CANDIDATE PROFILE: Political newcomer Tew running for District 5 borough assembly seat

WASILLA — Mokie Tew may be a newcomer to the public office scene, but he is not a new face to residents of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough. His road maintenance company’s pink equipment and the Valley Mover commuter bus system he helps manage are a familiar site across the Valley.

Tew, 55, said he is running because he wants to make the Borough a better, safer place for all residents. He is hoping his Big Lake-area neighbors will send him to the Assembly as the representative for District 5.

Tew, whose legal first name is “Clayton” but is only primarily as Mokie, is running against incumbent Dan Mayfield. Although the Assembly is non-partisan, Tew said he is a Republican.

“I’ve been watching the stuff around the Valley for a lot of years, and I don’t agree with what’s been happening, and I think they we can do a lot better and so, you know… you can’t complain if you don’t vote,” he said. “I’ve been complaining for several years and I don’t seem to get my point across, so I said ‘well, I’m going to join in.’”

Tew, who has lived in the Valley since 2000 and moved to Alaska from Virginia as a child, said his platform focuses on good fiscal behavior and lowering the crime rate.

“I would like to make sure that we don’t increase taxes and that the money that is being spent is being spent wisely. And I think I have enough knowledge — I know I do — to make that happen,” he said. “The crime has been pretty bad here … the drugs are terrible too … I think they’re both related to each other.”

Tew has been married for about 32 years to his high school sweetheart, Roberta. He moved to the Valley from Anchorage in hopes of raising his kids in a more relaxed environment, he said, and started Tew’s Inc., a road maintenance company that runs snow plow operations in the winter and repairs roads in the summer.

Tew may be a familiar name to some because of the local government contracts held by his business, Tew’s Inc., that have been plagued by controversy and accusations of mismanagement.

But Tew said many of those issues were the result of the Borough unfairly and unevenly enforcing contract standards, a practice he will end if elected.

“We all are equal — and we all deserve that fair shake,” he said. “If you believe that we are not all equal, then they were right, spot on. But if you believe that we are all equal then they were way off. What should be good for one contractor should be good for the other.”

Tew said he is largely retired from his company and is instead focusing on campaigning and family. Should he win, he said he still plans to “do just a little bit on the side” with Tew’s, Inc.

On a variety of major Borough issues, Tew said he needs more information from stakeholders and others before suggesting specific fixes.

Rather than pass a new sales tax that would give schools more money, he wants to make sure the system is spending wisely now.

“I don’t have the answer — I’d have to look into it further and see, you know, maybe what the problem is that the school buses are charging so much money that it inflates the cost of the school, so we could reduce that rate,” he said. “It might be a budget problem that something’s out of whack. I don’t know without looking and investigating each part.”

The Borough also recently considered a new plastic bag tax at some area retailers, aimed at discouraging their use. Tew said he would rather see the bags banned outright, and said he’d want more information before supporting any such tax measure.

“Nobody is saying what the real problem is with the plastic bags. I think you don’t just throw a tax on there. You try to find out what the real situation is and go from there,” he said.

On public safety, Tew said hiring a Borough police force likely isn’t possible due to the cost. However, he said the Assembly could look into a “hybrid” approach to leverage small forces in individual communities, or rollout a robust neighborhood watch program.

“It would take a little something out of the Borough or somebody to organize it to make sure that everybody is on track to make it go,” he said. “The Borough is so vast that … none of us could afford to have the amount of troopers necessary to make a big impact on what’s going on.”

District 5 is also home to the Borough-owned Port MacKenzie, which in June required an additional $1.6 million in funding for maintenance, despite the fact that it gets little use. Tew said the Borough shouldn’t spend any more money on the port until it is ready to pay for itself.

“They built this thing and we have to figure out right now if it’s an asset or it’s a liability,” he said. “I can’t see having the port and putting millions, and millions, and millions and millions into it without it actually having the chance of giving us revenue.”

The election for the District 5 seat, as well as the District 4 Assembly seat, and the School Board District 3 and 6 seats, will be held Oct. 3. The deadline for new voter registrations was Sept. 3.