ONE WORD OVER THE LINE

There's certainly no love lost between Anchorage Democratic
Representative Eric Croft and Republican Lieutenant Governor Loren
Leman, who oversees the Alaska Division of Elections. The tussle
between the two has been going on for a while, but just recently made
it into the news when Superior Court Judge Morgan Christen sided with
Croft over the language in the "Trust the People" initiative he
sponsored. Judge Christen ruled the ballot language worded by the
Leman's office was biased and factually inaccurate. That proposition
proposes to remove the governor's authority to appoint a Senate
replacement if a seat becomes vacant.

Prior to that court battle, Leman wrote a letter to Croft about the
initiative. In that letter, he said, "You suggest that 'political
pressures' have caused me to act or not act in a way other than what
you would want. This is absurd. You may think if you repeat these
falsehoods enough times, the media and others will believe them.
Judge Christen, apparently, is one of those "others." But there are
plenty of other "others," too. "Croft & Company," as Leman calls the
folks behind the Trust the People initiative, are not the only people
who believe that the lieutenant governor had a heavy hand in the
wording of their ballot initiative. The Proposition 2 people - the pot
people - say they were steam-rolled, too.

This is how these things usually work. The sponsors of the initiative
write the language they want to appear on the ballot. The lieutenant
governor's office and the attorney general's office have the option of
rewriting it. When and if they do, it is normally sent back to the
sponsors for their approval.

This process was already completed with the pot initiative language in
2001. The pot people had no reason not to believe that the language
that was already approved wouldn't appear on the ballot. But Ken
Jacobus, the lawyer for the pot initiative, was surprised when he saw
a new version on the Internet. The whole thing was changed. But it was
one little word that he most objected too, one little hot-button word
that might make all the difference in the world: "children."

Prior to Leman's rewording, the initiative read: "State law could not
stop doctors from prescribing marijuana."

Now the November 2 ballot initiative reads: "It removes all existing
state restrictions on prescription of all marijuana patients,
including children."

Jacobus had already been in touch with Leman, requesting that he
change the language. Jacobus didn't officially challenge it because,
he says, there wasn't enough time. Also, he didn't think he had the
best case.

The initiative itself does say that there should be no
age-restrictions for prescribing medicinal marijuana. But Proposition
2 backers insist that the initiative's authors didn't intend for
doctors to prescribe pot to four-year-olds. But they wouldn't want a
sweeping law to restrict marijuana prescriptions for, say, an
18-year-old suffering from leukemia.

After Judge Christen ordered the reprinting of the ballots to change
the wording for the Trust the People initiative (at a cost of nearly
$300,000), Jacobus wrote a letter to Leman requesting that his office
should change the pot language, too.

"While technically true," Jacobus wrote Leman, "it is unnecessarily
editorializing against the initiative. As a practical matter,
children are not prescribed medical marijuana, and the specter that
they would be should not be in the ballot language."

Leman said he's sticking with wording he and his staff came up with
for Proposition 2. He also denies any bias. He said that Proposition
2's authors left him no choice.

"My job is to be as fair and impartial as possible," Leman said. "They
may say it's farfetched (that a doctor would prescribe pot to a
child), but I have to walk a very fine line."

When asked if there might be a better way to go about addressing such
concerns - such as by having a non-partisan body oversee the Division
of Elections - Leman said, "Now you're implying that I can't be impartial."

Leman has admitted being against the pot initiative. He also has some
"strong feelings" about "Croft & Company." But, he said, "it would be
inappropriate of me to tell you what they are."