Valley favors Miller in primary

WASILLA — After reviewing last week’s primary election numbers, a few things seem clear — the Valley supports the current oil tax structure and voters here love Joe Miller.

Vote totals aren’t yet official and might still change slightly. The Alaska Division of Elections plans to count the early ballots cast between Aug. 16 and Election Day today, then count absentee and questioned ballots until Sept. 2, after which the election will need to be officially certified.

Miller, the eventual second-place finisher in the Republican primary race for the U.S. Senate seat that Mark Begich currently holds, took every Mat-Su district from Butte to Talkeetna to Chickaloon. Percentage-wise, he walked away with 41 percent of the vote. His nearest competitor in Mat-Su — the eventual statewide winner, Dan Sullivan — took just 35 percent. The third major contender, Mead Treadwell, garnered 22 percent. An additional 2 percent went to John Jaramillo.

Miller performed similarly well in Mat-Su the last time he ran for Senate, an election in which he first bested Lisa Murkowski in the Republican primary then lost to her write-in campaign in the general.

As for oil taxes, Mat-Su voters preferred the current regime, with 61 percent voting against its repeal. Every single district voted that way.

Another statewide race — that for Lt. Governor in the Democratic primary — featured a local man running as a serious contender. Colony High School math teacher Bob Williams, ran on a shoestring budget, and managed to wrest 29 percent of the statewide vote from Sen. Hollis French. Hailing from Anchorage, French is a perpetual candidate for higher office on the Democratic side with high name recommendation and strong fundraising prowess in that party.

Despite being from here, though, Williams didn’t manage to pull a single Valley district from French. Still, he greatly outperformed his statewide numbers, pulling in 42 percent to French’s 58 percent in Mat-Su.

Looking at the data on a more granular level, the winners in contested races in the Chugiak/Butte/Fairview race for Senate and the race for House in the Knik/Fairview area went about the way you’d expect. The winners of the Republican primaries, Bill Stoltze in the Senate race and Cathy Tilton in the House race took every precinct by wide margins indicative of their blow-out performances.

But, as it often is, the race for the Republican nomination in the Sutton/Chickaloon/Valdez/Delta Junction race for House were interesting even on a granular level.

In that race, incumbent Eric Feige fell to challenger Jim Colver, a Mat-Su Borough assemblyman. Feige actually placed third — he also lost to Sutton Community Council member George Rauscher.

But Rauscher managed to prevail in a few precincts. He won his home precinct of Sutton with 117 votes. Colver actually placed third there with just 46 votes. Feige, who also lives nearby, took in 73 ballots.

Rauscher also prevailed relatively far from home, besting Colver by more than 100 ballots in the Big Delta precinct and by a smaller margin in the Delta Junction precinct.

Colver performed best closest to the Valley’s core area, with big wins in the Farm Loop and Fishhook precincts. He also won handily in Valdez, which can be a wildcard in this race in years when no candidate steps forward from that community.

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