Dana sez–I’m not what you could call a political animal. Mostly I just want those guys to take my taxes and fix the roads and then leave me the hell alone. I always vote, sure, but that’s as much to honor my parents as it is to do my duty as a citizen.
This election feels different. Maybe it was watching Washington, D.C. get literally bulldozed in real time, or maybe it was the $62 price tag on my last tank of gas, or maybe it’s the genocidal stupidity of the anti-science crowd. So I’m going to candidate events to get a sense of who they are, and posting about them here between now and November 3rd for those who haven’t had a chance to.
Takeaway: I may not be the sole member of the “Get Shit Done” political party after all.
I saw Jonathan Kreiss-Tompkins (aka JKT) at Alice’s in Homer last week, where he spoke before an SRO crowd. He thanked his parents for raising him to be curious, which evidently contributed to him becoming a Wikipedia editor before he was in his teens. “The article on the Harding Ice Field? I wrote that. The articles on the Alaska State Ferries? I wrote those, too.”
As a freshman in high school, he talked his way onto Howard Dean’s campaign for president and became one of its major online organizers. A year before he graduated, he quit Yale to come home and run a Hail Mary campaign against a Republican legislator widely considered a shoo-in. He traveled to every village and town in his district and it sounds like spoke to every person in them who couldn’t get away from him first. “When you land in Angoon and your ticket out isn’t until three days later, you end up talking to everyone. Sitting in a room filled with Tlingit elders teaches you everything you need to know about the people who live there.” He won the race by “a landslide of 32 votes” and served five terms in the state house.
Now he’s running for governor of Alaska. You can read about him here and here and about his platform here.
That evening he spoke with energy and enthusiasm and humor. This guy’s got a gunny sack full of ideas, like an Alaskan CCC putting Alaskans to work building trails and cabins across the state. On “the other side of November 3,” he wants to lead the state into a reinvestment in education, to beat our fair share of taxes out of Big Oil, and to rebalance representation on the Board of Fish so local fishermen have a voice.
He says he wants an administration with “a ferocious appetite to solve problems.” Like other Democratic candidates this year, he talks of building coalitions across party lines and he’s already picked a Republican for his lieutenant governor. I like the sound of him, too.
Here’s a link to the three debates for governor, U.S. House and U.S. Senate. All three will be carried live on radio, TV and streaming.
And then you can vote for JKT on November 3rd. I am.
Register to vote here.
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