Is everything right, or is nobody left?

Balance of house, senate power has swung to right

By SCOTT CHRISTIANSEN-Frontiersman reporter

When Alaska last re-drew its map for political districts based on the 1990 census, the Valley gained one House seat in a districting plan that was put into place in 1994. The 1994 election was a Republican sweep. Longtime Senator Jalmar Kerttula, a Democrat who had been going to Juneau since the 1960s, had lost the Valley's only Senate seat to Lyda Green, and Republicans occupied all three Valley House seats.

Eight years later Alaska has another new map, but don't look for the Democrats to make a comeback. Each Valley voter will participate in one of five House races, but the Democrats have candidates in only two of them. The situation statewide is similar. The party that controlled the legislature for the first 30 years after statehood is absent in 17 of the 40 House of Representative races.

By comparison, the Republican's primary on August 27 is a traffic jam, especially in Mat-Su. 11 Republican candidates are running for five House seats in which Valley precincts are a factor. Republicans Nancy Campbell, Carl Gatto, Randy Lorenz, and Jim Turner are in a pile-up race for House District 13, the seat representing the Palmer area.

If it's obvious Republicans are strong in the Valley, then that observation also has a flip-side. The situation begs the question: Where are the Valley Democrats? Has the shift to the right been so dramatic as to render their party obsolete in an area where they had a stronghold for three decades? In a state where they wrote most of the laws for the first 30 years? Has the party changed, or have the voters changed or some of both?

The population boom

Kerttula, whose first term in the state House started in 1961 with the second Alaska State Legislature, has noticed changes in Valley voters.

"Suburbia has moved in on an agriculture and mining area," Kerttula said. "And suburbia doesn't really understand what it costs."

Kerttula was the Alaska Legislature's most senior senator in 1994 when the voters replaced with Republican Lyda Green. Democratic incumbents Ron Larson of Palmer and Pat Carney of Wasilla were both shown the door. Curt Menard of Wasilla chose not to run. Kerttula called the 1994 campaign the "last strong ticket" for Valley Democrats. And he's not happy with that.

"We broke our backs to build a hospital and build colleges and infrastructure," Kerttula said. "Nothing much has happened to it in the last eight years, except people taking credit for a lot of federal highway funds … Maybe we had already done the work, so they decided to put us out to pasture."

Retired school teacher Carolyn Covington is an active Valley Democrat who is currently secretary of the Alaska Democratic Party. Covington is dismayed that in her own area -- an area where many people work government jobs -- the swing to the right has been so dramatic. She identifies herself as liberal, and said Kerttula and his contemporaries were conservative Democrats.

"They were people that were fiscally conservative, but socially for the people and progressive," Covington said. "Then we got oil and the greed motive kicked in, and then we got Republicans, Republicans, Republicans."

The grass roots

The strength of Valley Republicans was evident at the 2000 statewide convention at the Alaska State Fairgrounds in Palmer. Geography may have played a factor, but current chairman of the Republican Party of Alaska, Randy Ruedrich said that Mat-Su Republicans showed up full force.

"The Valley was entitled to about 56 people and they had every alternate delegate chair filled," Ruedrich said. "Many parts of the state did not have full delegations there, which even increased the Mat-Su's relevancy there, because they had a full delegation."

Representative Vic Kohring, a Republican who came in with the class of '94, gives credit to Republican organizers who have never run for office.

"People who are the backbone of the party and who make life easy for people like [state representative and senate candidate] Scott Ogan and myself," Kohring said.

The Democrats may have slipped on the grass roots level.

"My sense is that we are not doing the job we could be in terms of registering voters. But what I know that we are not doing that we need to work on is to get people who are like-minded to go to the polls," Covington said. "We do know that young women … won't vote if they think that they don't understand the issues."

Kohring, who defeated Carney in '94 thinks the formula may be simpler than that. He has a reputation as a tireless campaigner -- he claims to have knocked on 3,000 doors this summer -- and said in he simply campaigned harder.

"I had heard that he was a conservative Democrat. The reason I won that first race is because I simply out-worked him," Kohring said.

On the issues

Valley Republicans have also taken advantage of social issues such as abortion, gun control and hunters' rights. For the Democrats, losing ground on guns and hunting issues was particularly troubling. When one candidate calls himself pro-gun, the unspoken implication is that somehow the other candidate is less than pro-gun -- for Alaskan Democrats that can sting. It also gave Republicans a way to tap lower-income voters, according to Kerttula.

"They were anti-choice and pro-gun in every way," Kerttula said. "But it was a perception. The perception of being pro-gun, pro-hunting and pro-fishing also appeals to the poor." Kerttula said. Kerttula bemoaned the fact that those voters seemed to ignore or forget that the politicians of his day had set aside public lands for hunting. He still seems surprised that one Alaskan party can gain ground over another by identifying themselves as pro-gun.

"Hell, most of us are too, but we didn't run on it," Kerttula said.

Menard has looked at issues of campaigns and issues of government as a member of both major parties. He represented the Valley as a Republican in 1986 and switched to become a Democrat in his first race as an incumbent in 1988. At the time, he was joining the majority in the state House, but says he did it for philosophical reasons -- the Democrats provided a better fit.

"The issue with me was the environmental issues and on the Republican side what I felt was corporate America's control of the party," Menard said. As for abortion, he identifies himself as pro-life.

"I don't care what side [of the aisle] you're on, there are some issues on which you're going to cross the party platform," Menard said.

Menard believes that if the pendulum can swing back it will have to shift direction on fiscal issues and questions about what services the state ought to provide.

"There probably won't be a major change until the budget reserves get so low and services get cut back so far -- that's the issue that makes movement," Menard said. Covington agrees.

"If you talk to people about even a moderate income tax they look at you like you're crazy," Covington said. "I wish we'd think more progressively … They've decided who to vote for, not based on the legislature and what could happen to their families, but coming from their churches and voting anti-choice."

In the meantime, Kohring is knocking on doors and presenting his philosophy of cutting the state budget to what he calls necessary services. He tells voters he's a booster of roads, public safety and schools. Despite what some Democrats may think, Kohring believes the Republican-led legislature has accomplishments to be proud of.

"We can also point to school construction and renovations. It's not just pavement," Kohring said.

The voters will decide whether to give incumbents that sort of credit, but he's not far afield from the way Kerttula describes himself and the Democrats of the past.

"I'd say we were pretty conservative fiscally, but we wanted to bring back our fair share to our area," Kerttula said.