House Senate Race In Fairbanks to be Close

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Category: News

Created on Friday, 13 September 2024 13:22

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By JAMES BROOKS
Alaska Beacon
    Six years ago, Scott Kawasaki defeated incumbent Republican Senate President Pete Kelly for a Fairbanks state Senate seat with just under 51% of the vote.
    Two years ago, the Fairbanks Democrat won re-election against two different Republican challengers with just over 51% of the vote.
    Now, Kawasaki is in a head-to-head race against Republican Leslie Hajdukovich, and another tight race is in the offing.
    “I expect it to be even closer,” Kawasaki said of this year’s election.
    At stake is the balance of the Senate’s bipartisan majority, which includes nine Democrats and eight Republicans. Hajdukovich says that if she defeats Kawasaki, she’s willing to serve in the majority, but both she and Kawasaki say that her victory would change the balance of that majority, tilting it toward Republicans.
    “I think changing this seat gives the Republicans a stronger position if there was a coalition, and I think that’s important,” she said.
    They’re competing in Senate District P, which covers downtown Fairbanks and Fort Wainwright to the east. It’s urban and semi-urban, but it’s among the poorest Senate districts in the state, ranking 19 out of 20 in median household income.
    In 2020, before redistricting changed its boundaries slightly, the district leaned Republican, with voters preferring presidential candidate Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan.
    Since then, the Fort Wainwright half of the district has stayed Republican-leaning, but the downtown Fairbanks half trended Democratic, albeit by only a small margin, in 2022.
    Under Alaska’s elections system, up to four candidates — regardless of party — advance from the primary to the general election. Kawasaki and Hajdukovich are both well-known in Fairbanks, and no one else entered the race.

Getting to know the candidates
    Kawasaki, 49, was born in Tokyo but moved to Alaska with his family when he was six years old and has lived in Fairbanks ever since.
    A 1993 graduate of Lathrop High School, he became a legislative aide and was elected to the Fairbanks City Council, then attended the University of Alaska Fairbanks and graduated with a biomedicine degree while on the council.
    He’s been a member of a variety of service organizations and co-owns Two Seasons Meadery. Financial disclosure forms show only his legislative salary and Permanent Fund dividend.
    Hajdukovich, 58, was born in Fairbanks and has three children with her longtime husband, airline executive Bob Hajdukovich. A graduate of the University of Puget Sound, she has a bachelor’s degree in business administration and served on the Fairbanks North Star Borough school board from 2005 through 2011.
    In 2014, she co-chaired the successful campaign to defend a state law that lowered taxes on oil companies. The “No on 1” campaign defeated a voter referendum that would have repealed Senate Bill 21 and kept taxes higher.
    She worked as an aide to Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, until 2019 when she retired. Financial disclosure forms show rental income, investments and income from her husband’s job. The couple own homes in Fairbanks, an airplane, and land in Salchaket, Big Delta, and Delta Junction.
    Differences on oil taxes and budgeting
    During his time in the Legislature, Kawasaki has supported the concept of raising the state’s oil taxes in order to pay for a larger Permanent Fund dividend and improved state services.
    Hajdukovich opposes that approach, she said by phone. Her preference, also outlined in a written answer, is to pay a dividend using what’s left over in the state budget after services are covered.
    That “surplus dividend,” as it’s been labeled, is the approach that state lawmakers have generally followed since 2016.
    Kawasaki said he prefers to raise oil taxes in order to pay for a larger dividend because it’s less financially regressive for poor Alaskans.
    “There’s a lot of families up here that rely heavily on a PFD. And so I’ve always stood strong for the Permanent Fund dividend, and not as a way to balance the budget,” he said.
    The trustees of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp. have warned that the spendable portion of the Permanent Fund may be exhausted in the next several years, which would cause a state financial crisis.
    Kawasaki said higher oil taxes are a solution to that problem. Hajdukovich noted the trustees’ suggestion that the spendable part of the fund be merged with the principal to solve the problem and said she needs to learn more about the issue before making a decision.
    “It’s concerning,” she said, adding that oil production is expected to rise on the North Slope in the coming years, which could help the issue.

Similarities and differences on education
    During this year’s legislative session, the attention of the state House and Senate was consumed by education reform proposals and the idea that the state should raise the base student allocation, the core of the state’s per-student funding formula.
    Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed a proposal that was passed by the Legislature, and Kawasaki was among a bipartisan group of lawmakers who unsuccessfully attempted to override the veto.
    “It’s hard for me to believe that I wouldn’t have … voted to override the governor’s veto,” Hajdukovich said when asked what she would have done.
    She watched the Legislature vote on Gavel to Gavel and by phone acknowledged that she has the advantage of answering that question with the benefit of hindsight.
    In the last week of this year’s legislative session, the state House debated and passed a bill that would ban transgender girls from competing on girls sports teams. The bill, which didn’t receive a hearing in the Senate, would have turned an existing regulation into law.
    Kawasaki said he doesn’t support the idea behind the bill.
    “I think that the transgender youth bill took — I don’t know how many hours of discussion when we should be discussing the economy and education. I think that’s a complete waste of time,” he said.
    Hajdukovich said she supports the concept behind the bill.
    “I believe that transgender girls are built differently than biological girls, and I think it puts biological girls at a disadvantage and potentially opens them up to harm,” she said.
    She said she “absolutely supports” the ability of someone to identify as transgender, “but it’s truly about protecting girls and women in sports.”

Both view energy as key issue
    Hajdukovich and Kawasaki each said they view the cost of energy as a key issue in the next two to four years. Kawasaki noted the Legislature’s passage of House Bill 307, which is intended to ease the shipment of cheap electrical power along the railbelt.
    That bill was a major accomplishment, he said, and he was happy to support it. He noted, however, that many Fairbanks-area residents heat their homes with fuel oil, and that bill won’t address all their needs. The next four-year term would involve tackling that issue, he said.
    Hajdukovich also said energy is a top issue over the next term and said she supports an “all of the above approach” on the topic.
    Helping Anchorage with its natural gas shortage could free up cheap energy for shipment to Fairbanks via the electrical intertie that runs between the two cities, she said.
    “That’s been made clear: The upgrade to the intertie, Cook Inlet gas, it affects all of us,” she said.

Differences on ballot measures
    This November, voters will be asked to decide two ballot measures. Ballot Measure 1 would raise the state’s minimum wage, require employers to offer sick leave, and ban employers from requiring their workers to attend political or religious lectures.
    Ballot Measure 2 would repeal the state’s current elections system, resulting in party-run primary elections that would send one candidate per party to the general election, where voters would pick just one candidate.
    Hajdukovich said in a candidate questionnaire that she didn’t support the 2020 ballot measure that created the state’s current elections system, and she’ll be voting to repeal it by voting yes on Ballot Measure 2.
    When it comes to Ballot Measure 1, she’s still undecided, she said by phone. She generally supports a higher minimum wage, but she isn’t sure about the other two parts of the proposal.
    Kawasaki said in a candidate questionnaire that he supports Ballot Measure 1 and opposes Ballot Measure 2. Speaking by phone, he said that the state’s current elections system encourages people to work across party lines.
    “If they don’t have ranked choice voting in the next election cycle, they may think differently about joining a bipartisan coalition,” he said, talking about the decisions that moderate Republicans may face.
    Under a scenario where Ballot Measure 2 succeeds, races like his become much more important, because they make it more likely that a coalition will continue.
    “I think this one seat is the decisive seat that either keeps a bipartisan coalition or fails a bipartisan coalition,” he said.

How to vote
    Alaskans must register to vote by Oct. 6 in order to participate in the state House election.
    Early voting begins at select locations Oct. 21. Absentee ballots are available by request through Oct. 26 for any reason for those who want to vote by mail.
    Regular Election Day is Nov. 5, and a map of polling places is available online. Preliminary results will be available by the morning of Nov. 6, but ballots arriving late by mail will be counted until Nov. 15 if they are sent from within the United States and Nov. 20 if they are sent internationally.
    Ranked choice tabulations — for races with at least three candidates — will take place Nov. 20 if no candidate has at least 50% of the vote in that race.
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https://alaskabeacon.com/james-brooks

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