With the Alaska GOP set to meet Monday evening to decide the fate of party chairwoman Debbie Brown of Kasilof, she has seized the Republican headquarters in Anchorage and is threatening to arrest anyone who tries to enter the building.
"In order to protect the assets of the Alaska Republican Party, the office located at 1001 West Fireweed Lane in Anchorage has been temporarily closed and the locks changed," she said in an email sent to various Alaska Republicans early Monday. "No one is to enter the premises without permission from the State Chairman. Any unauthorized attempt to enter the premises will be met by the authorities."
The Alaska Republican Party's assets are at the moment rather limited. The headquarters building borders on being a dump, and most of the party funds have been transferred to the control of the Capital City Republicans in Juneau, the state capital, for safe keeping.
That was just before the party hierarchy ousted party chairman-elect Russ Millette, a Yellow Pages salesman, saying that he'd proven himself incompetent as a party fundraiser, the key job of the party Finance Chair, which Millette assumed before becoming party chairman.
Left to step into Millette's shoes was Brown, the vice-chair elect from a contentious 2012 Republican convention that was taken over by supporters of failed Republican presidential nominee Ron Paul with help from supporters of failed U.S. Senate Republican candidate Joe Miller. Miller is the one-time attorney for the Fairbanks North Star Borough who upset incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, in the 2010 Republican primary only to lose to her in the general election when she staged an unprecedented write-in campaign against Miller and Democrat Scott McAdams.
The infighting within the state's most powerful political party has been ongoing ever since.