Republicans sweep Valley races

MAT-SU -- A strong voter turnout in Tuesday's general election worked in favor of incumbent Valley Republicans, who retained their seats and added a new Republican to represent House District 15.

Projections were that the contested races for five Mat-Su seats would be tight, but those projections didn't pan out on election night. Tallies in Valley races came in with relatively wide margins, with a nearly 25-percent vote margin separating competitors in the closest race involving incumbents.

The closely watched House District 15 race, for

a seat left open after Republican incumbent Beverly Masek lost her primary contest, went to Mark Neuman, the man who defeated Masek in the primary.

When the polls closed and ballots were counted Tuesday, Neuman came away with 48 percent of the vote in a three-way race. His closest competitor, Myrl Thompson, fell nearly 1,000 votes short of a win and former Mat-Su Borough Assembly member and previous Masek competitor Doyle Holmes came away with about 1,100 votes.

The biggest surprise Tuesday night appeared to be voter turnout, with more than 52 percent of eligible Alaskans casting their ballots across the state, and more than 50 percent voting in every Valley race.

The House District 16 race between Republican Incumbent Bill Stoltze and Chugiak challenger John Angell sported the highest turnout in the state, with nearly 61 percent of registered voters casting votes.

The Stoltze-Angell race had the widest margins of any race in the Valley, with Stoltze taking home nearly 72 percent of the votes -- 5,412 to Angell's 2,107. The closest Valley race was between Republican Vic Kohring and former legislator Pat Carney, but the 1,628-vote spread between the two is well beyond potential influence by absentee or questioned votes cast.

Carol Thompson, Southcentral region director for the Alaska Division of Elections, said there have been higher voter turnouts in Alaska elections.

The highest turnout on record was in 1992, Thompson said, when 83 percent of Alaskans eligible to vote -- about 199,000 people -- participated in the election. In 2000, more than 60 percent of registered voters turned out statewide. Both elections included presidential races.

The 52-percent voter turnout listed in the division's unofficial results included some absentee ballots, but about 13,000 in the Southcentral region have not yet been counted -- about 2,788 of those absentee ballots are in borough districts. She's estimating the counting will be complete by mid-November.

Polling places across the Valley were hopping Tuesday, with polls at the Mat-Su Borough Building in Palmer and Wasilla's city hall processing 100 voters or more each hour.

An election official working at the Wasilla city hall poll said she hadn't seen a turnout of that magnitude in the more than 10 years she'd been working during local elections.

Election officials at Cottonwood Creek Elementary had, by 3 p.m. Tuesday, served nearly 400 voters, at a precinct in which 1,350 people are registered to vote. Precinct official Gloria Tokar said the turnout for that polling place generally ranges between 25 and 30 percent, but it approached 50 percent by the time polls closed at 8 p.m. Tuesday.

One thing that was new this year, Thompson said, was the addition of poll watchers. Members of political parties have, for many years, been able to watch election officials interact with voters at the polls on election day, but Thompson said that opportunity had not been used previously. This year was a little different.

"They seemed to be at pretty much all of mine," Thompson said.

Poll-watching isn't just open to anyone -- observers must present their name, party affiliation and a signed document from a representative of their political party in order to observe what happens at the polls.

Thompson said she was not sure Wednesday whether poll watchers had challenged anyone's ability to cast a ballot on Tuesday. That information, she said, will become clear as division staff work through questioned ballots in the coming days.

Contact Rindi White at rindi.white@frontiersman.com.