Shooting suspect pulled 4,000 votes in 2006

Posted by Alaska_Politics

Posted: December 8, 2008 - 9:21 pm

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Alex Crawford, who supported repealing the ban on smoking in bars, brought his homemade campaign signs to Election Central at the Egan Center in 2006. (Bill Roth/Anchorage Daily News)

From Kyle Hopkins in Anchorage --

Police charged Keane Crawford with murder yesterday, saying Crawford shot a man in Spenard. He's also accused of punching his wife in the face.

But if you're a local political junkie - especially the type who watches City Hall - you know the accused shooter as Alex Crawford.

In 2006, Crawford got about 4,000 votes, or 1.7 of the total vote, in the U.S. House race.

Here he is in a three-minute interview from early last year, when he was running for an East Anchorage Assembly seat. He dropped out of the contest before Election Day. (Sheila Selkregg won that race against Ken Stout, the incumbent. Crawford's showing of about 6 percent of the vote wasn't large enough to play a spoiler role.)

The same year, he helped lead the charge against the city smoking ban, suing the muni over the way it described a ballot proposition that sought to reverse the expanded ban.

What you may not know about Crawford is that, according to the vice chairman of the Alaska Libertarian Party, he staged an upset at the party's annual convention in 2006 that temporarily placed him and his allies on the party's board.

Using proxy votes to replace several board members, "he took over the party for like a year," said Harley Brown, the vice chair.

Brown knew Crawford as Keane, not Alex. "I did like the kid, I really did," Brown said.

Crawford was loose cannon who had charisma and energy but could be childlike and got upset when he didn't get what he wanted. He left the party roughly a year ago, Brown said.

To accomplish things in politics you have to be subtle sometimes. Crawford wasn't, he said.

"He was just unsatisfied with the direction the party was going."

Local Libertarians today were frustrated by seeing Crawford's alleged crime associated with the party.

“It’s not about politics at all. It’s a tragedy. It’s horrible to hear something like that," said Jason Dowell, a former party chairman who also ran for Assembly in 2007.

“I’ve been around them (Crawford and his wife) so many times and I’ve never seen him act violent or raise his voice," he said.

Crawford is now listed as a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, according to public records.

Here's an excerpt from a short profile on his 2007 Assembly race:

Crawford is running a guerrilla Assembly campaign.

He prints his own fliers using pints of ink he bought on eBay. He says he won't accept any donations, and his campaign Web site is a MySpace page with a picture of a silver rifle where you'd expect to see his smiling face.

Crawford is big on small government.

He thinks property taxes are out of line and people should pay out of pocket for the services they want.

He says all drugs should be legal and so should all guns.

"I've got 15 SKSs with grenade launchers on them. Can't get the grenades," Crawford said, referring to a type of semi-automatic rifle.

Fifteen?
"Saving them for a rainy day," he said.

This year, Crawford volunteered for the Ron Paul campaign and eventually worked as a paid staffer for roughly three weeks, said Alaska field director Matthew Peters.

He pops up in this KTUU report at about the 1:30 mark:

His stint on the campaign ended when he was fired over a disagreement with a campaign official, Peters said.

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