Alaska Gov. Dunleavy spends nearly $10,000 on Facebook ads to support education agenda

Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s office spent nearly $10,000 on publicly funded Facebook advertisements meant to collect the names and email addresses of individuals who support his education agenda, according to records obtained by the Daily News.

The ads, which feature images generated by artificial intelligence, are accompanied by tag lines such as “Schools shouldn’t decide your child’s future” and “Stop Government Overreach in Schools.”

The ads began running shortly after the conclusion of a legislative session in which Dunleavy was at odds with most legislators over his education policy ideas, which included a limited-time teacher bonus plan and the creation of additional charter schools through a governor-appointed state board.

The governor’s office spent $9,640 between June and September on ads run through Dunleavy’s official Facebook page, according to receipts obtained through a public records request. Individuals who clicked on the ads were prompted to provide their full name and email address.

The ads yielded 2,256 signatures as of Sept. 30, according to information provided by the governor’s office. According to data collected by Facebook, some of the ads were seen more than 20,000 times.

“Those who sign up will be provided with updates about public education related information and proposals from the governor,” Dunleavy spokesperson Jessica Bowers said in an email last month. The goal of the ads was “to provide Alaskans with information on the governor’s proposals to improve public education in Alaska.”

Dunleavy has previously used advertising paid for by state money to bolster his agenda and collect contact information. In 2019, he spent more than $35,000 on ads promoting a larger Permanent Fund dividend and a state spending cap, among other issues.

[How a single education vote is shaping legislative races across Alaska]

State law prohibits the use of public funds for “partisan political purposes.” An ethics investigator concluded in 2020 that the collection of constituent names and contact information was legal as long as it was not shared with any entity outside of state government.

Public records officer Guy Bell said that the governor’s office “has no record of emails sent to individuals who requested to receive education updates under the petition.”

The Dunleavy administration also sought petition signatures at this year’s Alaska State Fair in support of “education reform,” but state employees manning the booth provided only limited details on the reforms sought by Dunleavy.

One ad that ran in June showed four old men wearing suits and smoking cigars, along with the phrase “They don’t want you to have parental rights.” Another ad that appeared that month stated that “education associations are doing everything in their power to prevent any progress outside of neighborhood schools and are limiting alternative public school models.” That ad was accompanied by the question: “Does Gov. Dunleavy hate kids?”

A July ad asked viewers to “sign to show your support for school choice in Alaska.” Ads in June criticized “education associations” for not supporting Dunleavy’s education policy proposals.

Dunleavy has repeatedly criticized the National Education Association of Alaska, a union representing most school teachers in the state, which has consistently advocated for increasing funding for Alaska schools.

NEA-Alaska President Tom Klaameyer called the ads “an ominous attempt to further divide Alaskans and undermine our public education system” and said the Dunleavy administration was “spending public funds on extreme partisan priorities.”

The ads began running several months after Dunleavy vetoed a broadly supported bipartisan education bill that would have permanently increased the state’s school funding formula for the first time in several years. Dunleavy said he vetoed the bill because it did not include provisions he had proposed, which would have established a three-year teacher bonus plan and created a new way for a governor-appointed board to establish charter schools.

Dunleavy, a former school teacher, has repeatedly called for an increase in the number of charter schools in Alaska. Under current state law, people who want to establish charter schools, which are publicly funded, must first seek approval by a locally elected school board. Dunleavy sought to have the state board of education, whose members he appoints, approve charter schools.

The Mat-Su region has the largest number of charter schools in the state, at eight. There are seven charter schools in Anchorage, five in Fairbanks, four in the Kenai Peninsula, two in Ketchikan and one each in four other districts. The vast majority of districts in Alaska have no charter schools.

Dunleavy has remained largely opaque on his future education policy proposals after failing to gain legislators’ support for his policy goals earlier this year.

Asked last month about the governor’s education policy priorities, Dunleavy spokesperson Bowers said Dunleavy “supports policies that improve student achievement” and that he intends to consider “how we can fund education, increase the number of educational options that support the needs of parents, students, and families, better support teachers and direct instruction, and improve outcomes for all public-school students.”

Just under $2,000 of the spending for the Facebook campaign was allocated to ads targeting specific regions of the state. Half of that was spent on ads targeting residents of the Mat-Su region, a largely conservative area.

Dunleavy spent $500 each on ads targeting residents of the Kenai Peninsula and Fairbanks. The remainder of the funds were spent on campaigns classified as “broad,” “parents,” and “teachers,” according to the receipts.

When Dunleavy used state-funded ads to bolster his agenda and collect contact information in 2019, the advertising campaign triggered an ethics investigation that found that while the campaign was dubbed a petition, its goal was to gather the names and contact information of Alaskans.

Most of the ads investigated in 2019 were found to abide by state law. However, Dunleavy did agree in 2020 to pay $2,800 to settle an ethics complaint that centered on some of the ads, which referenced lawmakers who were running for reelection while the ads were running.

[Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that only locally elected school boards can establish charter schools. Under current law, people wanting to create a charter school must first go to their local school board, but the state board of education then must also approve the charter, and the state board can also override local school board decisions to deny charters upon appeal.]