THEIR 2-CENTS

WASILLA — At least to judge by the eight candidates who showed up at Thursday’s gubernatorial forum at the Alaska Club, a natural gas pipeline is the dominant issue facing the state right now.

The gathering was the first of a series of forums and debates the greater Palmer and Wasilla chambers of commerce are putting on this election year. The four no-shows among the 12 candidates were Gov. Sean Parnell, Republican Brad Snowden, Libertarian William Toien and Alaskan Independence Party candidate Donald Wright.

After the forum, the candidates were ranked on their performance and four of them — Democrats Ethan Berkowitz, Bob Poe and Hollis French, and Republican Bill Walker — were asked back for next week’s debate in which they will get to argue with one another rather than take turns answering questions.

But, to get down to the gas line, here’s how Democrat Hollis French saw it:

“You need the best deal for the biggest pipe and the state will be just fine,” he said. It doesn’t matter where the line ends up. The market will determine that. Get a big line shipping lots of gas, he said, and the state is secure.

Bill Walker reserved most of his passion during the forum for the gas line topic.

Gov. Sean Parnell “recently gave $20 billion to incentivize a gas line going through Canada,” Walker said. And, to him, it makes no sense at all. “That’s the cost of the all-Alaska gas line,” the one that Walker wants to build, using the existing permits, following the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline.

For his part, Poe advocated starting small, building the piece from Prudhoe Bay to Anchorage, putting in the infrastructure to support multiple lines along that route. All of the projects proposed, he pointed out, have to travel that piece of the route. He said the state just needs to get things going.

“One of the things that Alaska is really good at is getting kind of wrapped around the axle on big projects,” he said.

Ralph Samuels said the state should, before it does anything else, build a bullet line to feed gas to Alaska.

“I don’t need permission from Barack Obama’s administration to get a bullet line down here. I don’t need a tax deal with a big oil company,” he said.

Anchorage Republican Merica Hlatcu said he wanted to see the pipeline built in Alaska serving Alaskans. He said he’s tired of seeing Outside interests extract resources from Alaska and move on.

“Everybody comes, makes holes and goes — and leaves nothing,” he said.

Palmer Republican candidate Gerald Heikes said gas pipelines are all well and good, but the state needs to do more with its oil resources. He wants to take some of the state’s share of that oil in-kind, meaning he would like to see the state take oil and refine it for use in-state at refineries he wants to build in Fairbanks and Glennallen and on the Kenai Peninsula.

And Republican Singing Sam Little said he thinks the gas pipeline is something talked about more than acted upon.

“There’s been several governors who have won an election on building a gas pipeline,” he said. But none have built one, and the state has other concerns to address. Fishing returns are going down. The state needs to find out why and change that. There needs to be more money going into education.

But the forum wasn’t all natural gas all the time. One yes or no question showed some stark differences among the candidates and probably caught the attention of the Valleyites in the audience. The question: Do you support the Knik Arm Crossing as proposed by (The Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority)?”

Poe, Walker, Samuels, Little and Heikes said they did. French, Hlatcu and Berkowitz did not.

And the candidates did show some differing views when asked what they would do to combat hunger among the state’s senior population.

Hlatcu said the state needs to care for it’s seniors; without them there wouldn’t be a state.

Samuels agreed. Despite his conservative, small-government policy positions, he thinks senior and veteran care are two areas the government needs to be involved in. He said he’d like to see the state work with non-profits and faith-based groups to address the problem.

Little said he’d start by giving seniors a utility credit, by making sure winter heating and electrical bills aren’t bankrupting any of them.

Berkowitz expanded the question, pointing out that one in 10 Alaskans aren’t sure where their next meal is coming from. He said Alaska needs to expand its agriculture, build cold storage to store crops and stop “trading cropland for condos.”

“If you grow food you can feed people,” he said.

Heikes agreed on the points that more land should be cultivated and non-profits should be empowered to do the work. But he took a very long view, saying that the biggest change won’t come until the federal government stops farm subsidies.

Poe said he would like to see existing programs strengthened. One of the biggest problems is “knowing where seniors are and why they’re not getting fed.” The state needs to work hard to answer those questions.

Walker took the opportunity to take a jab at the current administration. He said that in the days before Parnell and Palin, Lt. Gov. Loren Leman set up a 21-member board for faith-based initiatives. The current administration, he said, has allowed that board to wither and all but die. He would like to revive it.

He also said keeping seniors in their homes as long as possible is “critical.” Advocates of that policy point out that assisted living care is incredibly expensive as compared with most seniors who live at home.

As for French, he said the state just needs to get more of its share of oil revenues to pay for these kinds of programs..

“It would be nice if the churches and the neighbors would take care of every senior in our community, but it’s just not enough,” he said.

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