Larger than life, Don Young left a powerful legacy for Alaska

A lot of Alaskans have spoken of their recollections of Don Young.

Here are some of mine.

Young was a genuine, larger-than-life Alaskan. I first met him in Fort Yukon in the early 1960s. I was accompanying a journalist friend (I was a University of Alaska student at the time) and I remember Young as the community get-things-done – mayor, school teacher and volunteer projectionist when movies were shown at a community hall.

I can’t recall the movie I watched there but I remember Don.

I knew him better after he went to the state Legislature in 1966. Few people know this, but in his early Fort Yukon days Young was a Democrat.

At the time Fort Yukon was in a state House district that included Fairbanks, the more populous Interior city to the south.

That meant Young, as a potential candidate, had to curry favor with the Democratic Party in Fairbanks, which was dominated by old-time pols and organized labor.

Things did not go well. Young’s requests for support fell on deaf ears.

Judy Brady, a mutual friend, recalls talking with Young in Fairbanks at the “Big I” (a local watering hole). He was incised about being rebuffed by the local pols and undecided whether to file as a Democrat or Republican. Young wound up filing as a Republican, and has been one since.

Fast forward to the early 1970s: Young was in the state Senate by then, and bored. Nick Begich, Alaska’s congressman, a Democrat, was then at a peak of popularity. No one could defeat Begich, it seemed. Young decided to file, but winning seemed hopeless.

I recall talking with him in the state capitol in Juneau and hearing his reasoning. He would be the Republicans’ sacrificial lamb, he said, because someone had to be on the ballot against Begich. No other Republican wanted to do it but Young felt a contrary voice was needed, and and perhaps gain enough statewide name recognition by being on the ballot that he could get Republican Party support to make a run two years later for Secretary of State (now lieutenant governor).

Young jumped into the race against Begich but became incensed again when the Republican Party refused any significant financial aid. Don threatened to go public with that to embarrass the party, which he partly did. A few dollars were shaken loose, but the experience soured Young on political parties, a view he held for the rest his life.

History intervened. Begich died when his plane was lost on a flight from Anchorage to Juneau along with House Majority Leader Hale Boggs and several staff. This happened close to the election, which Begich actually won even though dead by then. A special election was held to fill the seat and Young won that. The rest is history.

However, Don’s memories of being rejected by Republican establishment in the early 1970s stung, and stayed with him. Demonstrating his independence over the years Young refused to join the “tea party” conservative Republicans in budget-slashing in the Congress, and in recent years disdained many of Donald Trump’s views as President as well as many hard-right views of his conservative House colleagues.

In fact, Young developed a reputation for dealing “across the aisle” with Democrats in the House to get important legislation passed. Some of his signature accomplishments as chair of the House Energy Committee (now House Committee on Energy and Commerce) and, later, the House Transportation Committee came about because he was able to knit together bipartisan coalitions of support, a skill that seems lost in Congress today.

As Young rose through the seniority ranks in the House he was “termed out” on the energy and transportation committee chairmanships, so he opted to chair a subcommittee, Indian Affairs, which was very important to Alaska’s Native people.

In an interview with this writer Young said that subcommittees are actually more important than the major committees because they are where most policy originates and where bills are vetted. Indian Affairs was a logical subcommittee because of his strong interest in Alaska Native affairs.

In his transportation agenda for the nation Young’s critics often painted him as anxious to pave over everything that was green, but this was unfair.

In his work leading the House Transportation Committee Young expressed serious concerns about inner-city congestion, for example. In a conversation this writer had with Young about his Transportation Committee work he was urging support for green spaces and sidewalks in cities. “No one walks anymore and that’s unhealthy,” he told me.

Innovative features that are part of the six-year federal transportation funding programs today include scenic pullouts on highways and recreational bike trails. Young can be given some the credit for those for his work in the Transportation Committee.

Young’s work in the House was often overshadowed by that in the Senate by Alaska’s two senators. Former senator Mike Gravel, for example, engineered the strategy for Senate passage, by one vote, of the Trans Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act in 1973. But people forget that it was Young who, newly arrived in Congress, got it through the U.S. House amid much of the same controversy that faced the Alaska pipeline in the Senate.

Similarly, former Sen. Ted Stevens was wideky recognized for his work as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and major legislation on fisheries conservation. But again, everything that Stevens did in the Senate, as well as what senators Frank Murkowski, his daughter Lisa and now Dan Sullivan have done, needed to get through the House, and it was Young’s responsibility to do that.

All of the major federal legislation affecting Alaska since Young arrived in Congress in 1973 were guided through to passage in that body by the state’s lone congressman.