McAdams talks issues

WASILLA — Scott McAdams says that Alaskans expect their politicians to ask them for their votes in person and lately he’s been spending all his time doing just that.

Thursday he took a break to talk to the Frontiersman’s editorial board about the tenor of the senate race; what he wants to do about public education, voter apathy, health care reform and resource development; and what sets him apart from Lisa Murkowski and Joe Miller in this very hot three-way race for U.S. Senate.

The big news story of the day was a series of allegations that Miller had used Fairbanks North Star Borough computers to do partisan campaign work and a fight over access to his personnel file from his time as a borough attorney there.

McAdams said those fights are distracting from the issues at a time when Alaska can least afford to.

“I’m less interested in any one person’s personnel file than what Alaska will be like for 625,000 Alaskans in the year 2020,” McAdams said. “We don’t know what Alaska looks like when Prudhoe Bay oil runs out. . . We need to start to craft that vision now.”

As for education, McAdams said that in his time as a teacher and as a member of a school board in Sitka he has come to hold strong opinions on federal involvement in education. Too often, he said, lawmakers in Washington, D.C., pass laws requiring schools to do certain things but only provide a fraction of the money needed to accomplish the task. He said he wants to fight to get those programs fully funded.

“We need to stop the cycle of well-intended federal legislation that’s unfunded,” McAdams said.

On the topic of voter apathy, he said that not enough Alaskans vote and that needs to change. He thinks a good way to encourage more participation is to celebrate the good work that local service groups and governing bodies do on a daily basis.

Asked about health care reform, McAdams said he is not in favor of repealing the legislation passed this year. But that doesn’t mean he’s totally onboard either. He said he’d like to fix pieces he finds deficient.

“One of my biggest problems is the unfunded mandate of the individual mandate portion of the bill,” he said.

When talking about natural resources, McAdams said that he believes it’s in Alaska’s interest to seat another pro-development Democrat. Along with Sen. Mark Begich, McAdams said he could do a lot to convince reticent Democrats to support things like drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

“Alaska’s natural resources sit like an empty house on the market,” he said. “I’d say it’s time we change agents.”

And finally, what sets him apart from his opponents, McAdams said, is, in part, the way he feels about federal money. He pointed out that Miller has pledged not to seek any earmarks and that Murkowski has voted multiple times against appropriations bills because they contained those kinds of appropriations.

McAdams said that as mayor of Sitka, he understands the role that appropriations play in Alaska and would fight for them, to beef up Alaska’s educational system, its transportation system and its public works system.

“I don’t believe that the invisible hand of the free market is well positioned to provide those things,” he said.

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