In Southwest Alaska, a House race poses a choice about how to best meet rural needs

The Yukon-Kuskokwim hub of Bethel is seen from the air on July 13, 2015. Bethel is the hub community in House District 38, where a competitive race is pitting the youngest state legislator against a challenger from the village of Toksook Bay. (Photo by Rachel Loehman/USGS Alaska Science Center)

In a sprawling rural district that is the Alaska region with the highest poverty level, a freshman legislator from the population hub is defending his seat against a political newcomer from one of the outlying villages and a perennial challenger from a different village.

Rep. CJ McCormick, D-Bethel, acknowledges that he had ground to make up after finishing well behind fellow Democrat Nellie Jimmie of Toksook Bay in the Aug. 20 primary election. Jimmie, who is mounting her first try at elected office, had 43.8% of the vote in the open primary for the seat to represent House District 38. McCormick, a former Bethel City Council member, wound up with 28.3%. Two other candidates split the rest of the vote. All are the general election ballot, likely making Alaska’s system of ranked choice voting key to the outcome.

Both McCormick and Jimmie are Democrats running in an overwhelmingly Democratic district, but they present some contrasts.

McCormick has won support from many of his legislative colleagues and several labor unions, while Jimmie has the backing of Calista Corp. and Andrew Guy, the president and chief executive officer of that regional Native for-profit corporation.

McCormick, though only 27 and the youngest member of the Legislature, has experience in government positions, starting when he was a 23-year-old member of the Bethel City Council.

He often points out that he’s a lifelong Bethel resident. “I’m just a kid from out here,” he said in a telephone interview.

As a sitting lawmaker, has a record of stances on specific issues of statewide interest. Those include his support for a long-term increase in the base student allocation — the per-student state funding for school districts — and a return to a defined-benefit pension system for public workers. He joined the Republican-led majority caucus, along with Rep. Neal Foster, D-Nome, Rep. Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham, and former Rep. Josiah Patkotak, I-Utqiagvik, who was later replaced by Rep. Thomas Baker, a Republican-turned-independent from Kotzebue.

Important accomplishments in office, McCormick said, include new funding for the state’s village public safety officer program and passage of a bill that boosts the Department of Public Safety’s ability to address the crisis of murdered and missing Indigenous people. Aspirations for the future, he said, include some changes to fishery management to ensure more tribal representation to protect subsistence harvests.

Jimmie, 45, has no formal government experience. However, she has strong ties to Toksook Bay, a village of about 620 people, where she is a member of a local dance group and where her family made national news as the first to be enumerated in the 2020 U.S. Census. Jimmie has worked at the family store in the village and is the Toksook Bay representative on the Alaska Village Electric Cooperative board, a position that she said gave her the confidence to run for the House seat.

She has not made public her opinions on some key statewide issues, saying she is still studying them. She said she has not yet formed an opinion on caucus membership, either. Instead, she is focusing on what she considers to be the pressing needs for more investment in infrastructure and services, including law enforcement, in her rural and overwhelmingly Native district.

“We need more advocacy. I feel I can bring that rural perspective to the state Legislature and a better understanding of our way of life,” she said in brief remarks at a Wednesday evening reception at the Anchorage office of AVEC.

She spoke about how she embraces her Indigenous culture, which includes Ojibwa and Lakota heritage as well as her Yup’ik culture. “I carry all of those traditional teachings with me, and they’re very important to me,” she told attendees at the reception. She practices traditional arts like skin sewing and dance; at the Anchorage reception, she donned a traditional headdress and took part in a dance performance.

In a brief interview at the reception, Jimmie declined to criticize McCormick. She did cite the difference between life in Bethel, the incumbent’s hometown, and that in the outlying villages like Toksook Bay.

“District 38 is basically a long stretch, and where I’m from is from a village. So when I travel, I get to see firsthand the living situations, the infrastructures, the houses and just how in-person life is out there,” she said.

Competing from the political right is Willy Keppel, affiliated with the Registered Veterans of Alaska party. He is a frequent candidate who lives in Quinhagak, a village of nearly 800 people. He does not accept contributions, and he is campaigning largely through Facebook, on the radio and through word-of-mouth. He was the only District 38 candidate to respond to the Alaska Beacon questionnaire.

Keppel emerged from the primary with 20.5% of the vote. He said he believes the race will come down to a contest between Jimmie and him. McCormick has proven himself to be too young, too inexperienced and too out of touch with the district to represent constituents adequately, he said

“CJ McCormick is not one of us. He has zero clue what it’s like to live on 18 grand a year in the Bush,” said Keppel, who is 70 and reliant on Social Security benefits. “I know, and I fight for the people that are just like me, and nobody buys me.”

Like McCormick and unlike Jimmie, Keppel is non-Native. But he has Native family members and has lived in the Bush for 40 years.

There is a fourth candidate on the ballot, Democrat Victoria Sosa of Bethel, but she has endorsed Jimmie, citing her village perspective and strong ties to Indigenous tradition.

“I voted for her in the primary, and I’m going to vote for her again,” Sosa said at the AVEC event. She has past experience as a legislative aide and she worked on McCormick’s campaign in 2022.

Looming over the race — even though it is not an issue to be determined by state lawmakers – is debate over the Donlin Gold mine that has roiled the district. Residents of the Yukon-Kuskokwim region are deeply divided over what would be one of the world’s biggest gold mines that is planned for a region that is economically distressed but where people prize the Kuskokwim River system that provides salmon and other resources to feed people and nurture traditional culture.

McCormick adamantly opposes the mine, siding with campaigners who say Donlin poses unacceptable risks to the Kuskokwim ecosystem and the people who depend on it. He has drawn backing from prominent anti-Donlin campaigners.

He said his anti-Donlin position appears to be shared by most people in the district. In his campaigning through the end of September, he encountered only one contingent who favors the mine, he said. “Otherwise, it’s just a widely unpopular project, as far as I can see,” he said.

Keppel is also anti-Donlin, and he said most of the people in the district share that opposition.

“If just District 38 was allowed to vote on the mine issue itself, I would say it would go down 75% against it. That’s just my guess,” he said.

Jimmie said she does not have a position on the Donlin mine and is still studying the issue.

“Right now, I’m neutral because I’ve been campaigning,” she said. “I’m more focused on the issues affecting people in just the communities around – no running water, public safety, infrastructure.”

Calista, which is backing Jimmie, is a key partner in the Donlin mine. The project is being developed on land owned by the Kuskokwim Corp., a village Native corporation, where Calista owns the mineral rights. Calista’s interest in Donlin puts it in conflict with McCormick

Jimmie is the only non-incumbent on the corporation’s endorsement list this year, and Calista President Guy contributed a $3,000 donation to her campaign.

Calista backed McCormick’s opponent two years ago.

To Keppel, who said he has opposed the Donlin mine ever since it was first proposed, Jimmie’s support from Calista makes her vulnerable.

“Everybody out here knows: Donlin does not back anybody that does not support the mine,” Keppel said. “That’s the poison pill for Nellie, right there.”

McCormick is in trouble, too, because of his opposition to a bill pushed by conservative Republicans that would bar transgender athletes from girls’ sports, Keppel said.

McCormick views that bill as part of a pattern of bitter national partisanship that should not be part of Alaska policy discussions. “I’m sick and tired of forsaking the needs of our state so that people can grandstand on bullying children,” he said.

Campaigning in such a large and rural district is a challenge.

Both McCormick and Jimmie have kept a busy travel schedule, which is expensive because it requires air travel between numerous villages that are unconnected by any roads.

Door-knocking is time-consuming, McCormick said, but he has come to view it as critical. When he meets residents that way, he does not immediately ask for their votes, he said. “I’m there to learn how I can be of service,” he said. He does not know whether that will translate to votes, but it does allow him to connect with citizens and hear their concerns, he said. “I’m just making an appearance and making myself available. I don’t know if that’s the right way to do it, and maybe I’ll lose the election terribly.”

Jimmie, too, is bearing some significant travel expenses. It costs a lot to fly around the district, as each flight between villages has to be routed through Bethel, she said. Weather is also a factor, she said. But she said she “lucked out” recently when, after weather grounded a flight, she got a boat ride to Kwethluk. “Because of the weather, I got picked up by my nephew,” she said.