Royalty competition kicks off ahead of Fourth

It's a royal rumble this month, with the competition to see who gets crowned this year's king or queen of Wrangell's Independence Day celebrations starting off on May 31.

Arranged by the Chamber of Commerce, the competition is meant to raise funds both for the summer festivities and for the candidates themselves. Typically individuals have used what they raise to support higher education or some other project.

This year's group is no exception. Recent graduate McKinley Bosdell intends to head to Portland Community College in Oregon to study sign language interpretation. Wrangell High School alumnus Robbie Marshall is looking for funds to return to the University of Alaska with the intention of eventually teaching math, while Draven Golding has aspirations to attend flight school.

The competition's metric revolves around ticket sales, which themselves enter holders into a prize drawing. The candidate who sells the most by the end gets coronated.

To achieve that end, candidates and their helpers will do a lot of door-to-door sales, but their major draw through the coming month will be food sales at a trio of booths at the downtown pavilion.

"There'll be a lot of long nights, a lot of prepping food, and a lot of door-to-door smiling at everyone's faces. And hopefully a lot of fun," said Jessica Whittaker, this year's royalty manager.

The first year holding the candidacy kickoff at the pavilion, on May 31 the competitors were formally introduced. After each making some remarks about their motivations, samples of their refreshments to come were quickly mown down by the assembled visitors. Whitaker was there to lay out the rules and kick things off on the right foot.

"It is my first time doing it, but I'm not a stranger to the Fourth of July royalty race," she explained. "I ran in 2002, both of my sisters ran after me, respectively, and I've been a ticket manager for three different candidates three different times."

None of the three were able to start selling food, but instead had a short window to get a jump on selling tickets. The booths themselves opened up for business Friday morning, and will keep purveying through July 1.

"They'll have different specials throughout the month, which are laid out in their calendars," Whitaker said. "And then they'll also be able to host dinner specials, and they'll have garage sales and silent auctions and different events throughout the month."

The competition itself will last through the afternoon of July 3, when the ticket sales will end and final numbers tallied. A coronation ceremony will be held in association with the annual talent show at the Nolan Center.

"They'll be able to re-thank everybody that has helped them throughout the month, and then we'll announce how much each candidate sold throughout the month, and then we'll crown the winner," said Whitaker.

In recent years the competition raised tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes into six figures. Last year's race raised nearly $90,000 in all, while two years ago Alex Angerman and Kyla Teat each smashed previous individual records to raise over $126,000.

"We hope to be able to break records again," Whitaker said hopefully. This year's race will be the first three-way competition in about six years, which changes the dynamic somewhat.

"A three-way race obviously offers a little bit more competition," she explained. "Every dollar counts when you're trying to win a royalty race. That comes down to selling tickets. When you have three contestants vying against each other, it cuts into the number of people you see at a booth in two-people races. But it also gives them more opportunities for breaks in hosting different events throughout the month."

The additional competition has its benefits, such as allowing an occasional weekend off for one or the other from late-night boothing. Those won't be free evenings, though, in all likelihood being used to hold some other event.

"It's a whole lot of work," Whitaker recalled. "As a candidate, I could see that my parents would get up at five, six o'clock in the morning and start preparing the food that would be available by 11 a.m. If you weren't up early enough to boil your potatoes for your potato salad, or get your lasagnas put together and put into the oven by 11 a.m., then everybody who is waiting at your booth for your specials might not wait. It's early mornings, late nights, cleaning the kitchens at the end of the night after you shut down your booth. That's not every night, but those are the more extreme examples."

Putting together a successful candidacy takes many hands, and each contestant has a team to help them. Some portion of their earnings will go to compensate their different managers, who head up ticket sales or coordinate the booth. In a good year, a team can keep as much as 40 percent of what they raise, with 30 percent going toward the candidate. But there are a number of other helpers who are simply in it to win, and to contribute to the town's Fourth celebrations in the process.

"A lot of the people that you see in the booth or out selling tickets, they aren't getting paid anything," Whitaker pointed out.

The candidates and competition's organizers have been preparing for this year's competition since March, arranging menus and planning out different events. The teams have been eager to get to this point, Whitaker said, but have been working together without any friction.

"They're in for a lot of hard work, and that's what the royalty race is good about, is building character, building hard work ethics, a sense of team, gratitude to the community, gratitude to other team members," she promised. "We've been preparing nonstop to make sure things go as smoothly as possible."

There is still much to be done, and several ways to help out. Each candidate maintains their own event page on Facebook, which is one venue they might reach out to either for additional bodies or supplies. Both grocery stores also have signage up indicating items one or the other candidates could use for a particular menu item.

"There's a lot of ways that you can help," said Whitaker. "When they do track you down, make sure you're nice to them, because they're going through a lot of stress and they're working really hard."