Warrior, oracle: Constitutional framer Fischer in his 9th decade of political combat

The framers of the United States Constitution exist in textbooks, on framed canvasses. They can no longer arbitrate the meaning of their spare, elegant dictates. Alaska is different. A few of our state Constitution framers are still alive and very much engaged in the ongoing project of realizing a powerful vision articulated in that document.

Vic Fischer escaped from totalitarian Russia 77 years ago. This year, he has been campaigning on an election issue that most voters have never even heard of: Judicial retention. That’s in addition to pressing his views on state and national issues, including serving as a Democratic elector from Alaska for the presidential election. After escaping Stalinism, serving in the Second World War, organizing for statehood, drafting the state Constitution with other Convention participants and serving in the state Senate, Fischer is as energetic as a first time political volunteer, but informed by more than nine decades of experience.

Sixty years after Fischer helped write the Alaska Constitution, which is considered a model state constitution in the United States, he is still fighting to defend the values it enshrines. Most newspapers in the state published his opinion columns on judicial retention–Alaska’s system of selecting judges based on merit rather than political campaigns–just as Fischer has participated in nearly every other major public policy debate in the entire history of Alaska’s statehood. By chronological standards, Vic Fischer is an elder statesman, but one whose intellectual vigor and passion for justice is undimmed by the passage of time. If anything, Fischer has become even more effective and no less willing to throw punches.

It is extraordinary enough that Vic Fischer is here, physically, to help maintain fidelity to our state’s founding document. At the national level, there is rampant speculation about what the founders intended with Constitutional language. Alaska has no such problem. The individual who drafted the Constitution is our neighbor and he does not hesitate to wade into public debates about the values embedded in that document. Since Alaska’s Constitution is extraordinarily progressive and far-sighted in its treatment of civil liberties and economic rights, those values are under near-continuous attack from certain interest groups.

As of today, however, Vic Fischer has won. Alaska is an almost singular example of a state or nation that has escaped the “resource curse” that so often afflicts oil-rich commonwealths. Unlike states such as Louisiana and West Virginia, Alaska has not just wealthy corporations extracting resources, but also a vibrant middle class with strong publicly-funded institutions. Fischer lent his weight as an elder statesman, to the bipartisan coalition that socked away tens of billions of dollars in state savings after substantially raising taxes on oil during the Palin administration. Even now, after oil companies’ elected officials slashed taxes, the Owner State policies that Wally Hickel, Jay Hammond, Vic Fischer and others supported has produced savings that protect Alaska from penury during a period of low oil prices.

Alaska’s courts have consistently defended Alaskans’ right to privacy, even when such rights have been substantially curtailed in other states. Alaska’s courts have upheld children’s rights to a decent education provided by the state, in stark contrast to the school systems of other states and in radical defiance of geography and logistical constraints. Every one of these achievements is a testament to the founders’ foresight and, in no small measure, Fischer’s willingness to defend their legacy. This year, Fischer has helped defend Alaska’s independent judiciary from partisan attack yet again.

To describe Vic Fischer, the term “grandfather” is too limited, bound up with familial ties and limitations. “Patriarch” also seems inadequate, particularly given Fischer’s work on women’s rights. His length and depth of service is so great that it is hard to write about, much less remember, the battles that Vic Fischer fought and won before many Alaskans were even born.

After all these years, and as Alaska itself begins to approach a human’s old age, Vic Fischer still lives in Anchorage near the Chester Creek greenbelt that he helped create in 1954 as Anchorage’s first city planner. Although Fischer himself has written a far more detailed and compelling history of his life (To Russia with Love, An Alaskan’s Journey), I wanted to ask about the battles he still fights, in the context of today’s politics.

How did being in Germany, and later barely escaping Russia, inform your political views?

As a seven and eight year old kid in Berlin I was totally aware of Hitler’s rise to power and the subsequent murder of thousands, and eventually, millions of people. I subsequently spent six years in Moscow and was in the midst of Stalin’s terror that also resulted in millions of deaths.

Those dictatorships made me appreciate our democratic form of government ever more and probably made an activist of me.

In 1950, after serving in the US army during the Second World War and finishing my education, I came to Alaska and joined the statehood movement so we would become full-fledged citizens and practice self-government. That, in turn, led to my election to the constitutional convention and thereafter to the last territorial legislature.

It was during the latter that I had a chance to give vent to my abhorrence of states killing their own people by cosponsoring with Warren Taylor the act to abolish the death penalty in Alaska.

There are many august leaders who, after their time in elected office, become reticent to engage in the fisticuffs of politics. You have never shirked from battle, and are both pragmatic and aggressive about defending the legacy of Alaska values enshrined in the Constitution. What is your calculus for engaging on an issue–what makes it worth putting yourself out there on the battlefield each time?

As I stated in the introduction to my autobiography, I’ve lived under fascism, communism and democracy. I’ve been privileged to write my values into documents guiding generations of people, including Alaska’s Constitution. These include, essentially, two ideals: Just as we must identify and live by our values, we have an obligation to actively participate in our state and community, with full devotion to our fellow citizens. My basic values include ultimate respect for individual rights, opposition to discrimination of any kind and dedication to those without power, the poor and the underdogs. These are my basic humanistic beliefs. They should seem self-evident, but have been matters of deep and brutal conflict. Fortunately, although the world may seem bleak now, we have made progress.

Though the Constitution that you and fifty-four others crafted in 1955-56 is in fact a progressive landmark, are there nonetheless things that you’d wished it would address more fully, or differently?

I think the key one there is the preamble of the Constitution. It doesn’t directly recognize the Native cultures that predated Western contact. The issue of tribal governance never came up because it was not an issue at the time.

In To Russia With Love, Fischer addresses this issue in detail. Frank Peratrovich was the only Alaska Native delegate at the Constitution. Though “Muktuk” Marston also spoke strongly in support of Alaska Native sovereignty, it would fall upon Congress and the courts to delineate spheres of legal responsibility and control over Native lands and family law issues.

What is the biggest constitutional or civil rights issue facing Alaskans today?

I think the biggest constitutional issue that needs addressing is legislative redistricting. Originally the constitution gave the governor the most significant authority to do redistricting. An amendment in 1998 revised that to give the legislature a major role in creating a redistricting board. Both of these essentially opened the legislative districting process to partisan influence and resultant gerrymandering.

The system needs basic revision by constitutional amendment to take the process out of partisan politics by creating a nonpartisan commission. Some states have done that. We now have the tools to do the decennial redistricting it in a highly objective, scientific, nonpartisan manner that can do away with the gerrymandering, which takes place after each decennial census.

Alaska has benefitted immensely from development of its resources. The Constitution, with its requirement that resource development provide “maximum benefit” to Alaskans, is a primary reason that Alaskans and not just outside corporations have profited from development. As we now see low oil prices threaten the current structure of the Permanent Fund, what are your thoughts on adhering to the spirit of “maximum benefit” language in the Constitution?

Among my concerns is the Permanent Fund. If the fiscal crisis continues, there will be pressure to invade the Permanent Fund itself. Our long term goal needs to be to grow the Permanent Fund principal, not just use the revenues from the Permanent Fund, because in the long term we need to have a growing principal so future generations benefit from the nonrenewable resources that have been and will be extracted.

Accordingly, I believe that one element of dealing with our fiscal future is to place automatically one-third of Permanent Fund revenues back into the fund’s principal, another third into dividends both for sharing with the state’s citizens, and make the other third available for appropriation.

Though many Alaskans know you as a framer of our Constitution, your service in the state senate seems less well known. What were some of your priorities in the state legislature and how did they relate to the values you helped enshrine in the Constitution?

I felt very negative about going to Juneau, because I mainly ran to get rid of a very corrupt senator. The prospect of going there loomed over me like a four-year prison sentence. That’s the way I felt. But aside from that, my priorities were women’s rights and economic status, equality, protection from domestic violence, environmental protection and policies to support the poor and the vulnerable.

I did focus on those issues and was involved in putting together a package of funding to build women’s shelters in Anchorage and in eight other locations, and dealt with other women’s issues.

I also sponsored establishment of a personal use fishery. There was not much debate — I was on the resource committee and we were considering amendments to a subsistence bill, and I inserted an amendment to provide a category to authorize personal-use fishing and that’s why we have set netting and dip netting available to Alaskans now.

To reduce deaths from drunken driving, I worked with Mothers Against Drunk Driving to sponsor prohibition of happy hour drinking contests.

At the urging of Alaska pediatricians, another of my bills created the first requirement for children’s car seats.

As an ocean kayaker, it was my delight to work with state parks to create a system of marine parks for Alaska… And there were lots of other things that my staff and I were able to accomplish in Juneau.

Jane Angvik seems like an extraordinary partner in terms of intellect and toughness and energy, and do you want to comment on her role in your long life and continued engagement in the public realm?

Yes! Jane is a marvelous person in her own right and she’s been a phenomenal partner in my life. We share fundamental social values and involvement in our state and communities. Jane was elected Anchorage’s municipal charter commission in 1975 and later served six years on the Assembly; she’s been Alaska’s commissioner of commerce and state director of lands; worked for the Alaska Federation of Natives and helped create the Native Heritage Center; and it would take all my fingers and toes to list all the civic organizations in which she’s been involved.

Yes, Jane is a marvelous person, we share wonderful families, and I would not be here without her.

There are very few people left who helped create this state, who saw oil transform it, and now are witnessing what seems to be a transition away from near-complete reliance on oil revenue. What makes you optimistic or pessimistic about the state’s future? After living and prospering in a time that predated the pipeline, are you less concerned, perhaps, than some people who have only known Alaska in the context of this lucrative oily spigot?

I’ve always been an optimist. My feeling is that population growth per se is not something we need or want. I think Alaska is still a land of opportunity for young people. I see a lot of Alaska born and raised young people who are connected to Alaska and will stay in Alaska, and there are still very bright young people who are coming here who are excited about the beauty, the environment, the ability to be oneself.

The important thing is to adequately support education and provide training opportunities so people who want to be in Alaska have an opportunity to do so. I am concerned that we have had it so easy for a long time that we have forgotten how to support our own state.

The Constitution in section 1 of article 1, the very first section, sets forth the individual rights we are granted and it specifically states that all of us ‘ … have corresponding obligations to the people and to the State.’ We have not fulfilled that obligation since oil money began to flow and the legislature eliminated the state income tax and the school tax that Alaskans used to pay.

If we and those who come after us protect the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and meet our obligations, and if all are good stewards of Alaska, then I remain optimistic about the future.

Vic Fischer lives in Eastridge with partner, activist, and former Assembly member Jane Angvik. Their windows look out over woodlands near the Chester Creek greenbelt. It is early winter, and early afternoon darkness looms overhead. There is molten light on the horizon, little of which seems to reach Anchorage. Nonetheless, there are green shoots in a pot on Fischer’s kitchen table, which he says will soon bloom again, as they did last year. Fischer closes the conversation with his characteristic optimism, wonder, and humility:

I’ve been extremely lucky. I’ve worked with fabulous people, been mentored by outstanding individuals, and in turn have had the opportunity to mentor hundreds of people. I have a great family, am surrounded by friends across state. We have an incredible culture. Alaska!!! I do love this place, and it’s truly my home.