Primary preview: Past two Palmer mayors face off in House District 11 race

MAT-SU — With the primary election coming up on Aug. 21, there are three contested races to determine who will represent the party in the general election later this fall. Each candidate was interviewed separately and asked, among others, these questions:

What qualifies you to run for this position? What are your thoughts on SB91, the Permanent Fund Dividend, and the budget? Each candidate was asked if they would join a caucus if elected, and each candidate was asked about running against their particular opponent.

House District 11 will feature the past two Mayors of the City of Palmer with current Mayor Edna DeVries and former Mayor and incumbent, DeLena Johnson. Neither had negative reviews of the other. DeVries said she wanted to get into the race after seeing the use of the Permanent Fund Divended by the State Government.

Edna DeVries

DeVries served in the Senate from 1984-1986 after moving to Alaska in 1969. DeVries was the first treasurer for the city of Palmer and has served on the Palmer Planning and Zoning Commission, mayor of the Mat-Su Borough, served as a member of the assembly, and as chair of the Human Rights Commission in the 1990’s. DeVries currently serves as the mayor of the city of Palmer, elected in 2016.

DeVries would like to see the legislature move to Anchorage.

“I think the biggest things that we have dealt with is we have kept our mill levy at the same level, we’ve kept our sales tax at the same level, all of those things I think help our local businesses. As you know, we’re almost wrapping up an $11,000,000 project for wastewater treatment,” she said.

DeVries describes opinions on the new tenant for the old Fred Meyer building, U-Haul, as ‘Monday morning quarterbacking.’ DeVries wants to shy away from old code that made Palmer unattractive to new business.

“We did ban the plastic bag and whether you’re a conservative or a liberal you can jump on either side of that fence, but I felt that was the right thing at the right time,” DeVries said.

DeVries served in the Majority during her time in the Senate, and worked on the rewrite to Title 29 which she described as ‘The Bible for Municipalities.’

“Well I’m going to see who the caucus is because I feel strongly about the three things [crime, the PFD, and the budget] that we just did talk about. To me those three things would have to be the focus of that caucus, and if they’re not going to be then I’m not interested in joining.”

DeVries also wanted to copy what other Valley legislators David Eastman and Shelley Hughes have done in publishing her own update from Juneau, if elected.

“I’ve been pretty vocal about it the capitol budget, up to this time has mainly been pass-through monies from the feds, and the state just has to contribute a small portion. Well there was a $1,000,000 grant that was coming in clean water from the feds that the state did not put into their capital budget, and that would be major, or is major, for the city of Palmer. People who pay a monthly water and sewer bill, and I want to be sure in the capitol budget that we are sure that we are taking full advantage of everything the feds are offering.”

DeLena Johnson

Johnson Graduated from Susitna Valley High School and then from UAA with a degree in mathematics, served as Palmer Mayor from 2010-2016. She was elected to the Alaska State House in 2016. Johnson previously served as the executive director for the Palmer Museum of History and Art, rebuilt the building that currently houses the Palmer Alehouse as a business owner and also ran a non-profit. Johnson also raised five children in the Mat-Su Valley, one of whom works as an aide in the Senate.

“We’re a resource state. We don’t want people to say Alaska’s a one trick pony. Of course we don’t want that to be the only thing that Alaska’s known for but when you start talking about a $4.5 Billion operating budget, that’s what fills the gap. So knowing that I value bringing the revenue up as much as cutting the budget, because that’s another way of filling the budget gap,” Johnson said. “I sponsored basically a full repeal of SB91 that didn’t even see the light of day, didn’t get a hearing… I felt like that’s what people wanted so I did put it out there ”Johnson said that her degree in Mathematics really taught her how to think critically. Johnson mentioned the state’s credibility problem in paying off credits to oil and gas companies as one of the many things the state needs to address.

“My goal was to make sure that private investors aren’t held back by government regulation, and that’s really what got me involved in politics in the first place,” she said.

Johnson’s ethics reform was picked up and passed by another legislator, limiting the amount of per diem legislators can receive, which was one of the things that she focused her last campaign around.

“We’ve got to enhance our resources so we can get better jobs, so we can take care of the social issues that we have,” Johnson said.

Johnson mentioned Education as one of the other important issues on her radar.

“You can only fill up a cup out of a bucket so long before the bucket is empty, right, you’ve got to fill the bucket and so social issues like opioid addictions like crime, they’re tied together but homelessness, crime, property crime, violence, all of those things are tied to people not having jobs and when you have no jobs you don’t have people working, you don’t have a thriving economy. We know that our economy is down in Alaska and so we need to work on our economy,” Johnson said.