Seventeen candidates are running to be Alaska’s next governor. Alaskans are already heading to the polls for early voting in the Aug. 18 nonpartisan, pick-one primary, which will narrow the field to four.
It can be tough to pick a favorite in a crowded field, so as the primary nears, Alaska Public Media is conducting interviews with some of the top candidates in the race. We've reached out to every campaign that's raised $50,000 or more, and many have responded.
We’ll hear first from former Anchorage state Sen. Tom Begich, one of two top Democrats competing for votes. Begich served six years representing downtown Anchorage in the state Senate starting in 2016.
The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
You, of course, have a background and a family history in politics. You're also a musician and a poet. You've put out a number of albums, a book of sonnets. And I'm very curious, sort of, how your artistic side influences how you think about politics and the best way forward for the state of Alaska.
I've always thought that those who serve in public service should be well-rounded. I believe that at my core. And part of what my music does, and the poetry, and those kinds of things -- I'm also a long-form essay writer -- and all of that helps me really compress my thoughts, to be succinct in my thoughts, and to be able to present things in a manner that reaches people, not just at an intellectual level but at a soul level. And I think that's important. A good person in public service should have the ability to tap into not just their their brain but their heart.
And yes, you grew up in a in a political family as I mentioned: your dad, Nick Begich Sr., was a member of the U.S. House. Your brother Mark, a Democratic U.S. Senator, nephew Nick Begich III is the sitting Republican congressman. And I'm very curious what that dynamic was like growing up. Like, what were discussions at like family dinners or gatherings like growing up?
You mean growing up, or still?
Either way.
Look, one thing about my my parents, and of course, my dad passed away when I was 11. My mom raised us really as kids. She had you know four kids that were preteen teenager and two kids that were, you know, both four and six years old. So for her, you know, the the whole sort of carrying the the weight of that meant learning how you navigate six children as a widow at 34, and part of that was her talking to us about the importance of listening to each other. It's okay to disagree, but you don't leave the table being disagreeable.
And I think that really has formed all of us. It didn't change our opinions in terms of the things that we, you know, believed in passionately as 11-, 12-, and 15-year-olds. But over time, because of that openness that my mother taught us, we really did listen to others, and it shaped all of us.
So I've got a brother who's pretty conservative, a brother who's not very conservative, two sisters who chose a path as public educators. They're both teachers. One of them's still teaching in the Anchorage School District. The other finished her career as a principal at three different schools at the same time in ASD. And so, you know, when you think about it, that legacy of being able to disagree about issues, but being able to also work through that, and end knowing that you're going to come together again at the next holiday or the next gathering, is something I like to say transcends all of our work. Whether they're the teachers in the family or the political figures in the family, it allows you to talk to people. And if you don't talk with people, you don't learn. And if you don't learn, you really can't do. So, from my perspective, I think it's it's been a really beneficial shaping for all of us kids.
On that note, I mean, you have talked about Alaska sort of stagnating in recent years, not moving forward, and you have attributed some of that to a lack of communication between lawmakers and the governor, people, maybe, not working together as well as they could, and I'm curious if you can talk about what you would do differently.
Well, I mean, it really goes back to almost a quarter of a century in Alaska where people have lost the ability to communicate with each other, where where we used to be able to do a lot more of that.
I got involved in a couple of really important lawsuits against the state. One of them, Kasayulie, the other Moore. These dealt with how we build our schools and how we educate our kids. And what I learned was that we could win a lawsuit, but you couldn't win the actual action because people wouldn't talk to each other. So you might have a governor who would be supportive of the actions that needed to be taken, but at the same time you might have a legislature or one of the bodies of the legislature unwilling to talk to that governor.
The difference is night and day between how I would govern and how most of those governors have governed in the past, and and that is that I've experienced the ability to talk with others, listen to what they have to say, and be able to find a solution that works for them and for me, you know, and that consequently is going to be a better solution for the state. So, in my time as minority leader of the state Senate, and and even before, the two years I was in the Senate prior to being minority leader, that stood me well in terms of preserving education funding, in particular, but also in terms of identifying how we could move forward with everything from food bank expansion, blood bank expansion, things that mattered to real life people — you know, not just us legislators, but people that were living day to day and needing these resources. What I learned is that it doesn't hurt me to talk to a Republican or a nonpartisan or a Democrat who doesn't agree with me. It what mattered was my ability to sit in a room and listen to what they had to say. That hasn't happened in the last eight years. You don't see that happening.
I often would reach out to this governor and would have the opportunity to talk to him. Consequently, moving things like pre-K into the base student allocation, or moving forward on building the Alaska Sustainable Energy Fund or carbon credits, even after I was in office. But I didn't see others doing that same level of reach-out. Eric, politics in not just America but Alaska has become polarized, and there is no place for that. If we're ever going to build a society that serves our people, we have to learn to hear each other. We can disagree, but we have to learn to hear each other. And I pride myself on being, I think, the strongest candidate in this race when it comes to exactly that method of governing,
I would add just, you know, looking at the whole picture of how people go about running for office. One of the strengths of our system today is it augurs against extremes. It augurs for people talking with each other. That's what the ranked choice election is all about. It means that we we as Alaskans get the chance to have an open primary where we can pick and choose the best people for this job, regardless of party, and then we have the chance to have a backup plan in the general election by picking our first choice, which might be our more passionate choice, but also knowing that we have a backup plan.
And so, from my perspective, that's why we have bipartisan coalitions today. It's why they're strong. It's why they're based on philosophy, not expediency. And and I take pride in knowing that I helped build the one in the Senate from the ground up, working with my Senate majority colleagues, working with the state House and state Senate folks in the majority and the minority, on both sides of the aisle. As my wife puts it, I don't even see an aisle. What I see are people that have to work with each other. So it's not about across the aisle. It's about let's work together. We're the legislature, and we have to work with the governor. And now it's going to be, I'm the governor, let's all work together.
One example where you and Gov. Dunleavy did work together is on the Alaska Reads Act.
That's correct.
It you know it came alongside a small funding boost, but school districts have criticized it as a largely unfunded mandate. At the same time, though, early signs look to indicate that it is making a difference in early literacy, and I'm curious, looking back on that legislation, the policy itself, and then also the process that led that legislation to pass, I wonder if you have, you know, a reflection on what went well and what you may have done differently.
Well, what went well was being able to craft something. It took almost three years to do it, and in the middle of all all that, we had COVID, and that disrupted the legislative session, put a halt to all kinds of legislation. But we picked up right where we left off, with a new Legislature, and carried that bill through all the way to the end.
I think what we did best was we listened to people. There were over 66 hearings on that bill. In fact, the final version, which was an amendment to another bill. The final version of that bill incorporated nearly all of the objections to the bill that had come up in the House. Those objections ranged from: Is it strong enough in terms of its preserving of culture? Is it strong enough in terms of its parental authority, instead of taking that authority away from parents, and we were able to accommodate both of those perspectives completely in the bill. Now, not everyone read that, but I did, and that was really important for me.
And we got unanimous support out of the Senate for that bill, but we had a 21-19 vote in the House, and it was split. You know, there were Republicans who supported the bill, Republicans who opposed it. There were Democrats who supported the bill, Democrats who opposed it, and there were nonpartisans who supported the bill and nonpartisans who opposed it. But a lot of that was because people didn't understand the full impact of the bill.
Every piece of legislation is a starting point for a better place. One of the key components of that bill was that it had a process written into the law that would allow reflection from parents, superintendents, teachers, Indigenous organizations to be able to talk about the bill each year and reflect on it. But for the following few years, that was eliminated by the state House, that section of the bill, the evaluation section, which I think is a is a travesty. So I would have made that stronger. I would have made that more explicit. So that would be a way I would have fixed the bill, so that people knew how important that was to ensuring we're constantly retooling a piece of legislation. Because good legislation is is a starting point, and if you find out what's working, you emphasize that, and you find out what's not working, then you change that or adjust that.
The second piece is, I wish I would have been in the majority, because I would have forced this administration to fully fund the bill that they promised they would do. So, in particular, I'm disappointed with the the lack of full funding of the pre-kindergarten component. For 35 years, we fought for putting pre-kindergarten in our base student allocation, and getting it in the law was one thing, but not having it fully funded has been a tragedy from my perspective. Now you pointed out there's been success, and there has been because a number of school districts ranging from the North Slope to Fairbanks down to LKSD, Lower Kuskokwim School District, over to Petersburg — all of these places have have taken advantage of the Reads Act's statutory requirements and pushed for them, but they've done so without this administration fully and forward funding that. And that is something I have been strongly advocating on the road. There's also sunset clauses to the Reads Act, and I like to see those removed because if they're removed, we go right back to where we were, which is what took us to 49th in the nation. And I would rather not be there.
It's not what you've asked, but for for generations we've allowed outside interests to take advantage of Alaska, and what we have to show for it is an education system that used to be one of the best in the country, this state's education system, and that now is, as I pointed out, 48th or 49th, depending on what metric you're using. That's unacceptable in a state as wealthy as we are, with the capacity that we have, the teachers who are working so hard to do the right thing. It is a tragedy that we do not inflation index that one department. Every other department is inflation indexed, but not education.
So we keep losing ground every single year, and this governor, this administration, and this Legislature should be working to ensure that we fully fund and forward fund education, and that's what the Reads Act needs to complete the work. I'd love to see us expand that to science and math and technology because that's the next step. Once you learn to read, you can do all the rest of these things, and it doesn't matter what language you first learn to read in. What matters is that you learn to read.
Can you say more about those outside forces that you that you referenced? And then, also, can you talk about how you would improve an Alaska public school system that's been struggling with school closures, program cuts, and also a shrinking student population?
Well, the shrinking student population is a demographic issue. It's a matter of you know, people get older, but there's a secondary issue here too, which is that people are choosing not to return to Alaska, not to raise their families here, and part of that is a self-perpetuating circle. If you have a weak education system because you don't see state support for it, you worry about your kids, and are they going to be able to leave education, leave a K-12, pre-K-12 system, and not have the opportunity to succeed, and and you don't want that for your children, and so you have to trust that the government is going to prioritize education.
So let me just lay out for you what I think would make a working and strong education system here, and it does begin with a Reads Act that's fully funded, so there isn't an unfunded mandate, and there shouldn't be an unfunded mandate. It starts by separating the education budget from the operating budget and requiring it to be dealt with in the first 30 to 60 days of a legislative session. That means that districts will then have surety as to what their funding numbers will be for the coming fiscal year. We today still don't know the full number for our school district because the administration hasn't released that. They could. They could release estimates tomorrow, and we're already in the fiscal year, and they at least would give the ability of a school district to know what its parameters are. So that's the first thing.
The second thing is to ensure that we retain our teacher workforce because when you have disruption in your workforce, it disrupts. In particular, in elementary school, the connection children have to their teachers. Because those happen in our smaller schools. Happened to me when I was growing up here and going through Nunaka Valley (Elementary School). What I knew was all my teachers, and I knew they were there even after I moved up to the next grade level, and the next grade level, I knew I could tie myself back to those teachers if something came up as a kid. I remember that. If you have a system that doesn't provide a defined benefit for teachers after they reach their fourth or fifth year, when they're at their peak of of capacity and ability, they take their 401(k) or similar defined contribution plan, and they cash it out and go to one of the 49 states that do have a defined benefit plan, so they can have a retirement for their kids. That creates a disruption, and that disruption costs every single school district money. When I was in the Senate, we realized that could be as much as $25,000 per turnover for a teacher, and even more when you have your superintendents turning over. So, and they turn over because they have a workforce that's volatile, you know, moving all the time.
So, first, you forward and fully fund education. Second, you ensure that you have a pension plan that retains teachers. Third, you inflation index. So we have to make up for what's been lost. That means we're talking $7,860 base student allocation. That would make up — over two years, we can get there — and then we inflation index it to ensure we no longer see our schools eroded by decisions made outside of our control, decisions made in Washington D.C. because somebody decides to go to war, and then we lose four more teachers here because we're paying higher diesel prices, or or we've allowed inflation to wipe out more of our more of our capacity to to run a school district, all the costs of it. So those are three things right off the top.
A fourth thing that did happen recently in this Legislature was passing a bill that set the energy costs for schools as a separate line item, like bus transportation. And why does that matter? When we did go to war with Iran this year — and I know, some people don't call it a war, it's definitely a war. What that did is that immediately shot the price of diesel contracts up three times. That immediately wiped out this coming year's ability to hire all the teachers that some of these Western Alaska school districts wanted to hire. Why? Because energy comes out of the operating budget, so they lost the ability to do that. Under the new law, at least those items will be separate, and we can see what the damage will be. And I think that will be helpful.
Finally, there's a thing we used to do here. We used to tell the future Legislature because you can't bind them by Constitution, but we used to tell them what we thought education could be for the coming year by depositing that amount into the education trust fund. What that does is it literally forward funds education. We should be doing that. We can do that. It's my hope as governor that I will convince the Legislature to do that once more. Those are some of the ideas.
You asked about outside interests. Outside interests in Alaska, whether it was gold back at the turn of the last century, whether it was fish, whether it's been oil and gas, we've watched over and over again as our resources have been exploited for the use of people who don't even live here. And what we're left with in the end is, we've cut some kind of deal with those entities, and yeah, we have a Permanent Fund, but that permanent fund is all we got. And that Permanent Fund is going to be how we sustain our future here because it's a renewable resource. It produces capital, and that capital now funds 70% of our state budget.
The key here is to stop letting out of state interests continue to dominate our resources, to take control of those resources again, get our fair share for those resources, so we can fully fund our education system, provide healthcare for our citizens, ensure that our public employees have a reason to stay here because they have a defined benefit plan. All of that's affordable, but it's not affordable if we don't take back our future and take back our rightful resources in the sense that we get (a) fair share for those resources.
You have talked about talked a lot about, for instance, rolling back what's known as SB 21.
Absolutely.
And I guess my question is, how would you increase revenue from resources without spooking oil and gas companies that could easily, you know, perhaps redeploy their capital elsewhere. These are, you know, giant global companies.
Well, first off, I think that that that's the myth that the oil companies want you to believe and want the Alaskan citizens to believe. The president of the United States has bombed the Mideast. He's bombed Venezuela. He's bombed Nigeria. He's invested troops into Ecuador, and Russia is sanctioned. Every single major oil-producing region of the world, with the exception of the North Sea, and and maybe the Indonesian basin, are volatile. And even those are not — well, the North Sea is probably fine, but the Indonesian basin could even become volatile. We are the most stable place for the oil industry to be invested in, and they have capital investments here that are substantial. They're not leaving tomorrow. It's not their money, and it's not their resource. It's ours.
I'm not talking about taking something new. I'm talking about getting rid of tax credits that we give them. I mean, understand when they pushed through, and they did it. It was the industry that did it in 2014. By one vote, they pushed through SB 21, which changed a code, a tax code that was bringing us resource wealth, which they were perfectly fine to operate under. They promised three things: more jobs, more throughput. In the pipeline and a stronger state budget, and we don't have any of that. We have fewer jobs, we have lower throughput through the pipeline, and this state is not doing well.
In fact, we brought in 4.5 billion dollars. That's a lot of money, but we gave out in tax credits 5.6 billion dollars during that same time period, and that specifically to legacy fields, fields that have been mature for years. See, here's the thing: when you give a tax credit to somebody, it's to encourage investment. It's not to reward them for already making a massive profit. And during the time period that they've been making this money at our expense, using our resources, they've been recording record, record profits for their industry. It's not that they're hurting. It's that they can. And I, as governor, will stop them from doing that. It doesn't mean we can't have a working relationship. What it does mean is that the governor of Alaska has to have a backbone and stand up to these industries, and he needs a Legislature that'll back him up when he does that. That's who I intend to be, and that's what I intend to do.
Should the state of Alaska tax pass-through entities like S corporations, LLCs in the oil and gas business? Should they be subject to the same corporate income taxes that traditional C corporations are? The argument that you hear from folks like Hilcorp is that they have invested tons and tons and tons of money into reinvigorating these legacy fields, reversing production declines that were anticipated, and they're you know pouring lots and lots of capital into these investments.
First, great, I'm glad Hilcorp's doing that, and they get advantage of our tax credits to help them do that. Every time they develop a new field, every time they're reinvesting or doing new project development, they have the ability to tap into our tax credits, and that's great. I didn't say get rid of all the tax credits. I said on the legacy fields, so let's be clear about that.
You want to do more exploration, Pikka. You want to, you know, watch Santos develop out. Great, you guys are doing good work. You're developing new fields. You get tax credits to help you do that because that's our commitment. But when it comes to the S corp issue, that's very different. Those S corp that S corp provision helps small businesses thrive in Alaska. It was never meant to replace the taxes that were paid by the oil companies that we intended to have them pay. Hilcorp's complaint is that we want them to pay the taxes BP paid before Hilcorp bought their assets. That's that is ludicrous. That is saying that you've used a loophole in our tax code to avoid paying your taxes. That's you know putting the burden on the poorest Alaskans, frankly, putting the burden on Alaskans to carry the weight of a decision that could be fixed by a tweak a tweak of the law. And the Senate knew that, and that's why the Senate, not just in this whole issue of the gas line, has tried to plug, but even during the legislative session, the Senate passed a plug to that S Corp exception. It's not meant to hurt other S corps. It's meant to focus on if there was an asset that was paying taxes in this state, it should be paying taxes still. You don't get to say, "Oh, we found a little loophole here, and we can do it."
Good law is never stagnant. It grows with changing times. That's why I've been a big supporter of making sure Amazon and other companies pay the same tax that they pay in 36 other states, the corporate income tax. They didn't exist when we wrote that code, and so we are going to adjust the code, and bipartisan majorities in the House and the Senate have supported that twice. We're going to adjust the code so that they have to pay the same taxes that we would cause any other C corp to pay. Now, because they weren't in the code, we see the change that needs to be made. We adjust the code, we receive the income. In that case, it's 35, maybe more million annually.
In the case of the S Corp, we were getting $100 million from BP when they sold to Hilcorp. What Hilcorp did is stopped paying that $100 million, so we lost $100 million. This isn't about a new tax. This is about ensuring we get our fair share from those that use our resource wealth, I'm happy to sit down and negotiate with any company, but do not try to shirk your responsibility to these citizens in exchange for producing our resources. There will be other producers who will produce that resource because there were producers before who will do it. So don't play that game. If if if law was stagnant, women wouldn't have the right to vote today. Things change over time, and they change depending on changing circumstances.
You mentioned the Alaska LNG project, and the S Corp loophole, the pass-through entities tax, was part of the bill that passed the Senate. That's become a big issue in this Alaska LNG project debate. But separate from that, I'm curious how you would approach the Alaska LNG project, assuming this issue of tax breaks is not resolved by the time that you're governor. So, the question is, should the state offer enormous amounts of tax relief to the project, and has, in your opinion, the the lead developer Glenfarne committed to enough protections for Alaskans like price caps, like a spur line to Fairbanks, to make you comfortable proceeding with that.
Well, the problem here is we actually don't know everything that's been done because of confidentiality, and that is the biggest issue with the Glenfarne deal. The first piece, though, let me just talk about the Glenfern itself testified a year ago that they didn't need the S Corp exception. Now they're asking for it. That is a reverse of their position. Now maybe there's changing circumstances that I'm not aware of, but that seems like a pretty arbitrary change. So that piece, I don't think they need.
We've talked about already whether or not they or somebody or they or another entity should fund the spur to Fairbanks. They've agreed to do that, and that was Maxine Dibert's amendment that secured that in the deal. I assume that's still in the deal. I haven't seen the latest version because, at least as we're recording this, it hasn't been produced yet, and I suspect it will be at some point. We'll see what a new deal will look like, and I know that they are furiously working on one.
Third, I have said since the very beginning of this project that there must be full transparency on this project because we cannot get caught with a $60 billion mistake. We cannot afford that. This state will not survive that. So we have to be absolutely sure that the deal we're getting is the deal that's going to make a difference for Alaskans. The spur allows us to get gas into our system, but it doesn't matter if we end up stuck with the bill. So that, to me is also critical in this effort. If we're meeting these criteria, in particular the criteria of transparency, it becomes a better deal. But it requires us to have contracts in hand because no one will invest in a project privately if you don't have a guaranteed return. And right now, there's letters of interest, but there aren't signed contracts, or if they are, we don't know about them. And how a state Legislature cannot know what the deal details are in a project of this magnitude is, to me, shocking. And the governor, at the very least, should be insisting for that full transparency. I certainly would.
The other sort of concern that I hear about the Alaska LNG project is that not pursuing it quickly enough could lead energy prices to spike. I mean, LNG imports are forecast to cost substantially more than the price caps that Glenfarne has agreed to, and I'm curious if you see that urgency to secure gas supplies for the Railbelt, which is home to most of Alaska's population.
There's two different issues here. Import facilities importing is something we're going to be doing according to (Southcentral gas utility) Enstar, and we're going to be doing that relatively soon. And if we have, we don't have the mild winter that's projected. If we have a harsher winter, it'll happen sooner rather than later. No project will be done in time to offset that. So, this this tying the two together is a mistake. We'll be importing energy. We'll be importing gas, and that will happen as a result of us not planning for the future. We didn't plan 20 years ago when we could have. Instead, we thought, we're fat and happy getting our gas at a low price. Let's just continue to roll with it instead of building out what we could have done at that time, a network and array of renewables, like they did in places like Kodiak or Cordova, where people are now not reliant on diesel fuel or, or in fact gas, and by the way, also countries around the world that have now broken their dependency on oil and gas.
What we did instead is we just smiled our way through it. We continued to blindly move forward, as though it was always going to be an oil and gas future, and you and I, Eric, and most of your listeners know that that was never the case. We knew this 20 years ago, but our utilities didn't plan for it. They bickered, they fought with each other, and they didn't work it out. Our utilities did that, and our Legislature did that. They didn't plan for it, and our governors have done that. Nobody has made this real. They've always shot for the big project instead of trying to figure out how first we get cheap energy to Alaskans, and then second look at what the import market might be able to bring us. Because you could never guarantee the import market.
So, what I would say is that today, if we wanted to truly lower energy costs in Alaska, or at least provide consistent energy. Forget for a minute regular natural gas, but consistent energy. We should be doing three things. The first is we should be enhancing our renewable portfolio portfolios at the local level. I was just up in Kotzebue, where they have a solar array that's one of the largest in the state, they have wind turbines. They were denied additional resources from the federal government that would have lowered their per-kilowatt-hour cost to 26 cents from 50 cents. That's the kind of thing we could be investing in now, lowering costs.
That's not even in the Railbelt. But what we could be doing is looking at platforms up on the North Slope, where the gas actually is being burned off on a regular basis, build an electrical generation plant there and an intertie, a DC power intertie down to Fairbanks' Golden Valley Electric, that could be producing cheaper energy in a far shorter time than this pipeline will be built. If we did that, we'd be immediately providing relief to Alaskans. Alaskan companies, Alaskan entities like Calista and Doyon, are interested in exactly this kind of project. That's not an out-of-state company. That's an in-state company. These are projects that could be built by Alaskans for Alaskans immediately. And now, when I say immediately, three to five years you build those projects out, that's a faster turnaround time than this pipeline would be, and that would add relief, at least electricity relief.
But it also requires our Alaska-based utilities to think a little bit into the future for when that energy and power comes online. We already know (the Alaska Energy Authority) is working on enhancing hydro, but it's not anywhere near enough down at the Bradley Lake project. We know that that's one of the things that they're working on. That will have some relief, but it's only 10% of the total margin we need. These are the kinds of things, though, we should have been thinking about a decade ago. I'm thinking about them today. Now I'm trying to find what is the most nimble and robust way we can bring energy to bear. Instead of rolling the dice and expecting to get a project that might take a decade to build, why not try doing some of this stuff that we've already talked about could happen with renewables?
This administration federally denied us the ability to use tidal power. One of the two highest tide regions. The EPA and (Department of) Energy have both said we could build and use tidal right now in the Cook Inlet Basin, and that would help offset some of the costs for energy. Not all of them, but mind you, it's the smorgasbord of ideas here. You have to be thinking outside of the box.
I would add this: I want there to be an Alaska Department of Energy. Right now, our our various entities that serve us, whether it's oil and gas, whether it's alternative energies, renewables, they compete for time and they don't coordinate their activities. If we had a Department of Energy, and we're one of the few jurisdictions that have oil and gas that don't have a Department of Energy, but if we were able to consolidate all of those elements of our AEA and these other entities into a Department of Energy, we could have an actual energy plan, and this kind of lack of foresight wouldn't be happening. We'd be making it policy to think into the future. That is what I intend to do within the first month of me being in that office.
You mentioned hydroelectricity. I'm curious what you think of the Susitna-Wantana project, which is a large hydroelectric project on the Susitna River. That I don't have the figures here, but that would provide a lot of energy. It would it would take quite a long quite a long time to build. The estimates for construction are quite extensive in terms of cost, but I'm curious, sort of, how you think about that project in terms of securing Alaska's energy future.
I don't think the Watana Dam is going to happen anytime soon, so to me, it's not on the horizon for a project that we would do. What I would want to do is look at each, whether it's a community that has access to geothermal, whether it's a community that has access to in-stream hydro, where we can put out a solar array, where we can do battery storage, where we can do wind and combinations, even a number of areas in interior Alaska are using biomass and other things like that. So those are the ones. Those are the alternatives I'm looking at because they're quicker and they're more nimble, and they'll get energy relief to Alaskans on a faster timeline.
Large projects, and I don't know how many times I can say this, run into the same roadblock you're seeing with this gas line. If if indeed this gas line gets approved, there will likely be lawsuits that have to be addressed. Those lawsuits will take time as well, so the project will be stalled by those lawsuits. Meanwhile, we'll be waiting for the next lucky break that gives us maybe energy relief or something like that from you know in the form of higher prices for our own oil and gas that we're still producing. What I want to see us do is develop strong, independent energy at the local level, and then I want to train kids in local communities to be able to manage it instead of always relying on outside resources and outside forces to do it. Projects like Watana Dam, while while good in concept, are not likely to come online anytime soon, and I'd prefer to focus our resources, the limited resources we have on producing locally based energy that's renewable and cheaper.
Speaking of allocating limited resources, the Alaska Permanent Fund dividend is a constant issue at the state Capitol, and there seems to be some bipartisan agreement that the formula in statute is not affordable. And I'm curious what your approach would be to the Permanent Fund dividend, and you know what would be an appropriate amount for Alaskans to expect in terms of a dividend each year.
I think that's a great question. I hope others answer it. I was talking to a guy in Marshall, a little town in Western Alaska, and that was one of his questions. He had a number of other questions on a number of other issues, but he came to the dividend and he said, "I want a full dividend." I said, "Well, you're one of a of a dwindling number of people who realize that the think that you can get a full dividend." Because it's not possible to pay a full dividend in this state.
And we know that the statute's outdated, and that's the problem with the statute. But there are those who say we should get rid of the dividend entirely, and I think that's a mistake. And and partially why I say that's a mistake is the dividend is our one real clear connection to the Permanent Fund itself. And as I mentioned earlier, the Permanent Fund produces 70% of our income today for our operations of state government. And what we want to do is preserve and grow the Permanent Fund so that it takes the bulk of our state operating budget, pays for the bulk of our state operating budget. But to do that, you have to ensure it's never raided.
So I've talked about a few things here. The first is we've been paying on average between $1,000 and $1,500 for a dividend. So I'll put forth legislation that says here's a new statute. You guys set the number in the Legislature somewhere in that range, whatever the range is going to be. But let's make it volatile. Let's make it if that year before that the permanent fund makes 5% and that number goes up 5% but if the permanent fund loses 5% it goes down 5% So it's directly connected. That'll lead Alaskans to pay more attention to the investments and activities of the permanent fund. It'll create more of a watchdog, if you will. It'll make it more real to people. It'll connect them more closely to it, and it'll be a realistic number, so that we don't start every year by law with a statutory deficit because that gets into people's heads — oh, we don't have any money. But the truth is we haven't paid that full dividend in over a decade — that may not be true, maybe eight years, nine years now — but it's been a while, and so let's do set an average starting point, and then let's build from that starting point, and that way your permanent fund, as it grows, creates a larger and larger Permanent Fund dividend. But it's never one that's so large that we can't afford to pay it because it's directly connected the actual earnings of the fund.
That's my solution to that. Never exceeding that percent of market value piece either. You know that 5% that we're operating under now may even be too high. I might want to lower that over time to 4.75% or 4.5%. Why? Because that creates a more stable fund over the long run, and it allows it to grow with inflation and beyond inflation, which is what you need to do.
So these are some of the answers. I think that the statute today and the way that the dividend board is formed, are are not sufficient. That board only it has a small number of members. I think we should expand that board. Right now, a governor can change majority on the board in less than a year, and that can lead to rapid exchanges and changes in policy. I think we need to be a little bit stricter in that regard. I've looked at a number of proposals that do that. Former Sen. (Joe) Paskvan has presented some, and I'd like to to explore how we could expand that. Former Sen. Steve Rieger, a Republican, has also also done that, and I've talked to both, and I'd like to see what a robust, working citizen-focused board could do, as opposed to a board today that's pretty much made of political appointees that may or may not have the expertise to do the job.
I want to return to to your time in the state Senate. In in 2022, when you stepped aside from the state Senate, you you know withdrew from the campaign very late in the game, essentially clearing the way for the current Democratic Sen, Löki Tobin to take your seat. And I'm curious if you have any sort of regrets about how that all turned out.
I don't. I think Löki Tobin, Sen. Tobin, has turned out to be one of the brightest lights in the state Senate. She leaves. Not just the education committee, but she leads the charge when it comes to our ability to move forward on renewables. She's leading the charge in so many of these areas. I knew she had capacity then, and I've seen it manifest itself many times over since then. And I'm very proud of her work in the state Senate and glad she was unopposed this year in running for re-election,
Setting Sen. Tobin herself aside, with voters across the country and across the state, you know, worried about corruption or the appearance of corruption. I'm curious what you would say to people who are concerned that that the way that played out — you dropping out, and then Senator Tobin, your aide, you know, filing to join the race, and other folks who might have been interested, not necessarily having the indication that there was going to be an open seat and thus a, you know, a pretty competitive race in that district. The concern that I've heard is that you essentially handed your Senate seat off to a top aide rather than allowing a robust field of candidates to duke it out in front of the voters.
I have heard that before too. You know, you make your decisions when you make your decisions. I actually stayed in the race for a few days afterwards. You may recall that. I had a conversation with her, a couple of them. I wanted to know if she was ready to do that job, and she was.
And look, you know, I've spent a lifetime mentoring people into various roles and jobs, and the sense that there's a corrupt bargain, something like that. I think is a misnomer. That is simply untrue. What you have is recognizing talent and ensuring that talent has a path to getting the job done. Did did how did that affect certain people? Former Representative Drummond has been a strong supporter of my campaign and endorser, and has supported me throughout this entire process. So, you know, I've heard that discussion before. I think it it it may be related to people that are disappointed that they didn't get a chance to do that, and I get that. But they always have a chance to run. They had chance to run this year, you know, and they didn't, and they chose not to. So I think that the proof in the long run is in the pudding.
It's not an unusual situation. It's happened with many many other folks in the past as well, where an aide takes on the role, where a legislator, for example, that same year Matt Claman stepped away the very last day and opened a door for his House seat as he ran for a Senate seat for somebody who was effectively unopposed as a result of that. So, I mean, you know, it's not an abnormal thing, and I'm proud of the job that Löki Topin is doing in the state Senate, and I think Alaskans are too. Over and over again, what I've heard from my former constituents is, thank you for making a path for one of the brightest people that has served in our state Senate in decades, and I agree with them.
Returning to the campaign, you've raised more than a million dollars. I believe 1.1 million, according to the last fundraising report. The vast majority of it coming from donors with Alaska addresses, more than 90%.
Closer to 95%
It's 93-point-something, if I remember.
It varies depending on who you're talking to. Our calculation is 94 and change.
But about half of that money has come from two two individual Alaskans who have each donated well into the six figures. I'm talking about wealth manager Justin Weaver and Robin Brena, an attorney. I have to ask: Did you make any promises to these donors?
Of course not.
Would they have roles in your administration? Do you see them as advisers?
Well, no. I mean, they're two people that have. Robin came to me and he goes, "I love what you're doing in terms of talking about holding the oil industry accountable." See, Robin Brena was one of the few people that fought back against SB 21. He invested a million dollars of his own money trying to defeat the oil industry in a repeal of that bill, and lost by the narrowest margin because the industry pumped 20 million dollars into that campaign. He has been frustrated with the industry ever since. Now he used to be an oil and gas attorney who argued for the industry. He's grown disgusted with their misuse of Alaska resources. So I'm proud to have Robin Brena's support. And Justin Weaver and he are close friends, and they work together.
Now Justin has supported Republicans and Democrats and nonpartisans in his career. He gives altruistically. In fact, I met Justin before I knew he was a guy with any money, but the bigger story here is they chose to match contributions that I had coming in. They said, "We'll match contributions that you get, but you have to make those contributions be, you know, people that are living right here in Alaska." And I said, "Well, that's the only place I'm trying to raise money for the most part." In fact, most of my out-of-state funds that have come in have come from people who used to live here, and that to me is something that I'm quite proud of.
So no, I'm not. I'm not bothered. Did I make a promise to these guys? My promise is the promise I made to Alaskans. We're going to get a fair share for oil and gas resources.
And I'll point out, Eric, nobody else is talking about it in this race. Nobody else talks about getting rid of those tax credits, and that's why they're invested in this race because they want to see those tax credits go away as much as I do. The only people who benefit from getting rid of those tax credits are the citizens of Alaska because there is no other way to fully fund education in this state unless those tax credits go away. Everyone will come to you and go through an interview with you, and every one of them is going to promise all the things they're going to do, but not one of them is going to be able to show you how they're going to pay for it. I have.
Because those tax credits alone, based on our calculations, if they're gone, are between $200 and $250 million dollars annually coming back into the state coffers. You add the $100 million or so that comes from the Hilcorp exception and the $35 million from the internet fee, and you're beginning to push close to $400 million that this legislature and this governor have left on the table, and that's why we talk about not having enough money. A state with a $90 billion Permanent Fund, a state that has 70% of its money coming from that permanent fund, and yet they look you in the eye and tell you we can't afford education, we can't afford healthcare, we can't afford law enforcement, we can't afford any of this stuff. Oh woe is us, and they can't afford it because they can't communicate together about how important it is to not leave that money on the table, and that's why those two folks have backed this campaign, and I'm proud to have the support of Alaskans in this campaign. Nobody has raised as much from Alaskans unless they gave it to themselves.
You've said you support the ballot measure that will be on the August 18th primary ballot, essentially reinstating campaign finance limits that were ruled unconstitutional by a judge in 2021. You have an opportunity to — you could refuse large donors, and you haven't. And I was hoping you could explain why,
for the same reason that nobody else has, because you know you don't tie your hands when you're running an election, these are the rules today. You know what you may not know is that I was actually a witness in that lawsuit. I was witness who provided an affidavit supporting the position of maintaining that that those contribution limits we had. I was deposed in that lawsuit because I supported maintaining those contribution limits. I have fought for those contribution limits. In fact, when I first came out of college and went to work, I worked for Senator Vic Fisher, where I wrote the Fair Campaign Practices Act, and that has been part of my mantra since I was 23 years old. We need campaign finance reform.
This governor chose not to appeal that decision by the Ninth Circuit Court because he was perfectly fine for people to get unlimited amounts of money into this race, a number of candidates have received those contributions from people well over those limits, and until the rules change, that will be the way it is. I am participating just like every other candidate for governor exactly by the rules that have been written. And I want those rules changed. That's why I would encourage everyone listening to this to vote yes on Proposition One, and by the way, in the fall, to vote no on Proposition Two.
I want to move to a few closing questions in the time that we have left. A Democrat hasn't won the governor's race since Tony Knowles, since before the turn of the millennium. Why do you think that you, as a Democrat, can win a statewide race?
Every single one of my opponents, regardless of their party affiliation, talks about the need for change, and yet roughly a dozen of them come out of this administration or were strong supporters of the current administration, they're saying that because they recognize Alaskans are tired of the direction we've gone in, and I believe that's true. I'm more than just a Democrat. I'm a person who loves and believes in the state of Alaska. That's why I have been able to draw support from Republicans and Democrats in this race, as well as a vast majority of nonpartisans.
For me, this is a battle for the soul of Alaska. I have watched for 25 years as we have slowly slipped away from the promise of the past. That promise was carried by Republicans like Jay Hammond, Democrats like Steve Cowper and Tony Knowles, and by by nonpartisans like Walter Hickel. Those days have gone. But I think we can move to a new, vital, revitalized future in this state, and I think Alaskans are ready for it.
Do I think a Democrat can win? All the public opinion research says that I will, and that to me is good enough if Alaskans are willing to to support me. I'm willing to move Alaska into the future, and I hope that they will join me in that effort.
You're one of two well-funded Democrats in the race, and why should Alaskans pick you over Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, and then in November, one or both of you is going to need second choice votes from Alaskans whose first choice was a Republican. So I'm curious, what's your message to people trying to decide whether it's you or Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins in this pick one primary, and then how would you approach the ranked choice general election.
Well, the the the answer is the same in either case. There's a little bit of my background, perhaps you're not aware of, but I spent over three week three weeks three decades working in rural Alaska, throughout rural Alaska. I spent that time working on substance use prevention, mental health issues, juvenile justice and delinquency prevention, sleeping — I think I've told you this before — but sleeping on gym floors when I had to, staying in those communities, working with those communities. Everything from fixing a playground, working to fix a playground in Brevig Mission, to helping set up tribal courts in Togiak and other places in the state, Emmonak, Kotlik, Elim, Koyuk, working with Mike Jackson down in Kake. In all of those instances, I spent time in Alaska helping strengthen community. That breadth of experience, no other candidate in this race has, and and certainly not the other Democrat.
No one has been to as many of those communities and spent as much time as I have, through my private business, as community justice coordinator for Alaska, as restorative justice programs coordinator for Alaska Native Justice Center, and as village services director for Cook Inlet Tribal Council. Those are my, as we say in the music world, chops, and that's why my experience outweighs everyone in this race, and I think that's important: private business experience, public office experience, but more important than any of that, real community-based experience. That's why I'm the best choice in this race.
