disgust in the FOIA response of Max Todd, the school’s Assistant Registrar and Freedom of Information Act official: “We are not aware of any formal relationship between this organisation (Summit Ministries) and the University. It appears to have a relationship with some of the colleges, possibly in connection with a summer school, but we have no detail as to the nature of the relationship. Colleges are independent of the University and separate legal entities,” he wrote.

A 2013 article in the Telegraph UK detailed a report in which University of Oxford officials expressed concern about allowing these glorified church camps, and the toll they might take on Oxford’s reputation.

“Although the students are not officially part of the university, senior figures said they ‘pose severe reputational risk’ because their academic standards are ‘often low,’” the article said. “The report said that colleges, which are independent of the university and are free to set their own admissions policies, granted them admission for ‘purely commercial’ reasons.”

The report goes on to accuse the colleges of using these American students as ‘cash cows’, charging almost four times the rate of what British students pay per year.

It’s worth noting that the same Telegraph article says, “The students can refer to being educated at Oxford on their CVs.” It’s a statement that isn’t attributed, but we can probably assume it checks out, and if it does, it’s game, set and match against the Democrats’ claims that Eastman was ‘lying’ on his curriculum vitae.

If they’re going to take aim at Eastman’s character by using language as strong as ‘lying’ they’d better back it up with something better than this.

Managing Editor Matt Hickman can be reached at news@frontiersman.com