PETERSBURG — With the state fiscal crisis swallowing Alaska’s political debate since 2014, the Alaska House races in Districts 35 and 36 are being fought on almost identical grounds.
House District 35 includes the northern and more populated half of Prince of Wales Island.
While Ketchikan’s Rep. Dan Ortiz is an independent, both he and Rep. Jonathan Kreiss Tomkins, D-Sitka, are members of the Alaska House minority caucus. They won their races after unlikely campaigns as political underdogs. Kreiss-Tomkins was first elected in 2012, while Ortiz won his first race in 2014. Both had reputations for visiting every front door in their districts at least once.
While in office, they have supported, rhetorically or through votes, plans to reform the Alaska Permanent Fund and new taxes.
Their challengers, Ketchikan Republican Bob Sivertsen and Sitka Republican Sheila Finkenbinder, both make the pitch that Southeast Alaska needs representatives at the negotiating table, which is controlled by the Republican-led House majority caucus.
In both cases, the incumbents are outpacing their challengers in fundraising, with both Kreiss-Tomkins and Ortiz sitting above $30,000 raised. Finkenbinder and Sivertsen have both raised between $10,000 and $20,000.
During the annual meeting of Southeast Conference, Kreiss-Tomkins and Finkenbinder spoke about their candidacies with the Ketchikan Daily News.
Neither candidate is likely to spend much time in District 36 before November, but they’ll be putting in face time next door in Craig, Klawock, Thorne Bay and other communities on Prince of Wales.
“It’s a high-energy race given the nature of the district about the size of Connecticut with 20-odd communities within its boundaries,” Kreiss-Tomkins said.
The incumbent Democrat was attending Yale when he decided to run for office in 2012. Finkenbinder is a business owner, Republican activist and worked as an aide to former Rep. Peggy Wilson.
A central debate to this campaign has been whether it’s a better time to be a Democrat in the minority or a Republican in the majority for Southeast Alaska.
From the minority’s perspective, the group has banded together to restore funding for education, the Alaska Marine Highway System and other services because given the state’s multibillion-dollar deficits Republicans need the support of minority lawmakers to clear the three-fourths threshold needed to spend state savings to fund a budget.
However, Republicans argue that being at the table for budget negotiations, much of which happen behind closed doors in the majority caucus, is critical for Southeast, which is still adjusting to political weakness in Juneau.
Finkenbinder is hitting the majority point hard.
“To have three of our four representatives in the minority we don’t have the power in Juneau that we need to have,” she told the Daily News. “Just being in the majority, and being able to be at the table when discussions are held and being able to chair a committee that makes a big difference.”
The longtime Sitka resident is also running as a business-minded Republican who supports job creation and economic growth.
Kreiss-Tomkins said the “best way you can represent people is with an independent mindset,” noting his support for a viable timber industry and the permanent fund reform proposal advanced by Rep. Paul Seaton, a Republican from Homer.
He’s also leaning on his familiarity with his district in his campaign.
“The best campaign strategy is to just do your job really well, and I’ve tried to do that the last four years,” he said.
Kreiss-Tomkins, looking to Prince of Wales, noted the region’s particular issues: It’s the battleground for Alaska’s ongoing fight to keep logging alive. In Southeast, it has some of the worst problems with telecommunications, especially on its north end. The Klawock Airport is going through frequent growing pains as it becomes a “bustling, sub-regional hub.”
On financial issues, the Democrat supports an income tax over a sales tax, which he’s “strongly opposed to.”
Finkenbinder wouldn’t say whether she’s more inclined to an income tax, a sales tax or a restructuring of the Alaska Permanent Fund to help pay for more of state government, but she was enthusiastic about cutting more from state budgets before turning to new revenue.
“There are people that argue it’s Republicans’ fault because they’re in charge and things didn’t get done, but things also didn’t get done because Republicans were attempting to make cuts in the budget, which is what the governor asked them to do, and Democrats refused to vote to pass a budget before they put money back in it,” she said. “It got to the governor, and the governor did what? He felt he was forced to take part of our permanent fund dividends.”
When pressed on potential taxes, Finkenbinder said she wants to grow the economy and create jobs, which would throw off more revenue to support state government and possibly avoid tax increases. About the permanent fund restructuring, she said she needs more information about the proposal.
Statewide, Republicans have criticized Gov. Bill Walker’s plan for the permanent fund, saying it’s too optimistic about the fund’s performance and could stretch it too far in funding state government.
Both Republicans and Democrats have knocked Walker’s veto of more than half of the funding bound for dividends this year.
Kreiss-Tomkins and other legislators, along with many political observers, have pilloried what they’ve called a “do-nothing Legislature.” After the 2015 session, he wrote an op-ed to the Alaska Dispatch News apologizing for what he saw as a dysfunctional legislature.
Finkenbinder pushed back on this idea.
“I don’t think the system is inherently flawed because there are parties that disagree,” she said. “We disagree for good reasons about what the solutions are to solving the state’s problems, the nation’s problems.”
The two House District 35 candidates ran uncontested in their primaries. The general election is set for Nov. 8, a Tuesday.
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