Valley voters show solid preferences

MAT-SU — If gubernatorial candidate Bill Walker is disappointed at the results of Tuesday’s primary, it wasn’t the Valley’s fault.

Vote totals are going to change as absentee ballots are counted, but Walker seemed to be holding onto a second-place finish as of Thursday afternoon with 33.85 percent of the statewide vote in the Republican primary.

Despite that, Walker carried every Valley district. His closest margin was in the Butte/Chugiak district, where he edged out the presumptive winner, Gov. Sean Parnell, by just seven votes. His widest margin was in District 14, Greater Wasilla, where he took 1,598 votes to Parnell’s 1,299.

Elsewhere on the ballot, the Valley bucked the statewide trends only in the ardency of its support.

For instance, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Joe Miller, who as of Thursday was leading the statewide count by less than 1 percentage point, scored wide margins in Valley districts. His widest was in District 14, where he scored 2,253 votes to Lisa Murkowski’s 1,234. That translates to 64.6 percent of the vote. All the other districts handed Miller at least 60 percent of their ballots.

U.S. Rep. Don Young, as he did in the statewide election, trounced his closest opponent in the Republican primary for the U.S. House. In the Valley, he more doubled the vote totals of former telecommunications executive Sheldon Fisher in every district.

The Valley also apparently likes the idea of informing parents before their daughters have abortions. Proposition 2, requires that and passed by wide margins statewide. It also passed by overwhelming majorities in the Valley. The tightest margins were in Greater Wasilla and in the Butte/Chugiak districts. But even there, the “yes” votes nearly doubled the “no” votes.

Valleyites also shot down the other proposition on the ballot — dubbed by opposing camps as an anti-corruption initiative and a gag law. Margins there were tighter than for Proposition 1.

In the lieutenant governor’s race, Valley residents liked Mead Treadwell in the Republican race more than his two closest competitors — Jay Ramras and Eddie Burke — combined.

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