The next two years may be Alaska’s last chance for productive, bipartisan legislative action.
The state House and Senate have both organized in bipartisan coalitions, with Democrats, Republicans and independents pledging to work together on the big issues facing Alaska.
Sadly, that across-the-political-aisle cooperation could end in two years.
Alaska’s switch to open primaries and ranked-choice voting for the 2022 and 2024 elections encouraged candidates, particularly Republican candidates, to appeal to moderate and nonpartisan voters instead of running the gauntlet of a closed, highly partisan primary election controlled by the party’s most strident factions.
Until open primaries, where the top four finishers advance to the general election regardless of which party, if any, they put next to their name, and ranked-choice voting, moderate Republicans feared for their political lives in the party’s closed primaries which restricted who could vote to pick the Republican candidates.
It became a verb: Moderates were “primaried” before they ever had a chance to appeal to a wider electorate.
Sadly, it looks like Alaska could be headed back to the dark days of killing off moderates in the primaries. A ballot measure in the Nov. 5 statewide election to repeal ranked-choice voting was ahead by more than 5,000 votes last week, though there were more than 45,000 ballots still to count before the final tally on Nov. 20.
If the ballot measure passes, the voting system will get tossed into the trash can. And with it, so goes the state’s best hope for lasting political compromise on good legislation.
Without the need to win over a wider breadth of voters, Republican candidates, and some Democrats, will gravitate to extreme issues needed to win their primary election, particularly in legislative districts that are overwhelmingly favorable to one party. Win the primary in those districts, and a general election victory is assumed.
The risk of losing the benefits of open primaries and ranked-choice voting makes it all the more important for legislators in the next session to take action on the big issues they have identified: school funding, energy needs, protecting the Alaska Permanent Fund from overspending, bringing back a retirement plan for public employees and a list of other priorities that would suffer under a partisan-dominated Legislature.
One piece of advice: While winning legislative approval for any of the big issues is important, what is equally essential is assembling a veto-proof majority should Gov. Mike Dunleavy strike down the legislators’ good work.
It takes a two-thirds majority of the House and Senate — 40 votes out of 60 members — to override a veto of a non-budget bill, and a three-quarters majority — 45 members — to override a veto of a spending bill. Those are high thresholds and exceed the number of lawmakers likely to join the bipartisan coalitions in the House and Senate.
Which means lawmakers in both chambers will need to count twice as they work on important legislation: Can they count enough votes to win passage, and can they count high enough to override a possible veto?
Even if Dunleavy bails out for a federal job in the Trump administration and is replaced by Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, legislators need to pay attention to their math as they work on school funding and other measures.
The next two years of legislative action may be the best chance to make the state better for Alaskans, particularly students. An opportunity like this may not come around again.
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