The building housing the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ International Arctic Research Center, seen on Sept. 18, is named for center founder Syun-Ichi Akasofu. The campus is in Senate District R, which has three candidates competing in the Nov. 5 general election. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
When longtime Republican Sen. Click Bishop abruptly announced in May that he would not run for re-election, it set off a scramble.
With days to go before the filing deadline, four candidates hurriedly signed up to run for Bishop’s former seat in the Interior.
After the August primary, three remain in the race.
Republican Mike Cronk, who has served in the Alaska House of Representatives since 2021, is the presumed favorite, but in August’s primary election, undeclared candidate Savannah Fletcher finished just 112 votes behind Cronk out of 7,551 cast. There’s also Alaskan Independence Party candidate Bert Williams, who’s campaigning as a more conservative third option.
Bishop governed as a moderate Republican with a tendency for pithy sayings, and whoever replaces him in office could steer the Senate in a more conservative or progressive direction.
‘A hard district’ for candidates
Senate District R, as it’s formally known, is bigger than New Mexico. It covers a vast swath of Alaska, from towns and villages along the Yukon River to communities in the Copper River basin, north of Valdez.
It’s economically diverse, including subsistence communities and precincts that include the University of Alaska and the Geophysical Institute. It has satellite stations and a rocket range, countless fish camps and hunting cabins.
Half of the district is Democratic-leaning west Fairbanks, surrounding the university, and the other half is the vast, rural, Republican-leaning House District 36, which includes Delta Junction, Tok and Glennallen.
“This is a hard district,” Williams said of the challenges facing any legislator who needs to represent the region. “The vast majority bloc is a wealthier portion of the city of Fairbanks, and then the remainder is spread out, and a great number of these rural communities and their needs are totally different.”
“This district — I mean, good Lord — we go all the way down to Copper River. There’s, realistically speaking, very little that somebody who has a farm down in Copper River has in common with somebody in Fairbanks,” he said.
Meet the candidates
Williams, 31, is an apprentice machinist who was born in Fairbanks and has lived his life in the city. He’s a graduate of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and has a master’s degree in biological sciences. Married with two children, he spends most of his time with his family on a small-acreage homestead, he said in the official elections pamphlet.
Their goal is to produce as much of their own food as they can and be as self-sufficient as possible. Secretary of the Alaskan Independence Party since April, he’s a reluctant candidate for office, he said.
He said he doesn’t want to serve in office but follows the adage that the best politicians are the reluctant candidates. He decided to run after several acquaintances asked him to consider it.
One of the AIP’s core beliefs is the idea that Alaska’s 1958 vote to become a state was flawed because it failed to include alternatives other than statehood. The AIP has repeatedly called for a new referendum, but Williams said he personally doesn’t believe the time is right for one.
Given international instability, he said, “it would be incredibly foolish to try to push the issue” right now.
Cronk, 53, was born in Oklahoma City but moved to Alaska in infancy. Raised primarily in the rural town of Northway, he was a star basketball player in high school and attended the University of Alaska Fairbanks, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in elementary education.
He put that degree to work in Northway and Tok, teaching for 25 years.
In 2017, he survived a mass shooting in Las Vegas, helping victims in the aftermath. He returned home and was elected to the local school board in 2018 and then to the state House in 2020, defeating his closest opponent by 25 percentage points.
A longtime hunter, fisher and trapper, he has a network of friends and acquaintances grown over more than four decades in the Interior.
“A lot of candidates come with agendas, you know, all different kinds of crazy stuff, but my only agenda is Alaska, and to make Alaska the best place for all of us to live,” he said.
“I’m a lifelong Alaskan, and I’ve been invested in Alaska for 53 years,” Cronk said, explaining that his life experience makes him stand out against two younger candidates.
“I hope I stand out more than other people that have just moved up here and haven’t been here very long — five years or six years — and they’re not as invested,” he said.
Fletcher, 31, is prepared to argue that point. In the seven years she’s lived in Alaska, she’s earned a name as a civil rights attorney through work with the Tanana Chiefs Conference. That work has taken her to communities throughout Interior Alaska.
A graduate of Columbia University, she holds a law degree from Stanford Law School and served as a clerk for the Alaska Supreme Court.
Since moving to Fairbanks, she ran for and won election to the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly, where she serves as presiding officer.
“If all it took to be a good representative was having lived in a place for 53 years, then there are thousands of qualified candidates to serve as our next state senator for this district,” Fletcher said. “I don’t think that can be the sole thing someone relies on.”
“I would never presume that no matter how long I’ve lived here, that I’m inherently an expert on all things. I want to put in the work to learn what really serves everyone best,” she said.
Caucus consequences
In the state Senate, the flow of legislation is dictated by which group of legislators — called a caucus — controls at least 11 of the Senate’s 20 seats. Holding a majority of seats earns the caucus the right to pick the Senate president and thus set the Senate’s agenda.
Currently, 17 senators — 9 Democrats and 8 Republicans — form a supermajority bipartisan coalition.
Fletcher said unequivocally that she prefers to be part of that structure, keeping it at 17 members but turning it “tripartisan” because of her status as an independent.
“I would join that coalition, and I would make sure we focus on the bread-and-butter needs of our state, whereas I think my opponents are more interested in some extreme fringe causes that really don’t serve or represent the thoughts of the majority of the people in our state,” she said.
Cronk said he’d be willing to join a coalition, but his preference is one where Republicans have a controlling role. Previous Senate majorities have been primarily Republican, with one or two rural Democrats also participating.
“I would prefer to be in a Republican majority caucus, but the reality is that I don’t think we’re going to get enough Republicans elected to have a full majority,” he said.
Currently, the Senate has 11 Republicans, with three outside the majority and eight inside the majority.
If the current supermajority continues, he’s uncommitted about whether he would be a part of it.
“I think I just want to have an open mind on it and see what happens. I would prefer to be in a Republican or conservative majority. But again, I don’t want to ever just close doors down either,” he said.
Williams prefers a third option.
“I would be totally on my own,” he said.
His approach is one like the one taken by Rep. David Eastman, R-Wasilla, in the state House. Eastman isn’t a member of either the House majority or minority but joins members of either caucus on voting for bills.
“I don’t care how well they line up with me; if we agree, then we’ll end up voting together, but otherwise, we can act independently,” Williams said.
Education veto looms large
During this spring’s legislative session, members of the state House and Senate devoted much of their time and energy to a wide-ranging education bill that would have permanently increased the amount of state funding allocated for public schools.
The state House and Senate passed a compromise bill, but Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed it, and an override attempt failed by a single vote. That override vote has since become a major issue in legislative campaigns across the state, including this one.
Cronk was among the lawmakers who voted to pass the bill, but on the override, he switched sides, voting to sustain Dunleavy’s veto.
“I know I’ve caught a lot of criticism,” he said.
Cronk said he would have preferred to have additional accountability measures in the final version of the compromise education bill, but when key negotiators presented him with the language, he was told that they had the votes to pass it, and it was a question of getting on board or getting left behind.
“We got into caucus and were like, ‘Hey, here’s the new bill, and we have the votes to pass it,’” he said, describing the situation. “You’re kind of like, OK, well, some of that stuff in there, I like. … I voted for it because you’re pretty much on the spot there.”
When Dunleavy vetoed the bill, Cronk saw his vote as a chance to continue negotiating on the topic. He liked Dunleavy’s requests for more support to homeschool programs and charter schools. Cronk also was concerned about the cost of the plan.
“My no vote was to say, let’s come to the table and start working on (the key question): How do we become the best at educating our kids again?”
Fletcher’s decision to run for Senate was at least partially based on the education vote.
“That was a big motivator for me to run,” she said.
She said she thinks Cronk — and the Legislature as a whole — made a mistake in failing to override the governor.
While the Legislature and Dunleavy ultimately agreed on a one-time funding boost for public schools, a one-time bonus doesn’t allow for stable, long-term budgeting, she said.
“It just doesn’t allow for the kind of budgeting that keeps our class sizes low, allows you to have extracurriculars — whether it’s music, bands, sports, career, tech classes. It just doesn’t allow you to thrive,” she said.
“I would have stood by (the bill) and voted to override the veto,” she said.
Williams said that if he were in the Legislature this year, he doubts he would have overridden the veto.
“Frankly, I agree with the reasons for the veto,” he said.
“If we have learned anything at all in the last 20 years, it should be that throwing money at this problem isn’t going to fix it,” he said of state schools’ poor performance on standardized tests.
Permanent Fund differences
Since 2018, an annual transfer from the Alaska Permanent Fund to the state treasury has accounted for more than half of the state’s general-purpose revenue.
The question of how much of that transfer to spend on the Permanent Fund dividend has been one of the Legislature’s biggest annual questions.
During his time in the state House, Cronk has been a supporter of the “50-50” plan, which would use half the transfer for dividends and the other half for state services.
This year’s budget, in contrast, included a payout roughly equivalent to 75-25, or 25% of the transfer for dividends.
“I would love to see a 50-50, and I do believe everybody needs to be realistic when we’re talking about this,” he said, acknowledging that some of his supporters want to see a bigger figure.
When Cronk originally ran for state House, he supported a larger amount.
At present levels of state services, paying a dividend larger than 25% will require new taxes or additional cuts to services. At present levels of spending, a 50% dividend would result in a deficit of between $500 million and $600 million.
Cronk said he’s “not a tax person” but is willing to consider taxes if they’re part of a complete plan to bring state revenue and expenses in line over the long term.
“I’m going to be looking at what’s the best way to move Alaska forward,” he said, “and not at ‘Hey, my next election’s in four years or three years from now.’”
Fletcher said she doesn’t have a preferred dividend formula in mind right now but believes one should be hammered out through negotiations among the legislators.
“I could tell you I have the best solution in the world, but if no one else is on board and there’s no political will behind it, it doesn’t matter. So I’m eager to find something that everyone can buy into,” she said.
Williams said he prefers a dividend paid using the traditional formula that remains in state law. Alaska legislators have ignored that law since 2017 because of its cost, which is roughly equivalent to 66% of this year’s transfer from the Permanent Fund.
Dunleavy proposed a traditional dividend in December 2023 with the resulting $1 billion deficit to be covered by spending from savings. Lawmakers rejected that proposal.
When asked how he would like to pay for the larger dividend, Williams said, “the only sensical solution — although that’s not at all to say that it’s the easy solution — is to cut services.”
Williams said he doesn’t think that a statewide tax is workable, given Alaska’s high cost of living and taxes imposed by local governments.
“There’s only so much blood in a person before they’ve got nothing left to give. There’s much cheaper places to live in this country, and we’re playing a really dangerous and stupid game, which is, if we try to keep increasing the tax load, people will decide that they’re just not going to deal with it anymore, and they’re going to leave,” he said.
When asked what he would prefer to cut from the state budget, Williams spoke frankly and said he needs to become more familiar with the budget before identifying possible cuts.
When Dunleavy sought to close a similar-sized projected deficit in 2019, he proposed cutting 41% of state university funding and 25% of state K-12 education base funding. After a public backlash, the governor has not repeated these proposals.
Energy prices are a priority
All three candidates said the cost of energy in Interior Alaska is the region’s top problem, and that a solution to that cost is its biggest need.
“Energy has to be our No. 1 issue,” Cronk said.
Cronk has repeatedly advocated an “all of the above” approach when it comes to electricity, saying that all forms of power — wind, solar, natural gas, coal, nuclear and hydroelectric — should be considered when discussing how to lower the cost of energy.
“We can’t be so bogged down in the fact that we need to be carbon-free and ‘no oil-based anything,’ because our whole economy is based on (oil),” he said.
He labeled Fletcher a “climate lady” and suggested that she might be willing to ignore cheaper energy if it came with large environmental consequences.
“Well, we all live on this planet, so I hope he’s a climate gentleman as long as I’m a climate lady,” Fletcher said.
“I agree with him that we need to find cost-effective energy,” she said, pointing to a March 2024 analysis that found the cheapest energy on the Railbelt is likely to come from a mix of renewable and nonrenewable sources.
She said she believes the state, especially through newly passed “green bank” legislation, should take a role in financing and facilitating renewable energy projects.
“Maybe that’s where we differ,” she said. “I’m willing to get down in the weeds and not just say, you know, fossil fuels are always going to be the cheapest.”
Williams denounced federal regulators’ requirement that Fairbanks residents phase out wood heat because of particulate pollution caused by wood stoves.
“Wood is fundamentally the most renewable energy resource that there is,” he said, speaking about tree regrowth. “It’s asinine in this modern climate of looking for the best, most renewable and ecologically friendly fuel sources to say, ‘Hey, you can’t burn wood, even though that is the No. 1.’”
He also said he believes that “intermittent generation” power sources like solar and wind shouldn’t be considered a permanent solution because they put extra demand on the local power grid. Nationally, these sources have grown from generating less than 1% of energy in 2007 to 14% in 2023.
Improving the power grid requires money, and that money adds up when the population is as spread out as it is in Interior Alaska, he noted.
“There’s a lot of money that goes into just making sure the power gets from point A to point B, and that’s not going to be fixed by grid-level solutions like that,” he said.
If the state does need big solutions, it might look to China’s high-voltage electric lines, which can transmit large amounts of power efficiently, Williams said.
How to vote
Alaskans must register to vote by Oct. 6 in order to participate in the state House election.
Early voting begins at select locations Oct. 21. Absentee ballots are available by request through Oct. 26 for any reason for those who want to vote by mail.
Regular Election Day is Nov. 5, and a map of polling places is available online. Preliminary results will be available by the morning of Nov. 6, but ballots arriving late by mail will be counted until Nov. 15 if they are sent from within the United States and Nov. 20 if they are sent internationally.
Ranked choice tabulations — for races with at least three candidates — will take place Nov. 20 if no candidate has at least 50% of the vote in that race.
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