Letter: Billionaires and their enablers

Regarding outsiders influencing Alaska's elections — indeed, our very future — you can't get more elite in wealth and power than Elon Musk. Last year's huge loss of steady, good-paying jobs in Alaska resulted from Musk's DOGE chain sawing the federal workforce. The service jobs he killed supported communities and industries across Alaska. The Defense Department — Alaska's largest federal employer — lost 755 Alaska jobs. Musk summarily fired veteran Mike Macans, who served as an airborne infantryman before joining the Small Business Administration's emergency management team, helping Alaskans who were dealing with disasters. Congress handed Musk the power to brutalize Alaska's workers by rubber-stamping everything the president does. In return, Musk and other billionaires spend heavily on Dan Sullivan's and Nicholas Begich's reelection campaigns. Because he doesn't want us to know how much skin he's got in Alaska's game, Musk has given over $1 million to a group supporting Ballot Measure 2 to return dark money to our elections and push Alaska backward to closed, extremely partisan primaries and pick-one-hold-your-nose general elections. We can break this cycle of monied power by voting out billionaire enablers Sullivan and Begich. And we can protect our right to know who's helping them by voting no on Ballot Measure 2. — Jeff Silverman, Anchorage • • • Have something on your mind? Send to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Please include your contact info. Letters under 200 words will have the best chance of being published. Writers should disclose any personal or professional connections with the subjects of their letters. Letters are edited for accuracy, clarity and length. If you're citing statistics or published sources, please include citations or links. Read our full opinion guidelines here.