Downtown Nome and part of Norton Sound are seen from the air on Sept. 29, 2020. Nome is the biggest community in House District 39, which sprawls across the Bering Strait region and includes part of the Lower Yukon River area. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
For the third time, the Alaska House in the Bering Strait region is a showdown between a seasoned lawmaker from the hub community of Nome who has represented the district for 15 years and a challenger from the smaller village of Shishmaref who nearly beat the incumbent in the past two elections.
Both incumbent Rep. Neal Foster, a Democrat, and opponent Tyler Ivanoff, an Alaskan Independence Party member, are Native. But there are some striking differences between the candidates running in House District 39.
Foster, who holds a degree from Stanford University and studied at Oxford University in England, served as a Nome City Council member and vice president of the Nome-based village Native corporation, among other professional positions, before starting his legislative career.
His campaign is emphasizing his deep legislative experience and his leadership status.
Foster co-chairs the House Finance Committee, making him one of the most powerful members of the Legislature. The finance committees in the House and Senate craft the annual budgets that guide state policy, and all legislation that has any meaningful fiscal impact must pass through those committees.
He is now second in seniority in the House, after Rep. Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham, also a co-chair of the finance committee.
“With that brings a lot of power to our district. And I feel like I need to capitalize on the momentum that we have and the strength that our district is currently sitting in,” Foster said in an Aug. 16 interview with Nome radio station KNOM. His experience and seniority make it possible for him to bring funding to the district and fend off efforts that would be harmful, such as proposed cuts to the Power Cost Equalization program, which subsidizes rural energy, he said in the radio interview.
“I feel like we’re in a really good position, and I just hate to walk away from that,” he said.
Rep. Neal Foster, D-Nome, and Sen. Donny Olson, D-Golovin, talk to Rep. Louise Stutes, R-Kodiak, at a July 28, 2022, ceremony at the Alaska Native Heritage Center where Gov. Mike Dunleavy signed bills on tribal recognition and tribal education. Foster, who has been in the Legislature since he was appointed in 2009 to succeed his late father, is touting his experience and leadership role in his campaign for reelection. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
Ivanoff, a fourth-grade teacher at Shishmaref’s school, is embracing an outsider status and presenting himself as more in touch with the district’s rural residents.
“You really should vote for me because I’m just a regular person like a lot of people in the district. The guy who’s the incumbent, he kind of comes in and out of the district,” Ivanoff said in a Sept. 23 radio interview with conservative talk-show host Michael Dukes. Ivanoff said people in Nome claim to rarely see Foster.
“So, he kind of just visits Nome,” Ivanoff said in the interview. “I live in the district. I live the life of the majority of the people in the district. And I live a subsistence lifestyle. I’m here to fight for a subsistence lifestyle. I’m ready to give a voice for our people.”
But there are some similarities in their backgrounds. Ivanoff, like Foster, has experience in Native corporation management; he currently serves on the board of the regional Bering Straits Native Corp. He also has municipal and tribal government experience, having served as the mayor of Elim, his hometown, and president of the Native Village of Elim.
Foster points out another similarity: family ties. The two have the same great-great grandmother, he said in the KNOM interview. “He is actually my cousin,” Foster said.
A Foster has represented the region in the Legislature for a long time.
The first Neal Foster the voters sent to Juneau was the incumbent’s grandfather, an aviator and World War II veteran from Oklahoma. That elder Neal Foster, who went by the nickname Willie, served in the Senate during the final two territorial legislatures as well as in the third and fourth legislatures after statehood.
His son, Democratic Rep. Richard Foster, served in the House from 1989 until he died in 2009. The incumbent Neal Foster was appointed to the seat after his father’s death, and he has been returned to office in every election since then.
Ivanoff is one of only two opponents whom Foster has ever faced.
Tyler Ivanoff, a teacher in Shishmaref, is an Alaskan Independence Party candidate challenging Rep. Neal Foster. Ivanoff has municipal and tribal government experience, and he is also on the Bering Straits Native Corp. board of directors. He has focused much of his campaign on problems facing the region’s subsistence fishers. (Photo provided by Tyler Ivanoff)
In the five elections from 2010 to 2018, Foster ran unopposed. In 2020, Ivanoff, then a Democrat, lost narrowly to Foster in the primary, 52.47% to 47.53% — a margin of only 100 votes, according to the Alaska Division of Elections. Foster went on that year to beat Republican Dan Holmes by a wide margin.
In 2022, Ivanoff ran under the Alaskan Independence Party banner, and he lost to Foster in the general election by an even narrower margin, 50.95% to 48.42%, or 92 votes.
Results from the August primary election suggest that Foster may have shored up his support this year. The incumbent got 64.3% of the votes cast, while Ivanoff got only 35.7%. Turnout in the district was fairly low, at about 16%.
Ivanoff hopes that once the November general election arrives and voters are more engaged, his third time going against Foster will prove the charm.
“I believe that if there’s a chance to unseat the incumbent, it’s now. We just need people to get out and vote. I have a lot of supporters, and with enough support, anything is possible. I didn’t enter this race to lose or waste my time and energy — I’m in it to win it,” he said by email.
On the issues
On education, Foster and Ivanoff have divergent views.
Foster has been a staunch proponent of the permanent increase in the base student allocation, the per-student funding that the state provides to school districts.
He argues that the increase should be at least $1,400, though the amount the Legislature approved earlier this year was $680. Foster also voted to override Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of that permanent increase; that override failed by a single vote.
Foster, in his KNOM interview, said that because of his leadership, he successfully negotiated with the governor to salvage the one-time $680-per-student increase that ultimately passed this year.
Ivanoff, in contrast, puts caveats on his potential support for a BSA increase.
“It’s not just about the money, it is about making sure our kids get the education that they deserve. As a teacher, I see the struggles in the classroom day in and day out. I worry that if we keep adding funding without clear goals or ways to measure success, it may lead us to spending a lot without really improving things for our kids. We need to make sure that the money that we invest leads to positive changes in education,” he said by email.
The Inupiat village of Shismaref is seen from the air in 2011. Shishmaref, where Ivanoff lives and teaches, is one of the numerous villages in District 39. The district holds the Bering Strait region but also includes part of the Lower Yukon River area. (Photo provided by the Alaska Division of Community and Regional Affairs/Alaska Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development)
“The BSA is important because it directly affects funding for the classroom, teachers, and resources. However, I believe that an increase in the BSA should be tied to clear goals for improving student outcomes. We need to ensure that we use our money effectively and responsibly, especially considering how it impacts other things like the PFD, which is vital to families in Rural Alaska,” he said, referring to the Alaska Permanent Fund dividend.
The candidates offered somewhat similar assessments about the district’s top needs.
Foster, in his Alaska Beacon questionnaire, listed multiple categories: infrastructure development, investments in education and workforce development, and protection of subsistence harvests.
To help protect subsistence fisheries, Foster has a specific goal: ensuring that at least two of the seats on the seven-member Alaska Board of Fisheries represent subsistence users. The board sets policies for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
He also co-sponsored a bipartisan bill in the past session that would have closed the commercial salmon fishery along the Alaska Peninsula for three weeks in June to reduce the interception of fish bound for Western Alaska rivers and streams. That measure, House Bill 180, targeted what is known as the Area M fishery, which has been the subject of contention among fishers from different regions. The bill did not advance.
Foster also aimed some criticism of Ivanoff’s relatively new membership in the Alaskan Independence Party. That party, Foster said during the KNOM interview, opposes the subsistence rural priority mandated in federal law, a position contrary to that of the Alaska Federation of Natives and other Native organizations.
Ivanoff is more focused on a specific challenge as the main issue facing the district: poor salmon returns in Western Alaska. “It is imperative that we develop sustainable solutions to ensure the recovery and long-term health of the salmon population,” he said in his Alaska Beacon questionnaire responses.
A specific solution he has suggested is a comprehensive genetic study of Alaska’s salmon to track their origins, movements and potential bycatch.
Nome’s Anvil City Square, with a giant gold pan and statues of one of the “Three Lucky Swedes” whose discovery kicked off the 1899 Gold Rush, is seen on Sept. 5, 2021. Nome is the population and economic hub of House District 39. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
Such genetic testing has already been conducted for several years, and some of it was used by the state task force created by Dunleavy to investigate the problem of bycatch, the unintended at-sea harvest of non-target species.
And he is defending his Alaskan Independence Party registration.
“I joined the Alaska Independence Party because I believed it stood for independence from both the Republican and Democratic parties. I think candidates should be guided by their own beliefs, not party lines,” he said by email.
The two candidates agree on some issues.
Both favor a return to a defined-benefit retirement system for state employees and teachers, a switch from the relatively new system that offers a 401(k)-style defined contribution system.
Both favor what they describe as a full Alaska Permanent Fund dividend, as would be calculated under a formula used until 2015 but since superseded annually by lawmakers.
In 2020, when Ivanoff almost upset Foster in the Democratic primary, the dividend was the challenger’s top issue. He criticized Foster for failing to secure a higher dividend. But the importance of that issue in the House race faded over time, Ivanoff has said.
And both candidates face the challenge of campaigning in a far-flung and largely roadless district that includes some Lower Yukon River communities as well as the Bering Strait region. Both are using social media and radio interviews to reach voters.
In-person travel across the district is especially difficult for Ivanoff from his base in Shishmaref, where he has daily duties at school. Even if he were to campaign from Nome, travel to the different villages in the district would be difficult and expensive, he said. Getting to the Lower Yukon section of the district would require flights through Bethel, and that would likely require flights through Anchorage, he said by email.
Foster enjoys an advantage when it comes to traveling around District 39. Like his grandfather and father, he is a pilot. He is able to fly on his own schedule to the district’s scattered villages. His campaign website features a photo gallery chronicling his visits to those communities.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX