Congressional candidate forum cancelled

WASILLA — The election-season events being held in Wasilla will be taking an unscheduled week off.

As originally conceived, this Thursday was to be a two-fer, with candidates for U.S. House taking the first hour and candidates for U.S. Senate taking the second.

Event organizers recently shifted that around, deciding to break up the two races and hold events for each.

But Monday afternoon, Diana Straub, who is organizing the events on behalf of the Greater Wasilla and Greater Palmer chambers of commerce, said she didn’t have enough RSVPs to go ahead with either of them. She had RSVPs from both races, but not enough to field enough candidates in either race for an interesting debate.

“I’m going to wiggle it around and reschedule it.,” Straub said, with the hope that “we will resume with candidates for U.S. [House] on July 15,” with U.S. Senate candidates debating the following week.

Of course, that all depends on how much feedback she can get from the various campaigns.

But the schedule has some wiggle room. State Sen. Charlie Huggins and state Rep. Wes Keller have no challengers. Straub had reserved days for debates in both of those races, but now neither candidate has anyone with whom to debate.

In the U.S. House of Representatives race, incumbent Rep. Don Young has drawn three challengers — two Republicans and a Democrat. The Republicans are former ACS executive Sheldon Fisher and 30-year Navy veteran John Cox. The lone Democrat in the race is state Rep. Harry Crawford, who represents East Anchorage.

The U.S. Senate race has seen considerably more heat after Republican Joe Miller, challenger to incumbent Republican Lisa Murkowski, signed on with the Tea Party Express, a conservative group making headlines in races nationwide. Miller also has the endorsement of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

Murkowski, on the other hand, announced last week she’d received endorsements from 13 state lawmakers, senators and representatives — from Kodiak to Soldotna, Anchorage to Juneau, Mat-Su to Haines.

Despite what you might think, though, they’re not the only two people in the race. There are also three Democrats vying for that party’s nomination. Jacob Seth Kern is a veteran of last year’s Anchorage mayoral election. Frank Vondersaar is a perennial candidate. Scott T. McAdams is mayor of Sitka.

This week’s event would have been the fourth in the series of local political forums and debates. The previous three included a forum inviting all candidates for governor to the table, a debate among the strongest finishers that night and a forum for lieutenant governor candidates.

Straub said that after July 22, the forums will resume, with a debate for state House District 13, in which incumbent Rep. Carl Gatto has drawn two Republican challengers — David Parks and Don Benson.

In August, the forums will move on to borough, city and school board races, with a break Aug. 19 for a third round with the gubernatorial candidates, this time featuring incumbent Sean Parnell, who could not attend the last two events, and Republican front-runners Bill Walker and Ralph Samuels.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.