Monday Mao Tosi received a surprise visit to his office at the Northway Mall.
“By late afternoon a gentleman came in, asked for me, dropped off some paperwork and left.”
The paperwork was a 15-count complaint against his campaign with the Alaska Public Offices Commission, or APOC. It was filed Tuesday afternoon. Tosi, a former NFL football player and activist who manages the Northway Mall and runs the non-profit, Alaska Pride Youth Programs, jumped into the race against sitting Assembly member Adam Trombley and candidate Pete Peterson at the last minute. Tosi refutes some of the allegations. He says he has never run for public office before and that most of the violations are honest mistakes that he is working with APOC to correct as soon as possible.
“There’s just things that now that we are aware of, we just want to go through and make sure those don’t become issues again. Being new to the campaign scene, is something that I think people expect me to screw up here and there but definitely would know that I would fix anything that’s wrong in there.”
Allegations in the complaint include making campaign expenditures before filing for office, not properly identifying that political ads, like bumper stickers, were paid for by his campaign and using his position at the Northway Mall to benefit his campaign, among other things. John E. Lewis filed the complaint and requested expedited review. APOC officials are not commenting at this time except to say that the complaint has been accepted. There will be a hearing but officials have not set a date. If the allegations prove true, Tosi could be fined.
Daysha Eaton is a contributor with the Alaska Public Radio Network.
Daysha Eaton holds a B.A. from Evergreen State College, and a M.A. from the University of Southern California. Daysha got her start in radio at Seattle public radio stations, KPLU and KUOW. Before coming to KBBI, she was the News Director at KYUK in Bethel. She has also worked as the Southcentral Reporter for KSKA in Anchorage.
Daysha's work has appeared on NPR's "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered", PRI's "The World" and "National Native News". She's happy to take assignments, and to get news tips, which are best sent via email.
Daysha became a journalist because she believes in the power of storytelling. Stories connect us and they help us make sense of our world. They shed light on injustice and they comfort us in troubled times. She got into public broadcasting because it seems to fulfill the intention of the 4th Estate and to most effectively apply the freedom of the press granted to us through the Constitution. She feels that public radio has a special way of moving people emotionally through sound, taking them to remote places, introducing them to people they would not otherwise meet and compelling them to think about issues they might ordinarily overlook.
