Wright and Eischeid face off again in a close state House race to represent East Anchorage district

The chambers of the Alaska House of Representatives are seen on Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2023. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)

In Anchorage’s North Muldoon and Russian Jack neighborhoods, two candidates are facing each other for the second time in two years for a seat in the Alaska House.

While Republican incumbent Rep. Stanley Wright is seeking reelection, Democrat Ted Eischeid is on a mission to unseat Wright in the rematch.

In 2022, Eischeid lost to Wright by 72 votes.

This year, Eischeid said he retired early from his job as planner for the Matanuska-Susitna Borough so he could redouble his campaign efforts —“I knocked a lot of doors two years ago, I’m doubling that effort this time,” he said.

Eischeid led the race in the primaries with a 3% edge over Wright, although only 8% of registered voters turned out.

Any flipped seat could be consequential in a closely divided House, so an Eischeid victory could tip the balance of power away from the current Republican majority.

Wright is a Navy veteran from South Carolina. He followed his wife to Alaska where they raised their children. Before representing House District 22, Wright worked as a community systems manager in Anchorage’s Community Safety and Development office. His previous public service roles include work in the state governor’s office and for the state’s Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.

Eischeid had a career as a middle school science teacher in the Midwest before he, too, followed his wife to Alaska where he found work as a planner for the Matanuska-Susitna Borough. His previous public service was two terms as a nonpartisan county board supervisor in Wisconsin. He said the value of listening to all viewpoints was driven home to him in that role.

“Sometimes I voted conservative, sometimes I voted progressive. I let people’s public testimony and I let the data guide me. And I listened very closely, tried to suspend my bias as much as I could,” he said.

As part of his campaign, Eischeid said he heard that the district’s main concerns are education, public safety and infrastructure. He said the value of a good education is a priority for him in part because he grew up poor in Iowa after his father died when he was very young.

“I’m a food stamp kid. I’m a free and reduced lunch kid. And because I had good public school teachers, I got a good education. I was able to earn that college degree, and I entered a good middle-class lifestyle,” he said, adding that, if elected, he will bring that history — and the sense of compassion it instilled in him — to Juneau.

That sentiment points to a similarity between the candidates. In 2022, Wright told the Alaska Beacon that a “pretty rough” childhood on a South Carolina farm and, later, in a housing project, taught him about the value of public assistance. He sought federal grants for low- and moderate-income housing as a city employee in Anchorage, according to his campaign.

Eischeid described himself as a moderate Democrat who will listen, but doesn’t want to “waste time” fighting culture wars.

“People don’t want professional politicians, and they’re not asking for much, but they want somebody that represents them and knows them and puts people over party,” he said.

Wright did not respond to the Alaska Beacon’s requests for an interview for this story. But his voting record has at least one striking example of putting concerns raised in his district over the leadership of his party: In the last session, he was one of the seven members of the Alaska House’s majority caucus who voted with members of the House minority in a failed attempt to override Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of an education bill that included a permanent increase for state education funding.

At the time, Wright said one of the schools in his district had been threatened with closure and that “really weighed heavy on my heart.”

In his first term in office he co-sponsored a number of bills that became law, including the measure that led to state recognition of Juneteenth, and passed a law that is intended to streamline the certification process for counselors in order to increase access to mental health care.