Gattis to run for state House

WASILLA — The race for the newly created state House seat, which won’t be decided for nearly a year, is already heating up.

In July, Mark Ewing announced to the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman he would not run for a second term on the Mat-Su Borough Assembly in order to run for the seat. This past week another local politician threw her hat into the ring.

Lynn Gattis is halfway through her first term on the Mat-Su Borough School Board.

“My kids are grown,” Gattis said, and the new seat happens to encompass the area she’s lived in for 20 years, meaning she won’t be running against an entrenched opponent. “I now have the time to participate. All the doors are open. It’s time for me to go there and make business happen.”

She said she wants to win the election in order to work on big infrastructure projects and to find Alaska cheap, reliable energy.

And, of course, education will be a big priority for her.

“My kids have gone through this whole school district, my parents were teachers, so you know I’ve got education in the veins,” she said.

She echoed the sentiments of Mike Dunleavy, the school board president who announced a run for Senate last week, when she said a lot of school decisions aren’t made around the school board table.

“There’s only so much we can do on a local level. You have to go upstairs,” she said.

Gattis has lived in what is often referred to as the “lakes” district east of Wasilla — west of Trunk Road, south of Bogard Road and north of the Parks Highway — for more than 20 years.

She has a number of business ventures that keep her busy. She and her husband lease airplanes to various lodges around the state. They have three large hay farms in the Point MacKenzie area and they have residential and commercial rentals in Wasilla.

“All of them are within my new district,” Gattis said.

She also serves on various boards, one of which, an advisory board for the Goose Creek Correctional Center, recently disbanded but might get back together when something starts happening with that facility.

“My husband’s an international airline pilot he flies for FedEx,” Gattis said. “Alaska has given me an awful lot — great education, great opportunities.”

She said she wants to go to Juneau to make sure future generations have that same level of opportunity to succeed.

As far as big infrastructure projects, Gattis mentioned a few. Knik-Goose Bay Road, she said, badly needs an upgrade. She’s working to try and do something about the traffic that piles up near Cottonwood Creek Elementary during pick-up and drop-off times.

“Infrastructure is probably one of the biggest gripes from people in my district,” she said.

She said she’s also made her peace with one of the bigger infrastructure projects ongoing right now, the one that would bring rail service to Port MacKenzie. The project had given her heartburn because it’s going right through the area where she farms hay.

“My peace is that it is infrastructure that will help all of Alaska. How dare I stand in the way?” Gattis said.

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