Daily Sitka Sentinel

Les Gara Lays Out Campaign to Sitkans

By SHANNON HAUGLAND

Sentinel Staff Writer

Candidate for governor Les Gara says he’s running to ensure “a future that creates jobs and opportunity again.”

Gov. Mike Dunleavy, Gara said, “has made a resource-rich state poor by giving away the value of our oil – $1.3 billion in company subsidies – so we don’t have money for schools or community grants to help community projects.”

 Les Gara (Sentinel Photo)

Gara, who lives in Anchorage, was in Sitka June 8-10, meeting members of the community, elected officials and other leaders. He served in the Legislature from 2003 through 2018 representing an Anchorage district in the House of Representatives.

He is the only Democrat in the August 16 primary election, with running mate Jessica Cook.

Others in the primary are incumbent Dunleavy, David Haeg, Christopher Kurka, Charlie Pierce, and Bruce Walden (Republicans), John Wayne Howe (Alaska Independence), William Nemec II (undeclared), William Toien (Libertarian), and Bill Walker (nonpartisan).

The top four highest vote getters, regardless of party affiliation, move on to the ranked choice general election in November.

Gara, 59, said as a result of Dunleavy’s failure to see the state gets its fair share from its oil, Alaska is lacking funds for basic needs such as public schools and infrastructure.

“Twenty-thousand more people have left the state in the last three years than have moved here because they don’t see a commitment to public education and they don’t see an economy that’s building jobs,” Gara said in an interview with the Sentinel.

Gara, an Anchorage attorney, said his views are shaped by his upbringing in foster care.

“Everybody deserves a chance to succeed, whether you’re born rich or poor, and in this state you almost have to be born to a successful family to succeed. And everybody else is left by the side,” he said. “I want to create a state with opportunity again, and you can’t do that when you’ve given away your oil wealth and you’ve pitted people who want schools against people who want a permanent fund dividend against people who want a Marine Highway against people who want support for their communities. We can do all those things, but the governor has made us too poor to do all those things.”

Gara said schools are at the core of planning for the future. With the state falling $120 million behind inflation in school funding since 2014, class sizes are creeping up, and teachers are leaving the state for higher pay.

“We’ve become a training ground for teachers,” he said. The same is true in law enforcement, resulting in shortages in public safety, he said, adding that the state has “torn apart” the Alaska Marine Highway System that businesses need to keep costs down.

“You can’t just tear down a state – you have to build it up,” he said.

He said the state currently has a construction budget - “not counting this year of Russian blood money” - that’s 75 percent smaller than it was in 2014, and the state is losing opportunities as a result to put people to work in multiple sectors.

“I would put people before the oil industry,” he said. “I believe in being partners with our oil industry, but I don’t believe in being junior partners. And this governor has made us junior partners.”

Gara said he sees abortion rights and a woman’s right to choice – and the right to privacy – as “front and center of this election.” The right to privacy is established in the Alaska constitution.

“Given that Alaska will remain the last line of defense for women’s rights, according to the leaked Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe versus Wade, I’m the only pro-choice candidate in this race,” he said. “Governor Dunleavy wants to eliminate a woman’s right to choose, Governor Walker has called himself ‘pro-life,’ and when he was governor sued to roll back choice.”

Every other candidate in the race “is also anti-choice,” Gara said. “So those are the differences: you can choose between the one pro-choice candidate or the five or six pro-life ones we have out there.”

Gara said he sees the issue as one of a person’s right to privacy. The same value of autonomy – and people’s rights to make decisions for themselves – extends to his view on marriage rights.

“Nobody told me I couldn’t marry my wife and I’m not going to tell somebody else they can’t marry who they want to marry,” he said.

Asked about issues important in Southeast, Gara said he’s interested in keeping resources abundant for future generations.

“Fish are a second permanent fund,” he said. “And the things the governor wants to do are nothing but a danger to fishing families.”

That includes the governor’s support of Pebble Mine, which Gara said is the “wrong mine in the wrong place.”

“I support responsible mining and there are others we have in the state that are run responsibly,” he said. “Pebble is a danger to the future and I don’t trade fish for mines.”

As governor, he would support appointing members to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council who support curtailing bycatch in the Bering Sea. He said the governor’s policies toward fishing puts out-of-state interests over those of Alaskans.

“This governor’s council has allowed over a thousand tons of halibut to be dumped to the bottom of the ocean, dead,” Gara said. “Those are fish that aren’t available to other Alaskans.”

He said he has similar concerns of trawlers fishing out the chum resource as bycatch – some 343,821 fish – when the people of Western Alaska are told they can’t fish.

“There’s a big logical gap there,” he said.

Gara predicts that once oil prices go back down, Dunleavy, given the chance, would return to “decimating” school bond debt reimbursement, university funding and the marine highway funds, and burdens on many expenses would be shifted to communities.

Gara is originally from New York City, and was living with his father when someone entered his office and killed him. He was then raised in two foster homes, and attributed his success to the opportunities he had, including through education. He worked his way through college at Boston University and Harvard Law School.

“The truth is most Alaskans suffer some hardship and it developed my view that regardless of whether you’re rich or poor, born of privilege or not, you deserve the right to opportunity in this world,” he said. “I got that right opportunity and I think it’s important other people have that opportunity to succeed as well.”

He and his wife, Kelly, a physical therapist at Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, moved to Fairbanks in 1988. In 1989 when the Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred, he made some calls on whether he could get involved in holding those responsible accountable, and was hired to be part of the civil prosecution team.

After retiring from his 15 years in the Legislature he’s consulted on children’s issues, resulting in national awards in 2017 and 2018 for his work on foster care reform.