Primary preview: Governor, Lt. Governor primaries to be decided on Tuesday

Alaskans go to the polls for the Aug. 21 primary election, taking their first shots at defining the structure of Alaska’s state government.

Whoever is elected governor and lieutenant governor, and as representatives and senators in the Legislature, will tackle pressing, even urgent, problems.

Former state Senator Mike Dunleavy and Mead Treadwell, a former Lieutenant Governor, are squaring off for the Republican nomination for governor in the November general election.

Whoever wins the nod to be the GOP standard-bearer will face two opponents in November, Gov. Bill Walker, who is running for reelection as an independent, and Mark Begich, a former Alaska U.S. Senator who is unopposed in the Democratic primary.

All four are facing voters who are in a sour mood. A recession sparked in 2015, when oil prices tanked, is in its third year, having drained thousands of jobs from the state’s economy.

There is still a state budget gap, although a bill passed by the Legislature to use part of the Permanent Fund’s ample earnings has eased a huge budget deficit.

No candidate is presenting a road map for continued fiscal reform other than continued budget cuts, and all of the governor candidates except Walker are arguing for expanding the Permanent Fund dividend, which puts constraints on using Permanent Fund income for the budget, indirectly creating more pressure for new revenues like taxes.

The public is meanwhile fed up with a wave of crime, mostly inspired by drugs, but only generalities — no detailed ideas — being talked of on the campaign circuit.

Most candidates in the legislative campaigns as well as the statewide races talk of repealing Senate Bill 91, a crime-reform bill that was implemented poorly, but offer little in proposals to deal with the wave of drug abuse and addiction that fuels crime.

Dunleavy, a new face on the statewide scene, is saying the least about his own ideas, which may advantage because he avoids creating targets for criticism that specific proposals might invite.

Treadwell, Begich and of course Walker are better known. Walker is running on the track record of his first term, so there are real decisions voters can fasten on, for better or worse for the candidate.

Begich has a track record of accomplishments as a former Anchorage mayor and U.S. senator and also the most detailed proposals so far of any of the governor candidates. His track record shows him to have moderately liberal leanings with a reputation for a pragmatic mechanic of government.

Treadwell brings executive branch experience as lieutenant governor and substantial private sector experience in finance, high-tech and natural resource development, mainly with Yukon Pacific Corp. and its work over several years on a North Slope gas pipeline and LNG project that is, ironically, similar in scope to the Alaska LNG project now championed by Walker.

Dunleavy is the blank slate, the outsider among a group of competitors who are political insiders. Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, he came to Alaska in 1983 and worked in education in rural Alaska for 20 years, then relocated to the Matanuska Valley.

During a period as superintendent t the North West Arctic School District Dunleavy was dogged by controversy over management disputes with teachers and other staff.

He was elected to the state Senate from the Mat-Su and served from 2013 until January, 2018, when he resigned to run for governor. Dunleavy served on the Senate’s finance committee and focused on education, but broke with the leadership of the body over disagreements on the state budget, which he felt was too high.

Dunleavy paid a price for crossing the leadership, however. His vote against the budget on the Senate floor, which violated protocol within the Majority, was based on principle but cost him his finance seat.

Two proposals Dunleavy is identified with included a proposed amendment to the state Constitution to allow state funds to go t o religious as well as public schools, and a proposal to combine school districts’ health insurance plans with other state employee plans to gain the efficiencies of large pools of insured people.

Dunleavy’s own proposal for insurance pooling didn’t advance but it inspired other senators to advance studies of the idea in a Medicaid reform bill.

The concept has been further developed by the Walker administration and is now being discussed with school districts and municipalities.

Dunleavy’s campaign is well-financed with major contributions by his brother, Francis Dunleavy, who works in finance and investment in Texas. Another major supporter is Bob Penney, a major Alaska sports fishing advocate.

Penney’s support has raised eyebrows in coastal communities where the commercial fishing industry is important. The worry is that as governor Dunleavy would tilt toward sports fish interests at the expense of commercial fish harvesters.

Treadwell, besides having more private sector experience than any other governor candidate, has a long track record in Arctic issues as chairman of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, a prestigious scientific body that coordinates federal agency Arctic research.

The position allowed Treadwell to advance Alaskan issues in the Arctic, such as those affecting indigenous people and the impacts of climate change on Alaska communities, among federal agencies engaged in the Arctic.

Treadwell was born in New Haven, Connecticut and came to Alaska in 1978 to work for Walter Hickel, who was running for governor after having served as U.S. Interior Secretary and as governor. Treadwell remaining in Alaska working as a journalist and again for Hickel at Yukon Pacific Corp., and was eventually named Deputy Commissioner of Environmental Conservation in Hickel’s second term as governor.

More recently, Treadwell was a partner in PT Capital, an investment firm focused on Arctic infrastructure projects.

Begich was born and raised in Alaska and comes from a family with deep political roots. His father was Nick Begich, who was Alaska’s long congressman but was killed in a plane crash on a flight from Anchorage to Juneau along with Hale Boggs, a Democratic congressman from Louisiana who was House Majority Leader at the time.

Begich served on Anchorage’s assembly and then as mayor, experience which acquainted him on how legislative and executive branches of government work together, at least on the municipal level.

He was elected to the U.S. Senate and served one term. Since leaving the Senate he has been doing consulting.

Begich is more specific in his proposals than his opponents. While many ideas put forth are still general and mainstream, one that is unusually direct is a commitment to do away with the “80th percentile rule,” a state regulation requiring that health providers pay at the 80th percentile of the average prices for specific medical procedures.

Many have blamed the rule for helping drive up health care costs because certain medical practitioners use it to ratchet up prices. Gov. Bill Walker is currently considering the rule and its effects.

Another unusual commitment Begich has made is a proposal to put the Permanent Fund dividend into the state Constitution along with dedicated funds for education.

The PFD proposal has been advocated by others but it has never gained traction because it would lock in spending to the possible detriment of other public programs. It would also take away the Legislature’s flexibility in allocating funds among needs, a key principle for the drafters of Alaska’s Constitution in 1956.

Walker, in standing for reelection, must run on the track record of his first four years. He has solid accomplishments to point to including giving new life to the Alaska LNG Project, as a state-run project that now has potential China customers and investors, after North Slope producers backed away.

Although it has been criticized, Walker’s expansion of Medicaid to cover Alaskans with very modest incomes rather than those in poverty, brought health coverage to thousands in the state for the first time.

President Barak Obama’s Affordable Care Act allows states to expand coverage under Medicaid, although not all have. Republicans in the Legislature fiercely opposed Walker’s move but they failed to undo it.

Walker’s signature accomplishment, however, was in shepherding through passage of Senate Bill 26, a bill that allows a portion of the Permanent Fund’s earnings to be used to fund the state budget.

The governor has also proposed new taxes to bring in revenue, in the form of a “wage” tax, or a specified tax paid by all wage and salary workers. He also linked the new revenues to pay for work on an $18 billion backlog of state deferred maintenance.

The Legislature did not consider the proposal, however.

Walker’s most controversial move, however, was his veto of part of the appropriation for the Permanent Fund dividend in 2016 when the state faced a financial emergency due to the oil revenue drop.

The following year the Legislature itself only partly funded the dividend, meaning the amount below the amount for the dividend set in statute.

SB 26, which sets the framework for using Fund earnings for the budget, also contemplates a dividend below the maximum set in statute.

Although Walker only went along with those later proposals, which were mainly backed by the Republican-led Senate, the blame among part of the electorate for first cutting the dividend is falling on him.

That may hurt him as he stands against opponents vowing to “fully fund” the dividend, meaning funding it to the maximum allowed by law.

While the governor’s race is attracting most of the attention there is also a contested Republican lieutenant governor contest. The two most prominent GOP candidates include two veteran state senators, Kevin Meyer of Anchorage and Gary Stevens of Kodiak.

Both are moderate Republicans with long history in the state Senate and House. Stevens has a background in education and has focused on education issues. Meyer has a business background.

There are three other Republican lieutenant governor candidates, all from MatSu, including former legislator Lynn Gattis, Edie Grunwald ane Stephen Wright.

On the Democratic slate for lieutenant governor there is only Debra Call of Anchorage, a Native tribal leader. Given that she and Mark Begich will surely emerge the victors in the Democratic primary, they will face whoever wins the Republican primary Aug. 21 along with Walker and his lieutenant governor, Byron Mallot, a veteran Native leader, in the November election.