Vance to ethics committee — don’t silence me
By Marcia Kuszmaul
Homer Independent Press
A state legislative ethics committee took no corrective action toward Rep. Sarah Vance (R-Homer) after finding probable cause that she violated state law when she used legislature letterhead for a nonlegislative purpose and partisan political activity.
In a written determination released on July 2 following its June 26 decision, the House committee simply told Vance to follow authorized use rules in the future.
But Vance is admitting no wrong. In a phone interview Tuesday with Homer Independent Press, Vance said she disagrees with the committee’s finding but has not yet decided how she will respond. By law, she may request a confidential meeting with the committee within 20 days of receiving its opinion.
“This was not an ethics violation, but true representation,” Vance said. “And that’s at the heart of what I was doing when I made the complaint to Sound Publishing, speaking on behalf of my constituents.”
“Me calling out the media for engaging in partisanship does not make me partisan,” Vance said. “It just wants to hold them accountable, saying this should not have been a partisan article.”
In short, the conflict involving Homer’s state legislator seems no closer to resolution, despite the ethics committee’s ruling.
The committee’s finding followed a seven-month investigation into 18 separate allegations that Vance used public resources – legislature letterhead and a social media account – to complain to the owners of the Homer News about its coverage of a Charlie Kirk vigil she helped organize in September 2025. She also urged the main corporate owner of Sound Publishing and the Homer News, Carpenter Media Group, to take “immediate corrective action.”
As widely reported at the time, Vance took exception to the Homer News story’s identifying Kirk as “far-right” and a “Christian nationalist icon” and describing some of his views as “racist and controversial.”
The committee referenced statements in Vance’s letter it found involved partisan political activity — she said “the article weaponized inflammatory labels and partisan rhetoric,” “read like an obituary drafted by a political adversary” and contained “political talking points.”
The committee also noted her statement that “If the paper continues to treat community events as opportunities for partisan spin, the consequences will be financial as well as reputational.”
In a July 3 social media post, Vance spelled out her disagreement with the committee. She framed the issue as a violation of her First Amendment rights, calling the ethics investigation “a process that many view as an attempt to silence dissent.”
“My First Amendment rights did not end when I took the oath to serve as your Representative,” she wrote. “Using legislative procedures to punish or discourage elected officials from expressing their constituents’ concerns sets a dangerous precedent and risks turning disagreement into a tool for silencing opposition.”
Many social media comments responding to her post supported the committee’s decision, saying it was not based on what Vance said but the means she chose to say it. Others offered appreciation and encouragement to Vance.
In her post, Vance also defended her use of legislature letterhead, saying that she designed her own letterhead and created and maintains the Representative Sarah Vance social media pages herself.
“Those platforms were not issued, created, or operated by the Legislature,” she wrote. “They are my means of communicating directly with the people I represent and are expressions of my own speech and convictions.”
In the lone dissenting opinion on the seven-member committee, Rep. Kevin McCabe (R-Big Lake) defended Vance’s action, arguing that no official Alaska State Legislature letterhead exists.
“Members create their own . . . and they differ from one office to the next,” he wrote. “Legislative letterhead is therefore a nebulous concept, not a uniform, state-issued asset.”
Jessica Geary, executive director of the state Legislative Affairs Agency, confirmed that there is no standardized legislative letterhead prescribed for members and “individual legislators may design and use their own.”
Kevin Reeve, administrator for the Select Committee on Legislative Ethics, said the committee considers the State Seal to be a state resource. Vance uses the seal on both her letterhead and her social media site.
Vance confirmed that she pays for her letterhead from an office allowance account that is funded by the state.
In response to Vance’s original Charlie Kirk letter, Carpenter Media Group replaced the Homer News story on the web with an unattributed rewrite and deleted the language Vance found objectionable without consulting the reporter or her editor. Four journalists, including the reporter and her editor, from three Carpenter-owned state newspapers – Homer News, Peninsula Clarion and Juneau Empire – resigned, citing the owners’ bow to political pressure and unethical tactics.
Of Carpenter Media’s action, Vance said, “I was surprised that they responded at all, and I was surprised that they changed the article.
“I was unaware that they had not spoken with the journalist when they made the changes, because they just simply informed me of what they had done, and I told them, ‘Thank you. I appreciate the effort in recognizing that some adjustments needed to be made.’”
Vance’s defense of First Amendment rights for elected representatives seems to contradict a 2017 effort she herself led to remove three Homer city council members from office after alleging they used their elected offices as a “platform for broadcasting political activism,” which was “unlawful, unethical and outside the bounds of permissible conduct in public service.”
The city council members countered at the time that they had constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression “so that the people’s elected representatives may discuss, debate and deliberate with freedom.”
On Tuesday, Vance said the two situations are different because legislators work in an essentially partisan world of political parties and caucuses, while city council members are elected to non-partisan positions.
Following a special recall election, all three council members retained their seats.
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