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Politics in Rural Alaska Look Different than Anywhere Else in the Country [1]
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Date: 2024-10-28
“A Cold State in the Far North”
Maxine Dibert is a State House Representative from Fairbanks, Alaska. Part of her job is greeting military families newly stationed at Fort Wainwright. Frequently, her welcome messages include advice for kids on how to dress for school at 20 below.
The transition to life in Alaska can be jarring, not just for middle schoolers getting used to recess in the subarctic. Political analysts also need to make adjustments. “We’re this cold state in the far north, it can be hard for national political people to understand what’s going on up here,” Dibert said.
Before every presidential election, politicos turn their attention to a particular voting bloc: rural voters in swing states like North Carolina, Michigan, and Wisconsin. These quadannual attempts to understand how rural politics fit into the national landscape have a dubious track record.
The Daily Yonder interviewed five local legislators in Alaska, a state generally spared from rural swing-state media treatment. Two Democrats, two Republicans, and one nonpartisan representative spoke about their state’s complicated relationship with national politics. And while Alaska’s peculiarities make it harder to fit into the national political discourse, they also lead the state to policy solutions that might not get traction elsewhere.
A girl, dressed appropriately for playtime in the subarctic, waits for her mother in Toksook Bay, Alaska. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
Federal Dollars and National Media
Alaska receives the most federal dollars per resident in the country. Rebecca Himschoot whose district “spans 500 miles from Yakutat to Heidelberg, including 11 school districts and nine tribes,” is an Unaffiliated State House Representative from Southeast Alaska. In such remote places, federal support is necessary for sustaining basic infrastructure, public education, health care, even food. “The pandemic revealed, we’re one barge away from not having food for our families,” Himschoot said.
Additionally, the decline in local media over the last fifteen years has meant many of Himschoot’s constituents receive most of their news from national sources. “In Sitka, we’re lucky to still have a local newspaper, but they’re running more statewide and national stories because the owners are looking to sell,” said Himschoot.
Legislators described a warped media ecosystem. Instead of local events driving the media coverage that informs voters, local politicians feel many of their constituents consume media that is wholly disconnected from local politics.
Like much of rural America, dwindling local news coverage means Himschoot’s constituents are less informed about local issues. For some, social media or major outlets have filled the void. Himschoot doesn’t believe national talking points reflect the core political issues facing her community. “Occasionally I knock on a door and the person cannot voice an opinion about local issues, they just keep veering back to the national. They just wanted me to comment on Biden and Trump,” said Himschoot. She worries about the divisive, hyper-partisan, and nationalizing political impact of increased dependence on social media and major media outlets.
Republican State Senator Jesse Bjorkman, from Nikiski on the Kenai Peninsula, also felt the effects of declining local media. “You meet some people and the number one question they have for you is your stance on the border. Border security is obviously vital, but that’s not part of my job here in Alaska.”
Rural Alaskans’ reliance on federal funding, combined with the dominance of national media, subjects the state to the turbulence of national politics. When local and national politics collide it can expose some of the quirks in Alaska’s system.
Politics that Break the Mold
Alaska is politically, geographically, and demographically unique. Only 37% of voters are registered to the two major parties. Most Alaskan communities are not reachable by road, and the state has the highest proportion of Indigenous people in the country.
The PFD or Permanent Fund Dividend, a check that every Alaskan receives from the state government annually, is another foundational anomaly.
Funds for the PFD have historically come from oil, which accounts for as much as 85% of Alaska’s operating revenue. With fluctuating prices and falling production over the last ten years, Alaska has had to seek other sources of funding.
A furniture store in Anchorage, Alaska, advertises PFD sales October 2, 2023, timed with the distribution of checks to nearly every Alaskan in the state. The PFD, or the Permanent Fund dividend, is the annual share of the earnings from the state’s nest-egg oil-wealth fund given to residents. Some use the money for extras like tropical vacations but others – particularly in high-cost rural Alaska where jobs and housing are limited – rely on it for such things as home heating fuel and the snow machines that are critical for transportation. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)
Some legislators pushed for allocating money from the PFD for government services. That meant lowering the amount that each Alaskan receives from their PFD check. In 2020, amid national furor over mask mandates and the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, “the dividend was the most divisive issue in our state,” said current Senate Majority Leader, Republican Cathy Giessel.
National figures, including Hillary Clinton, often describe Alaska’s PFD as progressive policy: the largest example of universal basic income. Yet in Alaska, many conservative legislators advocate for increasing the PFD amount as a way to limit the size of state government. Democrats and more moderate legislators generally want a lower dividend, using more Permanent Fund dollars for government services.
Senator Bjorkman, who is running for reelection in November, explained that some far-right Republicans have embraced a sales tax in order to pay out a full PFD. This support for new taxes among Alaska’s most conservative legislators has created tension within the Republican party. “Unlike my [Republican] opponent, I don’t think we should tax people who work to give more money out in a state where only some of us work,” said Bjorkman.
On the left, Ashley Carrick and Maxine Dibert, Democrats from Fairbanks, explained how the politics of abortion in rural Alaska diverge from national narratives. Dibert said the overturning of Roe is driving many voters, particularly “moms and grandmas” to the polls this year. But that energy doesn’t flow merely along partisan lines.
Alaska is often described as a red state. Carrick says that’s wrong, it is actually a libertarian state that, as she put it, “happens to have more Republican libertarians than Democratic libertarians.”
“Generally speaking, when I talk to anybody of any political affiliation, having independence, [the] right to privacy, and freedom to kind of do things with your own property, your own body, your own life are really highly valued here,” Carrick said.
Carrick explained the value for autonomy and independence is so fundamental it is written into Alaska’s constitution, where a right to privacy protects abortion.
Traditionally, Democrats have invoked abortion access to energize their base. However, this election has seen candidates, especially vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz, take a cue from rural choice advocates. In framing abortion access as a freedom from government overreach – similar to the way many Alaskans see it – national Democrats are hoping the issue will have more resonance with swing voters this cycle.
The Cost of Education and Energy
All five elected officials agreed that education and cost of energy are top issues for rural Alaskans right now.
Per capita, Alaska ranks first in the country in energy consumption and second in cost of energy. Harsh winters and the distribution challenges of an isolated, low-density population drive the problem. Moreover, Alaska’s energy system has buckled under increased costs over the last ten years. A recent study showed that Fairbanks’ energy-burden, the percentage of household income spent on energy, has doubled since 2018.
A woman walks before dawn in frigid January temperatures in a mostly Yuip’ik village on the edge of the Bering Sea. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
“I heat my own home with wood as my primary heat source through the winter and my backup and sometimes primary heat source is fuel oil and it is enormously expensive,” Carrick said. Rising costs have led to widespread support for oil and natural gas development, even among many Democrats who view the situation as too urgent to allow for changing Alaska’s dependence on non-renewables.
The other cost Alaskans are concerned about is education. Maxine Dibert is Koyukon Athabascan and taught at Denali Elementary School in Fairbanks for 21 years. She is one of several Representatives who ran for office because of the desperate state of education funding. “Education is once again at the top of the list of voter concerns – education and cost of energy,” Dibert said.
“We’re at ten straight years of education funding decline in Alaska and that affects rural areas disproportionately,” said Representative Carrick.
Ironically, though education has dominated national politics recently, legislators feel the increased attention has not helped Alaska solve its problems.
“We’ve seen, at the national level, a lot more commentary about social issues in schools, from trans women participating in sports, banning books, homeschool vs. charter school. Then lawmakers in Juneau start talking about those things, but they are not reflected in our school district as some of the major problems we’re facing,” said Carrick.
Himschoot worried about the push to set aside more money in education budgets for non-public schools. “In the rural places that I represent, how would anything else other than a public school sustain itself in these tiny communities? For my constituents, school choice isn’t top of mind, what’s top of mind is funding.”
Associate Educator Jessica Clark walks with an emotional Austin Carreaux, 4, as children board the bus during the last week at Meadow Lakes CCS Early Learning, a Head Start center, Monday, May 6, 2024, in Wasilla, Alaska. To keep staff from leaving for higher-paying jobs elsewhere, even Target, the regional Head Start group decided it would permanently close the Meadow Lakes location in an attempt to raise wages overall. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)
Electoral and Democracy Reform
“My birth certificate says ‘Territory of Alaska,’” Senator Cathy Giessel said. Her life in Alaska has spanned seismic political shifts: the development of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, the oil boom and Exon Valdez, and the subsequent cratering oil prices of 2016.
Recent electoral reforms in the state may prove just as impactful as any of these other seminal moments. Via statewide ballot initiative, Alaskans implemented automatic voter registration in 2016, and ranked choice voting with open, top-four primaries in 2020. An open primary is a primary election in which all voters, regardless of party affiliation, receive the same primary ballot.
Originally Giessel opposed these reforms.
But in 2020, with the bottom falling out of the state’s finances, Giessel worked with the Democratic Senate Majority Leader to pass a budget. That spring, she was confronted by a challenger who called her a “traitor to the party.” Giessel lost the primary.
In 2022 she ran again, this time with ranked choice and open primaries in place. They had an immediate effect on the way she campaigned. Historically, Giessel would buy a database from a Republican vendor so that she could knock only Republican doors in the primary. In 2022, she did not buy the database in part because, as she put it, “I had no money. I was a loser.” But Giessel also felt the new reforms meant she needed to expand her outreach.
Giessel said, “I realized, you know what? I’m not going to be knocking on just Republican doors. I want to knock on everybody’s door.”
The opportunity to get second-choice votes meant Giessel spoke to people she would have otherwise ignored. “One guy opened the door and immediately knew who I was and said, ‘oh, you knocked on the wrong door, I’m a Democrat. I’m a super voting Democrat.’ And I said ‘sir, you’re exactly the person I want to talk to.’”
Representative Himschoot believes that these reforms are necessary given Alaska’s unique political makeup. “Most people in Alaska are not registered with either party. The open primary has been extremely important in giving Alaskans more of a say in who they want representing them.”
Deborah Moody, an administrative clerk at the Alaska Division of Elections office in Anchorage, Alaska, looks at an oversized booklet explaining election changes in the state, January 21, 2022. An initiative aimed at repealing Alaska’s ranked choice voting system received sufficient signatures to qualify for the November 2024 ballot. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen, File)
There has been some push-back, however. Senator Bjorkman said that while he appreciates the open primaries, he believes ranked choice voting has had a negative impact. “People are concerned with why we as a Republican state have a Democratic congresswoman in Mary Peltola. People see ranked choice voting as the reason for that.”
Many also credit these reforms with producing the current bipartisan majority in the State Senate. Despite more Republicans than Democrats in the Senate, moderate Republicans joined Democrats to form a 17-3 majority.
Alaskans’ commitment to these reforms will be tested in November as repeal of ranked choice voting and open primaries is on the ballot as an initiative.
100 Ways to Kill You, 1,000 Ways to Make You Feel Alive
There is a lot of bad political analysis of rural America out there. Alaska in particular is hard for national pundits to make sense of because it exists inside and outside of national politics. National trends show up in Alaska but play out differently than any other state.
Representative Himschoot believes you need to experience Alaska’s stark landscape to understand the state. “While there are people who are listening to national media all day, they’re still gonna pull to the side of the road when you get a flat tire to make sure you’re okay regardless of whether you’re a Democrat or Republican. If we don’t help each other in this state, it sounds dramatic, but it can be life and death.”
The intense environment drives Alaska’s political oddities. It also may be what is driving legislators to try solutions to national problems that haven’t gained as much traction anywhere else.
Quoting “some author” Representative Himschoot said, “Alaska has a hundred ways to kill you but a thousand ways to make you feel alive, and we live that every day in these rural places.”
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