House Candidates List Views On Main Issues

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Created on Tuesday, 06 August 2024 14:15

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By JAMES BROOKS
Alaska Beacon
    Twelve candidates are vying to reach the final four in the race for Alaska’s U.S. House seat, and each has a different view of the state’s biggest need.
    Early and absentee voting is underway for the state’s Aug. 20 primary, and the four top vote-getters, regardless of political party, will advance to the November general election.
    Responding to a questionnaire from the Alaska Beacon, 10 of the 12 candidates offered their views of Alaska’s biggest need, with most focusing on economic issues.
    Incumbent Democrat Mary Peltola said she views “affordable and reliable energy” as the state’s top need but believes the state can be energy independent if it intensifies oil and gas drilling while also upgrading the electrical transmission infrastructure along the Railbelt.
    During her first term in office, Peltola backed development of the Willow oil project on the North Slope and encouraged the federal government to direct millions toward electrical upgrades.
    Peltola said it would be “unacceptable” if Cook Inlet utilities are required to import liquefied natural gas, and said she is advocating additional energy legislation to address the problem.
    Republican challenger and Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom likewise said she would “advocate for responsible legislation that unleashes Alaska’s energy and natural resource potential while maintaining our natural order.”
    She went a step further, saying Alaska’s economy as a whole needs help, adding that she believes Alaska needs “to get our economy out of the rut we’ve been in under Mary Peltola and Joe Biden.”
    Alaska has the sixth-worst unemployment rate in the country and ranks 26th in job growth, according to figures published by the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development. This spring, it became the last state in the country to erase job losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic emergency in 2020. Employment in the state remains lower than it was in 2014. 
    Fellow Republican challenger Nick Begich said Alaska’s “most pressing need is to address the high cost of living that affects all residents, particularly those in rural areas.”
    He, like Dahlstrom and Begich, suggested that energy development is needed and offered multiple other solutions, including the elimination of the Jones Act for Alaska. That federal law requires shipping companies to use American-flagged ships to carry cargo between American ports.
    Repealing that law could lower costs for Alaskans, he said.
    Begich said the state needs expanded road and rail infrastructure and that more federal land should be opened for development.
    Nonpartisan candidate Samuel Claesson, who lists an Iowa address as his home, said housing is the state’s biggest need, writing, “we have some of the highest costs of rent in the nation because of a lack of housing.”
    Republican Jerry Heikes and Alaskan Independence Party candidate John Wayne Howe each suggested that the state’s biggest need is to have less federal government presence.
    Howe, repeating a long-held tenet of his party, said the state’s 1957 statehood vote was flawed and that the federal government “is not a properly authorized governing body for Alaska.”
    David Ambrose of Fairbanks also suggested that the state needs “a separation of powers from the federal government over Alaska’s ability to be independent from bureaucratic overreach.”
    Lady Donna Dutchess, a nonpartisan candidate from Anchorage, said “awareness” is Alaska’s biggest need, and that she believes “there is corruption so widespread, that the citizen’s only recourse is to repent of past compliancy and call on the Most High God for guidance.”
    Richard Grayson, representing the No Labels Party from an address in Arizona, said Alaska’s biggest need is “A designated day for moose to stay off the roads. I would ask Congress to designate a holiday called ‘Moosemas.’”
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https://alaskabeacon.com/james-brooks

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