Knowles avoids labels

MAT-SU -- In an era when political candidates talk intensely about appealing to their bases -- the core element of their parties -- one Alaska candidate for the U.S. Senate is taking a different approach.

"You have to be independent," former governor Tony Knowles said Monday about being a successful Democrat in a conservative state. "You have to love your state more than your party; love your country more than your party." Knowles pointed out that about 19 percent of Alaskans are registered Democrats, 28 percent are registered Republicans, and the rest are independents. "[Independents] are going to look and say, 'Who's looking out for me?'" Knowles said. He is the democratic challenger for Lisa Murkowski's senate seat.

Taking that approach, Knowles rejects the temptation many politicians have to label one another.

"I think voters should be more demanding of their politicians," he said, "rather than just attach to whatever little label horse [candidates] want to jump on."

It is difficult to label someone who strongly supports a woman's right to choose, but who also strongly supports the right to bear arms. It's just as difficult to pin a label on a veteran who devotes a great deal of his passion and energy to veteran's issues, but at the same time is stringently opposed to the USA Patriot Act and opposes a Constitutional amendment to criminalize flag burning. Knowles said he remains focused on individual issues, as he believes the majority of other Alaskans do.

"People feel alienated from their government," Knowles said. "They feel the government is operating out of its own interests, not their interests. That's why people are keenly interested in this election, and why I think they're going to take part in it. And it's why I don't think they're going to vote along party lines." He said he believes there's a growing sense of something he calls "government of the powerful, for the powerful," and he believes voters are ready for a change.

Mike Miller has run his primary campaign against Murkowski by dubbing himself the only true conservative in the race. He has said Murkowski and Knowles are essentially identical in their positions on key issues. Knowles said he doesn't believe that's true. He also said some positions can't be easily defined as liberal or conservative.

"For instance," Knowles said, "Lisa Murkowski voted against allowing Alaska seniors, or any Alaskans, getting cheaper prescription drugs from Canada. I don't know whether that's conservative or liberal, I only know it's against the interests of Alaskans, and it's for the interests of the pharmaceutical companies." Those companies spend a lot of money on political campaigns, Knowles said.

"Lisa is against importing drugs; I am for it," Knowles said. "Lisa is against allowing the federal government to negotiate for Medicare prescription drugs at a lower price; I am for it. I don't know if it's conservative or liberal, but it's what I mean when I talk about putting Alaska first."

Knowles also said he takes a strong stand on the coal-bed methane issue that has garnered a lot of attention in the Valley. He said state politicians were not acting in the public interest when they opened the door for large-scale subsurface leases without sufficient public input.

"They cut the people of Alaska out of the deal by giving [CBM] away for peanuts -- it was just a handshake and a ten-dollar bill under the table," Knowles said. "The people of Alaska got the shaft because they didn't get any revenues out of a public resource."

Knowles said personal property rights were another key issue surrounding the CBM debate.

"Even though the state owns the mineral resource, the ability to get to it, literally to trespass your land, is a legal technicality that people don't think about," he said. The nearly unrestricted leasing of subsurface rights could lead to serious conflicts, according to Knowles.

"There are some things that are just fundamentally incompatible," he said. "You just don't have industrial development in the middle of residential development." The solution to the problem, Knowles said, is for the state to buy back the leases and begin the process again with more public input.

If elected to the U.S. Senate, Knowles will have to focus some of his attention on national and international matters as well, and his independent approach extends to that arena. While he said he is "pro-defense," he has concerns about how the war in Iraq was justified and conducted, and he said he is deeply opposed to the USA Patriot Act.

Knowles said the U.S. should have the best trained and equipped troops in the world. "At the same time," he said, "we are lost in Iraq and we are alone in the world. I think America is in a very dangerous position now because of how we've gotten to where we are. We've had 1,000 casualties, and we know that the reasons we went to war were false." Perhaps most critical is that fact that the U.S. entered the conflict in Iraq with no clear exit strategy, Knowles said, and our lack of support from other major countries makes a resolution even more difficult.

"We have to get other nations involved. Even after another UN resolution, there's not one troop from another country in the line of fire. We've spent over $200 billion over there."

While he characterizes the war in Iraq as a failure to date, Knowles said he is also concerned about how we're conducting the war against terrorism at home.

"The Patriot Act is an absolute threat to our freedoms," he said. "There's not many parts of the Bill of Rights it doesn't undermine. The idea that we can protect ourselves from threats abroad by undermining our freedoms at home is false. It's wrong."

Knowles says he's a hawk when it comes to the Bill of Rights, and in keeping with that, he opposes amending the Constitution, particularly when those amendments limit rather than extend personal freedoms, or when they limit the primacy of the states.

While Lisa Murkowski is the favorite to claim the Republican nomination, Knowles said he believes either she or Miller will be a tough candidate. Whoever he faces in November will likely have a difficult time pinning a label on Knowles, and that's how he said an election should be.

"The issues are too important to be judged by a label," he said. "People want to know where you stand on economic development and jobs. They want to know where you're going to stand on education, personal freedoms and our national security." He said his positions on those issues are clear, and he's arrived at them independently of the constraints of party politics. Whether Alaskans respond to that approach is yet to be seen.