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Talk:List of party switchers in the United States

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Alaska entries

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So, is the real purpose of this list just another exercise in cherry-picking info and/or sources, unduly weighted towards whatever one may find lying around the web on one particular day or another within the past X number of years? Just going through the Alaska entries provides plenty of clues of this. For example:

  • Don Wright was solidly a Democrat during the ANCSA years. From the mid 1970s on, however, he spent the better part of 30 years bouncing back and forth constantly between the Alaskan Independence, Democratic and Republican parties. No mention in the list.
  • There are plenty of state legislators besides Lindsey Holmes who switched parties, most of whom are far more notable than she could ever dream of being at this exact moment. In the early statehood era, there's Republican Jay Hammond being elected to the legislature as an independent, the reasons for which he explains in one of his books (oh yeah, Frank Ferguson serving a term as an independent sandwiched in between terms as a Democrat?). Bruce Kendall famously switched from Republican to Democrat many moons ago. While never elected to partisan office as a Democrat, he became the de facto leader of the conservative wing of the Alaska Democratic Party (yeah, I know, that and $1.49 will get you a cup of coffee at the gas station). Carl Moses, in his 22 years as a state representative, served under the AIP as well as the two "major parties". The switch of Dick Randolph and Ken Fanning from the Libertarian Party to the Republican Party was certainly a big deal. We're sending out the POV that it really isn't because it occurred ca. 1985/6 instead of 2013. Just like there's another list out there which gives undue weight to Karl Kassel's four-vote loss in 2008 because it happened in 2008, when there are multiple election results in Alaska which were closer yet occurred decades ago.
  • The Bill Walker entry is blatant cherry-picking of one particular source that multiple editors, including this list's creator, have used for years to falsely claim that Walker was elected as an independent while Mallott was simultaneously elected as a Democrat. This has been discussed elsewhere, so I don't wish to dwell on it, but the continued ambiguity of third-party "reliable" sources on this issue has only enabled such nonsense to continue unabated.
  • Wally Hickel is mentioned, but not running mate Jack Coghill. Why, here is a fairly recent third-party news source which refers to Coghill as long being known as "Mr. Republican", even though one would presume that the height of his political career came as a member of the AIP. Perhaps that's just the artificial pecking order Wikipedians have created in our coverage of political offices.

If you need help straightening any of this out, let me know. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 00:03, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Micheal Flynn

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He is missing. 177.76.145.165 (talk) 16:21, 14 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Presumably you mean Michael Flynn. Misspelling the name seems par for the course for IP editors of this list. – wbm1058 (talk) 13:45, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]