Every two years, Indigenous people from across Southeast Alaska and around the world gather in Juneau for Celebration. And though Celebration is no typical summer campaign event — no booths with signs, not a ton of politicking — it drew a bevy of political candidates to Juneau this year.
Former state Sen. Click Bishop, now a candidate for governor, said he’s been coming to Celebration for nearly two decades.
“It’s living history,” Bishop said in an interview. “You can see it, generation upon generation.”
Bishop has spent much of his career in state government, including significant stints in Juneau: six years as the state’s labor commissioner and 12 years as a state senator representing an immense swath of Interior Alaska.
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In a few ways, Bishop defies pigeonholing. He’s running as a Republican and has been with the GOP since he first registered to vote in Manley Hot Springs in 1974, he said.
But his party doesn’t define him, Bishop said.
“I am an Alaskan first and a Republican second. I've always been that way,” Bishop said. “I couldn't carry the late Sen. Ted Stevens' lunch box, but I align myself with his philosophy: To hell with politics, just do what's right for Alaska.”
That sentiment is evident in some of his policy positions. He boasts deep support from organized labor groups, typically a Democratic constituency, and said he’s a big fan of the Alaska Marine Highway System. Bishop also cast himself as a fiscal conservative who’d like to expand drilling, mining and oil refining in an effort to drive down prices, but he said he also wants to expand green energy, like hydroelectric power generation.
Bishop even picked a registered nonpartisan, NANA Regional Corp. board member Greta Schuerch, as his running mate. She’s an Iñupiaq woman who ran for state House as a Democrat in 2012.
But did Bishop come to Celebration to court the Native vote? He said he won’t be pigeonholed there, either.
“I don't pander for anybody's vote,” he said.
Another candidate for governor, former Democratic state Sen. Tom Begich, also said he didn’t come to Celebration to campaign. But he’s a little more willing to talk about his explicit outreach to the Indigenous community alongside running mate Julia Hnilicka.
“Both myself and Julia have experienced a lot of interaction with our Alaska Native community over our careers,” Begich said. “Being here is like coming home. And for us, when you come home, you don't grandstand, you listen.”
Some, he said, wanted to talk about healthcare in rural Alaska. Others had broader questions.
“What are you going to do to ensure that our values are represented in government?” Begich recalled one person asking. “Part of my answer to that is, I'm here because I value the things that you value. I value community. I value connectivity. I value tradition.”
Of course, there was at least a little campaigning, Begich said, including chats with voters about their top issues and his, like boosting education funding, cutting tax credits for oil companies and, like Bishop, lowering energy prices.
“I'm talking about moving towards affordable energy, renewable energy, and finding ways to do that, so that we can make Alaska affordable again, from the village level over the urban level,” Begich said. “And, more importantly, a fiscal plan to pay for it.”
Begich and Bishop are just two of the 18 candidates seeking one of four spots on the November ballot for governor.
For U.S. House candidate Bill Hill, a commercial fisherman and Dena’ina Athabascan man running as an independent, the stakes are a little different.
It was his first time at Celebration, Hill said. This time of year, he’s usually getting ready for commercial fishing season out in the Bristol Bay community of Naknek.
And like Begich and Bishop, Hill said he’s also talking to voters about high energy prices.
“Our spring fuel barge showed up, and immediately gas prices jumped up to over $9 a gallon,” he said. “That seems like a lot, but if you look a little further out into different places in Bush Alaska, it's even more.”
It’s a crowded field of challengers running to unseat Republican Congressman Nick Begich III, and Hill, running as an independent, said he’s hoping to consolidate the anti-incumbent vote in a field that also includes well-funded Democrat Matt Schultz.
“We are the campaign that can represent very well the coastal fishing communities, the Alaska Native communities, and the Alaska Native organizations, so we can build the coalition that can defeat the incumbent,” he said. “That's where our campaign is focused.”
Whether those efforts will pay off remains to be seen. Alaskans are set to cast ballots in the primary election on Aug. 18.
