Valley Lt. Gov. candidate running statewide

WASILLA — Bob Williams has put a lot of miles in this year.

Williams is running for Lieutenant Governor, facing off in the primary against Sen. Hollis French, D-Anchorage. Whichever candidate prevails will go on to face the Republican candidate in the general election.

Months of effort precede the primary election for some, but for Williams, a Colony High School math teacher, the primary election Aug. 19 will be the latest milestone after more than a year on the trail.

“I knew in order to be successful you have to start early,” Williams said.

That’s why he announced in June 2013.

Since then, Williams has been an inescapable presence at various town-hall meetings and other local events. However, Williams is also a statewide candidate and ran his campaign that way. He carries a map with him with dots placed at every stop he’s made.

“We went up and down the Kuskokwim campaigning,” he said.

He’s been from one side of the state to the other. Mostly, he said, listening.

“There are so many people out there who think the state of Alaska doesn’t understand them or doesn’t care about them,” Williams said.

He said he realizes that he doesn’t quite fit the mold of what people think of when they think about politics. He’s a schoolteacher, son of a Butte-area logger. He can’t afford to take a break from his job to campaign.

But, Williams said, in his time traveling the state, “one thing I haven’t heard is, ‘we want a career politician.’”

Williams is running as a Democrat and on the issues he doesn’t lay down a lot of surprises. Like other Democrats, he favors repealing the SB21 oil tax legislation.

“We need more transparency in the oil industry,” he said. “We don’t really have the numbers for things to make sense.”

He is opposes changing the state’s constitution to allow public money to fund private

education.

“I don’t believe there’s anyone in the state of Alaska that is more opposed to vouchers than myself,” he said.

The problem with education is that impoverished schools perform more poorly than rich schools, he said. If America were rated just on its richest schools, its education system would be the best in the world. Vouchers won’t fix that, according to Williams.

Williams is energized talking about the issues, but how much do issues matter in a race for an office tasked only with running the Division of Elections, maintaining the state seal and other relatively minor tasks?

Plenty, Williams said.

“I’m very excited about the position of Lieutenant Governor,” he said. “I spoke with former Alaska Lt. Gov. Fran Ulmer and current Colorado Lt. Gov. (Joseph) Garcia and they both told me the same thing and that is that if you partner with the governor you can greatly enhance the effectiveness of the executive branch.”

Running the Division of Elections is no small responsibility, Williams added. He pointed to statistics that could use improvement — the rate of rejection of military ballots, and the rate of rejection of voter registration applications have both gone up when they should go down — and said he wants to look at a completely online voter registration program.

“If there’s any state that cries out for complete online registration, it’s Alaska,” Williams said.