Two square off in primary for state House seat

MAT-SU — The race for the state House of Representatives seat covering Knik, Meadow Lakes and points north is one of the few contested races in this year’s election.

Incumbent Mark Neuman faces newcomer Stephen Jacobson in the Republican primary. No Democrat has filed to run, meaning the winner of the primary will likely sail uncontested through the general election.

Jacobson said he’s been campaigning for nearly a year. He filed to run in September. After a few months he realized campaigning was going to require all of his time and so took a leave of absence from his job as general manager of the Pittman Road Holiday gas station.

He said he believes District 15 isn’t getting it share of attention from the state, that there are numerous much-needed improvements to infrastructure in the area that just aren’t getting done.

“When you drive into the district the first thing you run into are two highway safety corridors,” Jacobson said. “The funding that we need for infrastructure in our area of the state has not happened.”

Neuman disputes that.

“I think if you look historically, District 15 has done very well,” he said.

And this budgeting cycle was no different. He pointed out that this go-around the state’s capital budget included $35 million to build a rail spur to Point MacKenzie. That line is going right through the district and the port itself is in the district.

Neuman said he thinks capital projects have to be doled out slowly so the jobs building them go to Alaskans, not to people from Outside.

“We tend to superheat our economy in this state and it drives me nuts,” he said. “You put all this money out on projects and we don’t even have enough laborers to do them.”

A lot of the appropriations he’s pushed through go straight to fire service and road service areas. Aside from buying air tanks for firefighters, those funds take a bite out of the property tax rate in the area.

“Those are all things that the citizens of those communities would have to pay otherwise,” he said.

Jacobson’s campaign slogan is “Enough is Enough.”

“We don’t have a representative that’s fighting for what we need, what our constituents need, what our business people want,” he said. “We need a representative who’s going to be out among the people and work with them.”

Again, Neuman would beg to differ. For example, he pointed to pike eradication in Alexander Creek. He said to get a handle on what was going on with that, so he could report back to his constituents, he had to talk to at least a half-dozen people, from fisherman groups and state agencies.

“That’s just on a little pike eradication thing,” he said.

That doesn’t even factor in the time he spends addressing constituents about issues from the wide-ranging — such as building up the state’s manufacturing base — to the minute and parochial — such as a constituent complaint about people trespassing on his land.

There’s more to the job than taking care of one’s district in the capital budget, Neuman said. He spends a lot of time working with state and national organizations to address sport-fishing issues. He’s working right now on a plan to manufacture synthetic jet fuel and marine gas from Alaska’s natural gas.

For his part, Jacobson understands that as well. He said that while infrastructure needs are dire, he doesn’t want to grow the state budget unnecessarily. If elected, he would want to work on, “things that help all of Alaska and not just some in a select area of the state.”

He and Neuman agree that one thing everyone in the state seems worried about is employment. Both say the state needs more jobs.

At any rate, it should be an interesting race in District 15 this year.

“I’m really looking forward to the debates,” Jacobson said.

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