I love it when people reply to my press releases as if I personally emailed them with this information.” – Shannon Mason, Twitter\/X, Feb. 11, 2022<\/em><\/p>\n\t\t\t\tMason said she never met Dunleavy during the interview process, but afterward her first encounter was indicative of a working relationship that would be more about personas than politician positions.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“I met him the first day in the governor’s mansion,” she said. “And the first day I walked in he was like ‘Who are you?’And I was like, ‘Hi, I’m your new press person.’ And he was like, ‘Oh, tell me about yourself.’ He loves to do the 20 questions.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
But being a spokesperson also meant emerging into the public eye, as she learned when the Alaska Landmine reported her hiring by noting Dunleavy “has come a long way since Tuckerman Babcock and Donna Arduin,” referring to two highly controversial and conservative top advisors.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Mason, on the other hand, “even has her pronouns in her Linkedin bio,” the Landmine noted in a Twitter\/X post. However, a subsequent post noted “soon after my retweet, she locked down her Twitter account and even deleted the original tweet.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Two years later after her last day working for Dunleavy, Mason described the experience as a surreal and enlightening initiation.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“This blog, who I’d never heard of, like made a whole thing,” she said. “And I was getting like so many different comments on the post. I started to freak. I was like ‘what have I done wrong?’ That was my great entrance into Alaska politics to be like, ‘oh, we’re not unnoticed.’”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
The demands of the new job also meant a big mental and social adjustment since, at the age of 22, “my friends are having fun and people would be like ‘you can’t,’” Mason said. Adding to that sense of initial isolation was she was working in Juneau — remotely, due to the COVID-19 pandemic — while the rest of the governor’s communications staff was in Anchorage.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Most of her work during the initial months involved social media, rather than writing press releases and speaking to the media on behalf of the governor. She said she quickly adjusted to the role of presenting his policies and proposals without the influence of her own thoughts.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“There was a lot of days where I’m like, ’yeah, I don’t agree with this, but you’re gonna do it,’” she said. “Because at the end of the day I wasn’t elected. He was elected. And it’s not about me or what I think. It’s about what he thinks.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Mason said she expects there will be similar occurrences with Peltola. Similarly, there will also be times when Mason has to issue statements taking the opposite position of statements she issued just months ago, due to differences between the governor and congresswoman on issues such as Alaska Native rights, environmental protections and social issues.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
A taste of the everyday work Mason said she expects to do extensively in her new job began last October when she became what she called Dunleavy’s “body man” last October, which meant accompanying him extensively on statewide trips to help coordinate events, and meet with local officials and residents.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“He’s like a teacher, so he’s like ‘Oh, you’re interested in this? Well come with me and I’ll show you how this works,’” she said. “And I think that was the best part of the job, was getting to go to a bunch of rural Alaska areas.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Ultimately, Mason said she felt her role was getting people to pay attention to Dunleavy’s words and letting him try to do the persuading when it came to politics.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“At the end of the job I was I felt pretty good about being able to say I showed people who Mike Dunleavy is as a person, rather than a politician who people don’t really feel like they know (other than) this 6-foot, 7-inch guy.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
•••••<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
”Campaigns should be able to trade staffers like sports plays” – Shannon Mason, meme shared on Twitter\/X, June 11, 2023<\/em><\/p>\n\t\t\t\tContinuing to visit remote parts of Alaska — and probably more often — will remain a major part of her new job for Peltola.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Mason said she started thinking about moving on from the governor’s office several months ago, stating two years is considered a long time to be a politician’s press secretary by many who work in the profession, and the apparent alternative was sticking with Dunleavy through the second term he was elected to last November.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“I was happy where I was. I was like ‘I could keep going for like another three years,’” she said. “Or I could just put out the feelers to see who else is looking for people.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
In addition to being familiar with Peltola, Mason said he got to know the congresswoman’s chief of staff, Anton McParland, during the recent legislative session and that led to a discussion about possible job openings — and ultimately the offer of one.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“I was a little bit nervous to like tell all of my governor’s office people, but they were so happy for me,” Mason said. “And I think the governor — again, he’s like a teacher — so he just wants to see people go on to do like good things. And so he was just so excited for me because he’s like ‘Yes, this is like an opportunity. Yes, take it. You should always be moving, jumping to the higher thing.’”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Mason — who said she asked to remain based in Juneau rather than moving to Anchorage or Washington, D.C. — said there nonetheless will be another political learning curve for her as she adjusts to federal-level policies and procedures. She’s also likely going to have to used to being more in the public spotlight on a bigger stage.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“Our chief of staff said that I’d be doing a lot more interviews on her behalf because she’s a busy woman, she’s not always going to have the availability,” Mason said, comparing the frequency of such interviews between her old job and new one.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
But familiarity with policy and the people she’ll have to interact with — both ordinary citizens and the people working in the hallways of Congress with her new boss — aren’t among her concerns.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“I really like what she’s done for Alaska,” Mason said. “So far I think she’s fascinating. I think we align a lot on a lot of policy views, which is always nice, because I would prefer to have a good alignment with someone who I’m working for.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
One X-factor is it’s not a job with long-term security. Peltola will be running for her second full two-year term next year and the National Republican Congressional Committee has named her seat among those being targeted as being the most likely to expand the party’s slim majority. But Mason, who said she might be interested in being a political consult in her long-term future, said she’s ready to embrace the campaign trail if Peltola wants — and already has material for soundbites at the ready.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“I have full faith that she’ll be reelected,” Mason said. “And I think campaigns are a lot more fun. I know it’s such a simple answer, but it’s so exciting and they’re so fun, and you never really know what’s going to happen because every day is different. And I really just believe in her message and I’d like to be on her team when she wins.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.<\/em><\/p>\n\t\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Juneau resident Shannon Mason says switch isn’t as strange as it might seem, given Alaska’s politics. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":868,"featured_media":102363,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[865],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-102362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/868"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102362"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=102362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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