Pollster Ivan Moore released survey results Thursday that show Congressman Don Young is running slightly behind first-time candidate Alyse Galvin. But Young hasn’t lost a race in 45 years, and pollsters have underestimated him before. Even some of Galvin’s supporters are keeping their hopes in check.

Campaign volunteer Sara Dykstra is good at getting strangers to open their door. But on an icy night in Fairview, one undecided voter was reluctant. Dykstra held up her Alyse Galvin campaign literature.

“She’s running for Congress against Don Young,” Dykstra shouted, to be heard through the closed window. And that seemed to do the trick: The door opened.

It probably helps Dykstra’s success rate that she often brings her toddler, and that she’s hugely pregnant. She’s due to deliver next week, the day after Election Day.

“Hi – so have you heard of Alyse Galvin running for Congress?” Dykstra said.

“I didn’t know who that was,” the resident said, “but when you said ‘against Don Young,’ then yes.”

Dykstra ran through Galvin’s attributes: She’s a lifelong Alaskan, an independent and the Democratic nominee. Dykstra told her Galvin wants everyone to have affordable health care.

“Yeah, but who pays for it?” the woman said.

Dykstra kept the woman talking for over five minutes.

“Those are the interesting ones, I think, when you can actually engage them in a conversation,” Dykstra said. “I don’t think Don Young supporters are coming and knocking at her door and trying to engage her … . So I think it’s door by door and voter by voter.”

Galvin volunteers are also hitting the phones.

At her threadbare campaign headquarters in Spenard one night this week, every surface had been put to use as a makeshift desk and someone was sitting at it, making calls. People were working at tables even in the garage.

But away from the din, retired electrician Bill Sosnowski had the laundry room all to himself.

He dialed a voter in Tok and asked if he’d support Galvin to unseat Young.

“Right now you don’t thinks so?” Sosnowski said into the phone. There’s a pause, and then he erupted in laughter. “So no matter what you say or what you do, you don’t think he’s going to leave, right?”

That’s part of the challenge for Galvin supporters – fighting the sense that Young’s re-election is inevitable. Those who don’t like Young have had their hopes dashed 23 elections in a row.

“Well,” Sosnowski told the man in Tok, “you could be that person that helps him retire!”

Don Young ads are in heavy rotation on television. He’s on radio, and in Anchorage his advertising is mounted on the back of public buses.

But Young’s ground game is less visible than Galvin’s, at least in Alaska’s largest city. His campaign repeatedly told me there were no events to watch in Anchorage this week, with Young or with volunteers, though a spokeswoman said there will be a rally with Mike Dunleavy, the Republican candidate for governor, on Sunday, and that sign-waving will also kick off next week.

Young’s long-time campaign manager Jerry Hood says the focus now is on getting out the vote.

“Phone-banking, and just working all the angles to make sure that people vote,” Hood said. “It’s an important election.”

But in the final full week before the election, while Galvin headquarters was abuzz in the evening, Young’s campaign office was dark during some prime calling hours, with nary a car in the parking area. Hood said it won’t remain that way.

Phone-banking “will happen at the campaign office, when it occurs,” he said.

Hood said he thinks when Alaskans get in the voting booths on Tuesday, they’ll again select Young, as they have since 1973. Hood pointed out the congressman is still getting bills passed – four in the current two-year Congress.

“I think Alaskans know that, and they won’t jeopardize their future by electing a naive rookie with no experience,” Hood said.

Political science research shows persuasion campaigns aren’t all that effective, not if they run counter to a voter’s partisan lean.

But identifying supporters and urging them to the polls – that’s been proven to work.

And as the Galvin supporters see it, the 24th time might just be the charm.

Following an extremely dry summer (by rain forest standards), October in southern Southeast Alaska started off equally dry. But, the second half of the month has brought enough rain that Ketchikan’s electric utility is switching off its diesel generators, at least for the moment.

October is usually one of the rainiest months in rainy southern Southeast Alaska. Ketchikan sees an average rainfall of about 20 inches in October.

This year, though, it was more like 11 inches – and most of that fell in the second half of the month. That was enough, though, for Ketchikan Public Utilities, or KPU, to give its diesel generators a much-needed break.

“We produced about 8.8 gigawatt hours of diesel, and burned through a little over half a million gallons of fuel, just for October,” said Andy Donato, KPU Electric Division manager.

He said KPU’s hydro-producing lakes have hit the low end of their target elevation, so KPU is going to turn the hydro back on.

He’ll feel more comfortable to see those lake levels rise more – and soon. And the forecast for the next few days does call for plenty of rain.

In Donato’s job, rain is a blessing.

“Two days ago, I got absolutely soaked. I had to work some outside. I got absolutely soaked, and I was smiling through the whole thing,” he said. “It’s a different perspective, right? When you desperately want the rain.”

Switching back to hydroelectric power is good news for KPU customers who pay a diesel surcharge when the utility needs to run its more-expensive backup generators.

But, while the rain appears to be back, the area remains in a drought.

“Ketchikan should be getting around 19 inches of rain in October. And this is the panhandle’s wettest time of year, that with September. However, you are just around 60 percent of that, which is not even beginning to crack anything on the drought,” said Wes Adkins, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Juneau.

He said this October is the area’s eighth driest on record. Those records go back about 100 years.

Adkins said the forecast now indicates a more normal weather pattern for the area, so that means the rain should stick around for the next month or so.

Rick Fritsch is a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Juneau. He said we’re headed into an El Nino winter.

“For us here in Southeast Alaska, that usually translates into a warmer-than-normal winter, so that’s bad for the snow at a higher elevation, but in this particular case it also looks like it’s going to be a wetter-than-normal winter,” he said. “So, that will give the various power providers and the rain forest an opportunity to recover this winter.”

Fritsch studies long-term trends to get the bigger climate picture for Southeast. He said Ketchikan has seen a lot of variability in precipitation over the past 16 years.

Looking at the summer months of June, July and August, he pointed out repeated instances of soggy summers followed by extra-dry ones.

The most recent example is this summer.

“Only 12.48 inches,” Fritsch said. “Now, 12.48 inches rivals the record for lowest summertime precipitation. And the funny thing is the previous summer of 2017 was the wettest summer on record. So, huge extremes going on in the southern Panhandle.”

That’s not a problem when the extreme is wet, he said, because rain forests are supposed to be wet. When it’s dry, though, things get tricky.

“It affects the power, it affects the rain forest, it affects the salmon. It affects a lot of things in a very negative fashion,” Fritsch said.

Fritsch said climate change could be a factor in this precipitation variability. The long-term trend has shown an increase in rain over the last 30 years. And he said warmer and wetter weather is something predicted by climate change scientists.

That isn’t necessarily bad news for the Ketchikan area, which has always received more rain than snow anyway. Go a little further north, though, and even a slight shift in temperature can make a big difference.

“An average temperature that hovers right around freezing, and the average temperature rises,” Fritsch said. “You very quickly go from snowfall measured 84 to 94 inches a year to snowfall measured 60 inches a year.”

That means less of a snowpack in the mountains, which means less “stored water” that melts slowly and fills up an area’s lakes during the drier months.

Snowpack is a potential concern for the Ketchikan area this year, too. If the long-range forecast of a warmer, wetter winter pans out, there might not be much of a snowpack for spring and summer.

But KPU’s Donato said for the moment, he just wants rain.

“I’ll worry about spring in spring,” he said. “But right now we’re desperate. We’ve got to make sure we get some of that into the reservoirs.”

Because once it starts snowing, the precipitation is locked up in solid form until the weather warms up. If the lakes are still low when that happens, Donato said, KPU will have to again switch on the backup diesel generators.

KPU’s diesel generators have been on 24/7 since mid-October, and already had been running five days a week for several weeks before that.

Donato said the diesels will be switched off Friday evening. After a full weekend on hydro, Donato said KPU officials will evaluate lake levels on Monday and decide whether they can continue with full-time hydroelectric power.

The Trump administration gave a key approval last week to a milestone oil development. Called the Liberty Project, it would be the first oil production in federal Arctic waters. It’s being developed by Hilcorp, a Texas-based oil company.

But as the Arctic warms, Hilcorp is already having to tweak its proposal to accommodate climate change. And future companies looking to drill offshore in the Arctic may have additional changes to plan for.

To get at the oil, Hilcorp is planning to build a gravel island about five miles from shore in the shallow waters of the Beaufort Sea and drill from there.

In order to build that gravel island, the company plans to use what’s called landfast sea ice, or ice that attaches to the coast each winter. They would drive on top of it and dump the gravel through holes in the ice. Shallow, near-shore operations have used sea ice in that way before.

“When it’s in place and when it’s stable, it makes actually a fairly convenient platform from which to operate,” said Andy Mahoney, a sea ice researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who provides information to oil companies and federal regulators on what they can expect of ice thickness, extent and seasonal duration.

“You can build ice roads on it. You can operate drilling equipment from it,” Mahoney said. “And it’s, I think, in many ways easier than trying to work off of a ship or a barge or something like that.”

Mahoney says that the primary concern he hears from oil companies who want to work on landfast ice is that the window they have to work is shrinking as the Arctic warms. Mahoney says the ice is forming later and breaking up earlier.

That means companies may have to stretch out work from one winter to two.

Apparently, that’s happening to Hilcorp, according to construction plans the company has provided to regulators.

According to plans Hilcorp shared with a federal agency in 2015, the company originally thought it could build the gravel island in one year. But in an email, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) confirmed that due to “historically abnormal ice conditions in the Arctic,” Hilcorp amended its plans. Now, the company is telling the agency it could take two years to build the gravel island.

Hilcorp didn’t respond to a request for comment.

There are also other ways that a warming Arctic may affect companies who pursue offshore drilling projects.

“With the projections of declining sea ice you would expect the waves to get bigger and bigger, and in fact that’s what is being seen in the Beaufort Sea,” said Jeremy Kasper, an oceanographer at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Kasper is currently leading a study for BOEM trying to better understand wave and sediment dynamics in the area around Hilcorp’s Liberty project.

A large part of their focus is the potential impacts of the Hilcorp development on the marine environment. But they’re also going to model how wave height, storm surge and coastal erosion may change along the whole Beaufort coast and some of the Chukchi coast decades into the future as the climate warms.

Kasper says those changes could mean that companies have to plan for increasing erosion around their pipelines or alter how they work in higher wave conditions — for example, in shallow areas of the Beaufort sea.

“If you increase the waves, you’re talking about bigger boats,” Kasper said. “Bigger boats, you have to start thinking about dredging because it’s pretty shallow up there.”

Earlier this year the Trump Administration proposed opening the majority of Alaska’s federal waters to drilling, including Arctic waters. The first federal offshore lease sale for the Beaufort Sea could happen as soon as late next year. However, a final plan has yet to be issued and lease sales have yet to be held.

But as warming temperatures change the Arctic landscape, it’s hard to imagine that any future drilling operation in Arctic waters could avoid calculating in the effects of climate change.

Alaska’s Energy Desk’s Elizabeth Harball contributed to this story. 

Donlin Gold, the company developing a proposed gold mine in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, says that it hopes to get most of its major permits out of the way this year. But so far, progress has been a bit slow.

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“The last ones we received was, I think, the [Army Corps of Engineers] permits and the Title 16 [Alaska Department of Fish and Game] fish permits,” said Kurt Parkan, spokesman for Donlin Gold.

The Army Corps of Engineers’ joint record of decision that came out in August is the biggest milestone for the company so far in the permitting process. It capped six years of environmental review for the project, which could be one of the biggest gold mines in the world, if developed. The Army Corps greenlighted the project in a joint decision with the Bureau of Land Management. BLM had to give Donlin permission to build a lengthy gas pipeline on some of its land.

So, what other permits does Donlin have? It has a wastewater discharge permit from the state, which will let Donlin Gold discharge water from its mining operations into Crooked Creek, a tributary of the Kuskokwim River. The water is treated for mercury and cyanide from its operations to meet the required drinking water standard. The state also issued an air quality permit for Donlin last year.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game gave Donlin 13 permits in August for disrupting fish habitat. The mine would eliminate one salmon stream and partially destroy another. Donlin is required to mitigate habitat near the site or offsite to compensate for that disruption.

Now, what permits does Donlin hope to get before the end of the year? One is approval of its draft reclamation plans and financial assurances, which are basically how Donlin plans to set aside money for reclamation. But the state Department of Natural Resources is still reviewing those plans, and it’s unclear when it will approve them.

DNR is the lead agency for issuing permits under its jurisdiction and the Department of Environmental Conservation. DNR did not respond to a request for comment. Another permit Donlin hopes to get this year is an integrated waste permit from DEC.

“That’s essentially a disposal of all material that’s generated at the mine, like the waste rock, and the garbage from the kitchen, and water flood from treatment plants,” Parkan said.

Parkan says that they are also expecting a public hearing from DNR within the next month or so for its right of way permit for the portion of the pipeline that goes through state-owned land. But Donlin still has a ways to go in the permitting process. It needs 100 permits to begin mining, and its dam safety permits, which will be a major milestone for the company, won’t come for a couple of years.

“The dam safety permits is probably is the biggest permit that will be outstanding after this year,” Parkan said.

Donlin needs these permits to build its tailings dam and other infrastructure. Parkan doesn’t know when the company will begin the necessary drilling and analysis to get those permits.

The steamship Princess Sophia sank with an estimated 350 people on board 100 years ago near Juneau. Since the sinking corresponded with the end of World War I, it received little attention at the time. For some, this lack of attention left the tragedy without a sense of closure.

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In Juneau, a collaboration of producers and artists from across the country present a new opera, “The Princess Sophia.”

In mid-September, about 100 people embarked on a boat trip to Vanderbilt Reef in Lynn Canal — this tragedy’s ground zero.

Among the passengers was opera soprano Kathleen Wayne. She sang two songs while at the reef — literally floating above the wreckage of the Princess Sophia.

“It’s a very emotional space to be in. 350 people lost their lives — children, mothers, fathers, young people,” Wayne said.

Behind her, Vanderbilt Reef broke the ocean’s surface like a craggy land creature coming up for air. And mountains lined the sides of the massive fjord.

“You’re right above them. Singing about them. People nobody here has met. But feeling very connected with them through this music and these lyrics,” Wayne said.

Another of the opera’s singers, tenor Bernard Holcomb, was in from New York researching his part and performing for the boat trip.

“I think that this is a great opportunity to be here, to see it, to be here physically. Not just imagine it, but to be here physically and to know that there is wreckage beneath us. And that there were no survivors,” Holcomb said.

Because of extreme tides and stormy weather, Holcomb’s character, Capt. John Leadbetter, was among the Juneau people who were unable to rescue anyone from the passenger ship.

“I am accessing the feeling of guilt, the feeling of being out of control. I cannot control what is happening and that’s incredibly frustrating,” Holcomb said.

The irony of boating to a shipwreck was not lost on many of the trip’s passengers. But the weather could not have been more different from the high winds, snow and low visibility the Princess Sophia faced 100 years ago.

“I am standing here on this clear, sunny day,” Holcomb said. “It’s so beautiful, and there’s land all around us. It seems so close. But they wouldn’t have seen that. They were in a storm. And I think it is unfair that they had to die because of that. That only increases the feeling of tension, the feeling of helplessness, the feeling of grief and sadness.”

As our modern, diesel-powered catamaran safely circled the reef, it was hard not to imagine the suffering of all those people. Imagine being stuck, on a reef, in a storm with gale-force winds, in 1918, on a steamship with little-to-no communication. Now remember that they were stranded like that for 40 hours before the ship sank.

Among the pieces Wayne sang was “Sophia’s Lullaby.”

“’The Princess Sophia Lullaby’ is about the ship actually singing to the people aboard,” Wayne said, emotionally. “And I really think she is singing to the children. Lines in there, ‘sleep children, wake with the dawn, it’s beautiful here, the days aren’t very long, and the nights are lovely, so just sleep and we’ll wake with the morn.’ So I really think it’s directed to those children to just be calm and it will all be OK.”

Sadly, it was not OK. All aboard perished, and in the turmoil of the end of World War I, one of the worst maritime disasters of all time had little closure. And now, 100 years later it’s the anniversary of a tragedy. How do we honor that?

“Opera is such a large, heavy-emotion medium for expressing stories,” said the opera’s Artistic Director William Todd Hunt. “And in a lot of ways I think it’s perfect just because it can capture that depth of emotion and pull you along, especially with a sensitive composer like Emerson [Eads], in a way that I personally think you couldn’t pull off with, say, just a straight play.”

In addition to the Emerson Eads, the opera features a libretto by Dave Hunsaker.

It’s hard to say what the opera will do, or what it represents, until the curtain falls. And, like most art does, it will affect each person in a different way. Perhaps it will offer closure for some, commemoration for others. And, maybe, it’s a way to feel what those people felt 100 years ago. But, safely, from a comfortable seat in the audience.

“The Princess Sophia Opera” plays 8 p.m. Saturday, and a 2 p.m. matinee on Sunday at Juneau-Douglas High School. The opera is also being recorded for possible later broadcast on 360 North.

Editor’s note: The Orpheus Project is contracting 360 North to record The Princess Sophia opera and promoted it through KTOO underwriting.

Alaska State House candidate Marilyn Stewart grew up in a family of Democrats in Alabama. Her first political job in Alaska was with Democratic Gov. Tony Knowles in community relations. Stewart later joined the Republican party when she began to feel the Democratic party wasn’t doing enough to elevate people from lower economic standings — especially for Black Alaskans like her.

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“I would hear things like, ‘Well we gotta get those people to the polls to vote. Who in the Black community should we reach out to that can galvanize these people and get them to the polls and vote?'” Stewart said. “Versus in the Republican party, the conversation we’re having is that we want prosperity, we want business opportunity for all.”

Now a Republican running in District 21 in Anchorage, Stewart is a minority in several ways. A little less than 4 percent of the state is Black, and a Pew research study found that about 10 percent of Black people in America identify as conservative — with 3 percent calling themselves Republicans. If that holds true in Alaska, Stewart falls in a demographic that’s less than half of a percent of the state’s population.

Alaska’s Legislature has always been overwhelmingly white. Even in the most diverse areas of the state, white Alaskans have almost always been elected to serve in Juneau. This year, there are seven Black Alaskans running for the Legislature — six for the house and one for the senate. It’s an unusually high number.

Anchorage NAACP president Kevin McGee says he’s never seen so many Black candidates on the ballot.

“Not to my knowledge, and like I said, I’ve been here since ’73,” McGee said.

And four of the candidates are Black Republicans — like Marilyn Stewart. They make up about 11 percent of the Republicans running for the state House.

Tuckerman Babcock chairs the Alaska Republican Party. He says the party doesn’t go out of its way to recruit diverse candidates. But he says the party has been encouraging minority candidates who show interest in Republican politics to seek prominent roles.

“People who have traditionally not given the Republican Party any thought, despite their being moderate or conservative themselves, now they realize they are welcome, they are encouraged,” Babcock said.

All four Black Republicans running for the House ran unopposed in the primary elections, something Babcock attributed to the support of the party for these candidates. But they’ll have an uphill battle to win the general election. All are running for office in districts that have been long represented by democrats. Ceezar Martinson is running to fill the District 20 seat of retiring Democratic Representative Les Gara.

The other Black Republican candidates are Marcus Sanders, running against incumbent Andy Josephson for House District 17, and Stanley Wright who’s challenging incumbent Ivy Spohnholz in House District 16. Both Black Democrats running for the state House are running in conservative districts. Danyelle Kimp is running against Republican Nancy Dahlstrom in House District 13 to replace outgoing Representative Dan Saddler. Dennis Harris is running to unseat incumbent Louise Stutes in House District 32.

Martinson says that he’s encouraged that, even if he and the other candidates don’t all win, they are showing a diversity of thought among Black Americans.

“And it’s been an honor to run with all of them, because I think all of us have a diversity of background and experience that we have brought to our races and to the discussions that we’re having around different issues,” Martinson said. “And I think it’s really elevated the conversation.”

One of the Black candidates running for office who has a clearer path to victory is Democrat Elvi Gray-Jackson, the sole candidate running for the Senate. Gray-Jackson has a career in Alaska politics that stretches back to the 90s with her service for and on the Anchorage Assembly. She’s also running against Republican Jim Crawford to replace outgoing Democratic Senator Berta Gardner in a very liberal district.

Gray-Jackson has worked locally to help recruit diverse candidates for the Democratic Party, and she says that diversity for its own sake can’t be a minority candidate’s sole platform.

“I happen to be African American, but the people that I’m going to represent are not all African Americans,” Gray-Jackson said. “We have a diverse community. I represent everybody. I work for all the people, not just people who look like me, but I work for all the people.”

Local NAACP president McGee says that even though most Black Alaskans identify with the Democratic party, issues-focused campaigns are a common thread among all of the candidates of color running for office.

“If people are honest with themselves, you get an honest approach to seeking out solutions,” McGee said. “Now if you just go in there and say, ‘I’m a Democrat, and I’m only gonna look at the Democratic side of things,’ that’s not right either.”

McGee says he’s hopeful that seeing higher numbers of minority candidates in general will encourage those who thought politics wasn’t for them to reconsider.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect a seventh Black candidate for the legislature: Dennis Harris, a Democrat running for House District 32.

In what the parties are calling a unique public-private partnership, the Sitka Electric Department has just installed five new cell phone towers — on behalf of wireless service provider GCI. The deal could help shave Sitkans’ electric bills by around $2 million over the next 20 years.

Sitka’s electric director Bryan Bertacchi began working on the idea a couple of years ago, as the department searched for new ways to generate revenue.

“As a utility, we’re really good at putting up poles.” Bertacchi explains. “What they do is antennas. And the community wants better cell service. And they certainly want revenue to share in that benefit that GCI gets, so I found it to be the perfect public-private partnership for the community.”

GCI is a telecommunications company founded 35 years ago in Alaska. Spokesperson Heather Handyside says the company has often had to look to creative solutions to improve infrastructure in such a huge region, but she doesn’t think it’s been done quite like this before.

Sitka’s Bertacchi explains that the deal is pretty straightforward.

“We invested $300,000 in capital, but it returns not only $100,000 a year in a lease for 20 years — they also have a big electric load,” he said. “Not only will each one of these towers have significant electric load, they’ve put in some switching on Japonski, on top of SEARHC hospital that’s a 400-amp feed. And there’s going to be some property tax involved for their equipment on top of the poles. So, from a community standpoint we’re looking at about $120,000 a year of revenue. So it’s less than a three-year payback on the investment that the community made through the Electric Department, and we get a lot better cell service.”

CGI already has antennas on SEARHC’s Mt. Edgecumbe Hospital, and on the Alaska Raptor Rehabilitation Center. The new towers are going in at the top of Shotgun Alley, on the hillside above Sea Mart, on the old Harbor Mt. Road, Viking Way, and at the ferry terminal. They’ll be discreet — as cell phone towers go — and will resemble Sitka’s existing 60-foot utility poles.

GCI says that the new coverage will significantly improve voice and data — even when a cruise ship is in town. But even though carrier contracts are common in telecommunications, Handyside wouldn’t disclose whether the new towers would benefit Sitka’s local AT&T customers.

And as KCAW found out, Bryan Bertacchi isn’t sure about that either.

KCAW: “What about us AT&T customers? Are we going to be left out in the cold?”
Bertacchi: “You know it’s interesting, I’m an AT&T customer myself, and I would have loved to have made something work with them, but at the time it just wasn’t in the place — it wasn’t in the cards — to make it work. I think it will be interesting for all of us AT&T users — GCI’s service has gotten better already, they’ve done a lot of work on the existing system — but I think by the end of January all five of these sites will be in service. That’s how fast this has gone.”

KCAW News reached out to AT&T Corporate Communications in Dallas, Texas, for comment on the issue, but has not yet received a response. Bertacchi plans to update the Sitka Assembly on the project at their next regular meeting, which has been rescheduled to Thursday, Nov. 8.

Stories are posted on the APRN news page. You can subscribe to APRN’s newsfeeds via email, podcast and RSS. Follow us on Facebook at alaskapublic.org and on Twitter @AKPublicNews

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To cut crime, candidates weigh adding troopers, increasing drug treatment

Andrew Kitchenman, KTOO – Juneau

Alaska’s rising crime has become a central point of contention in the closing days of the race to be governor.

Despite progress, Alaska lacks resources to handle rape kit backlog

Zachariah Hughes, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

An audit and change in collection practices identified 2,568 kits from police departments all around the state that had not been submitted previously and remain untested for DNA matches.

Alaska urges British Columbia to toughen mining standards

Jacob Resneck, CoastAlaska – Juneau

The Walker administration is using its final weeks in office to push for tougher mine rules across the border in British Columbia. The province is in the midst of reviewing its mine reclamation laws.

An unusually high number of Black Alaskans are running for the Legislature — and most are Republicans

Wesley Early, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

As long as Alaska has been a state, its legislature has always been overwhelmingly white. Even in the most diverse areas of the state, white Alaskans have almost always been elected to serve in Juneau. However, this year’s general election has an unusually high number of Black Alaskans on the ballot, and most of them are running as Republicans.

First transgender women sworn into Fairbanks-area offices 

Associated Press

The first two transgender women elected to public office in Alaska have been sworn in for their new jobs.

Donlin Gold still waiting for big state permits

Krysti Shallenberger, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Bethel

So far in the permitting process, Donlin Gold’s biggest milestone has been the Army Corps of Engineers’ joint record of decision, issued in August.

AK: Can opera help give closure to the Princess Sophia tragedy?

Scott Burton, KTOO – Juneau

A collaboration of producers and artists from across the country present a new opera about a local tragedy: “The Princess Sophia.” Can art help us process the worst maritime disaster in Alaska history?

49 Voices: Quinn Bennett of Anchorage

Ammon Swenson, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

This week we’re hearing from Quinn Bennett in Anchorage. Bennett is a lifelong Alaskan who’s done everything from outdoor guiding to teaching. He moved to Anchorage from Soldotna at the age of ten.

The State of Alaska is chipping away at the thousands of backlogged and untested sexual assault kits. But officials with the Department of Public Safety stress that recent progress is partially due to one-time grant funds, and that it needs more resources to keep up with rising demands for DNA testing in violent and sexual crimes.

On Friday, DPS released its annual legislative report on the statewide inventory of rape kits. Though down from last year when such reporting began, the crime lab still has 2,568 kits from police departments all around the state that had not been submitted previously and remain untested for DNA matches.

One reason for that high number is that in recent years, DPS centralized protocols for how sexual assault kits from police departments statewide are tested and stored long-term. Officials with the department say the current pool of untested kits represent decades of samples from 48 law enforcement agencies all around Alaska.

Mounting national attention on rape kit backlogs led Alaska officials to audit and overhaul the state’s collection system.

“Alaska has started looking at that, as well, and it started looking at an inventory statewide of how many kits do our law enforcement agencies have, and why weren’t they submitted,” explained Michelle Collins, who supervises forensic biology for the sexual assault team.

As recently as 2017, kits would remain untested in a local police department when the victim wished to remain anonymous, if police thought DNA would not further an investigation, or when prosecutors didn’t think a case was strong enough to bring charges. Priority is generally given to cases involving serious violence or an imminent threat to the public.

According to Collins, the state will now collect and retain rape kits in a more uniform manner.

“We want to test even if it’s not needed to prosecute that case, we still want to test that kit and determine if there’s data there that may be useful in other cases,” Collins said.

Under a federal program called the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative meant to reduce sexual assault kit backlogs, 577 samples from Alaska State Trooper have been sent out of state for testing at a private lab. The money is also being used to study and implement best practices on how DPS coordinates with other police departments.

However, officials say without more staff and resources budgeted from the Legislature, the backlog in kits will grow again. In its report, the department is asking lawmakers to add around $700,500 in new operating funds for expanded forensic testing.

Gov. Bill Walker is using his final weeks in office to urge his Canadian counterpart in British Columbia to toughen regulations on mines in transboundary watersheds. It’s a position fisheries advocates have been pushing for.

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A mine can’t legally operate in Alaska unless the owner makes financial assurances it can pay for remediation. Basically, that’s cleaning things up to a point that satisfies regulators.

“Here in Alaska we require that mines put up a full reclamation bond that shows that a mine can clean up its mess, and that is not required in British Columbia,” said Heather Hardcastle of Salmon Beyond Borders, a group that campaigns against transboundary mine pollution.

Her group has been urging Alaska’s governor to demand the same from British Columbia.

On Wednesday, she got her wish after Governor Walker penned a two-page letter to British Columbia Premier John Horgan demanding financial assurances.

“This letter in multiple paragraphs mentions it multiple times so it makes it very clear that financial assurances are a priority for Alaska,” said Ephraim Froehlich, the governor’s senior adviser on fish and game.

He said recent contacts between the Walker administration and British Columbia’s minister for mines made it apparent the province wasn’t enthusiastic about adding that requirement.

“And so it made it very clear that the governor had to make Alaska’s position crystal clear for the other side,” Froehlich said.

Salmon advocates applaud the new position.

“It’s much more forceful in tone than previous letters,” Hardcastle said. “I think it perfectly encapsulates the frustration that all of us are feeling right now with British Columbia and Canada.”

That frustration is also felt by some in the Walker administration. That’s because there’s precedent for mine operators in British Columbia going bankrupt and walking away.

Just upstream from Taku Inlet near Juneau, the former Tulsequah Chief Mine across the border, has been leeching acidic runoff for decades. The Taku River is an important salmon fishery in Southeast. The Taku River Tlingit First Nation in Canada also wrote the premier in September demanding the mine be cleaned up.

Meanwhile, there’s a booming Golden Triangle mining area in British Columbia with additional metals mines being proposed just over the border. And there are fears of the owner of the Red Chris Mine going bankrupt and being unable to finish what it started.

“We’re not going to be able to have confidence in British Columbia’s reclamation abilities of these mines that they are permitting at a pretty high rate if we do not see Tulsequah Chief be remediated and be cleaned up and properly dealt with,” he said.

The Walker administration’s days are numbered. Froehlich said the letter states Alaska’s position clearly for whomever occupies the governor’s mansion next month.

“We would hope that whatever administration comes in next takes a strong stance,” he said.

The British Columbia premier’s office referred questions to the province’s Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, which didn’t respond by Friday afternoon.

Calls to the Mining Association of British Columbia weren’t returned Friday.

Walker’s letter comes at a time that British Columbia is reviewing its mine reclamation laws. Province officials will accept public comments on recommended policy changes through Nov. 8.

The lead up to the holidays can be fun and exciting, but it can also be stressful and lonely. Financial pressure in the season of gifts and big meals can strain family budgets and what about those who are alone? On the next Talk of Alaska we’ll hear from community members who help connect people to everything from food and housing to job assistance and friendship.

HOST: Anne Hillman

GUESTS:

• Jim Baldwin – Food Bank CEO
• Alan Budahl – Lutheran Social Services

• Call 550-8422 (Anchorage) or 1-800-478-8255 (statewide) during the live broadcast
• Post your comment before, during or after the live broadcast (comments may be read on air).
• Send email to talk@alaskapublic.org (comments may be read on air)

LIVE Broadcast: Tuesday, November 6, 2018 at 10:00 a.m. on APRN stations statewide.

SUBSCRIBE: Get Talk of Alaska updates automatically by email, RSS or podcast.

How to address the problem of rising crime in Alaska has become a central point of contention in the closing days of the race to be governor.

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Recent debates have focused on the criminal justice overhaul passed two years ago, known as Senate Bill 91.

SB 91 drew from research that suggests that reduced criminal sentences can actually lead to reduced crime. The law allowed some low-risk offenders to avoid jail time. It also changed sentencing, bail, and probation, and it funded drug treatment.

But it’s prompted a fierce backlash from residents and police alike, who are upset over rising crime. The Legislature has passed two major laws to scale back the overhaul.

Republican candidate Mike Dunleavy said during a debate hosted by Alaska Public Media and KTUU Channel 2 that despite the changes to the bill, he still opposes it.

“I would repeal it, because the people of Alaska have lost trust in this bill and I believe we can do better,” he said. “I believe that we can fill in the holes that are in 91 and … restore that trust with the people of Alaska.”

Democratic candidate Mark Begich said during another debate – on KTVA — that he’d “clear the deck” of what’s left of SB 91. But he’d replace it with what he described as a comprehensive plan.

“If you just get wrapped around 91, you’re missing the big picture – which is fighting crime in this state,” he said.

His plan includes more treatment, as well as more state aid to municipalities to hire police officers. To fill vacant trooper, corrections and prosecutor positions, Begich said he’d expand recruitment and training, while offering defined-benefit pensions to compete with the Lower 48.

Dunleavy said public safety would be the highest priority for the state budget.

“That’s the primary purpose of a state – of any government – is provide safety for its citizens,” he said. “The last four years, we’ve all changed our behaviors. I don’t think there’s any of us that know of anyone that’s not been impacted by crime – either directly or indirectly.”

Dunleavy said he would fund his public safety initiatives by reducing the number of state government jobs that are budgeted for but aren’t filled.

There might not be much money available. The state budget accounts for the assumption that the state won’t have to spend money for a certain number of positions that become vacant throughout the year.

Begich emphasized that of the positions the state does fund but hasn’t filled, many are in public safety – where the state has struggled to successfully recruit and retain troopers.

He said that if unspent money was available, conservative lawmakers would have found it during the fiscal crisis.

“Because I guarantee you, the Senate – especially with (Republican Senate President) Pete Kelly at the lead – would have found that money and used it in some way without having to worry about dealing with taking the Permanent Fund,” Begich said.

Dunleavy wants to hire more officers and prosecutors, with a goal of arresting and jailing more people who commit crimes.

“We have to get the right number of troopers in place,” Dunleavy said. “We have to get the right number of prosecuting attorneys to move our cases through. We have to open up the courts Friday afternoon instead of closing Friday afternoon. And we have to look at corrections, to make sure we have the right number of folks there, because there will be a bit of an increase in folks going to prison.”

Begich also supports increasing the number of troopers and prosecutors. But in response to rising drug-related crime, Begich also emphasized drug treatment and using wellness courts, which divert offenders into treatment programs.

“Eighty percent of our folks in corrections need the treatment necessary – those that want to have it. Wellness courts are another great investment,” he said. “I’ve seen the turnaround: Ninety percent of the people who go through wellness courts do not re-offend. It’s the right kind of investment to have a long-term impact.”

Begich also said tribal courts could be expanded in Alaska Native communities, with a similar goal of reducing recidivism.

Begich added that he wants to fix a gap in the drug treatment system. People who leave prison have 28 days of medication to treat their addiction, but Medicaid coverage only begins after 30 days.

Dunleavy also said treatment is a priority.

Voters will decide on Tuesday.

The needs of those experiencing homelessness and poverty in the Homer area are growing, and organizations are stepping up to help.

The Homelessness Action Group began recently as a way to address the lack of shelters in the area and the Homer Community Food Pantry is expanding, in part because the number of clients it serves is growing.

Kyla Dammann works with youth at the Recreation and Education Cooperative, better known as the R.E.C. Room. She said teenagers have come up to her with no place to sleep and helping them find a place to stay is complicated.

“Basically if you take in someone that age without parent permission, it’s considered harboring a minor, so there’s a lot of hoops to jump through with that and there’s not really a whole lot of places for them to go,” she said.

The Kenai Peninsula Borough School District said the number of homeless students is increasing. There are programs to help homeless students such as the district’s Students in Transition program, which helps students who lack stable or adequate housing.

There’s also the Safe Families for Children program, which give parents an option to put their kids in a safe place while facing a temporary crisis.

There are also some exceptions that allow caregivers to take minors in without parental permission. But there are no shelters in Homer open to teenagers.

“Most homeless youth have couches to sleep on so they can hop around from friends to friends and stay with different families and whatever…,” she said. “But there was one instance in particular where somebody was given a tent and went to go sleep in a park before the campground opened and then couldn’t sleep there.”

So Dammam and the head of the local Safe Families for Children chapter started the Homelessness Action Group in September. A similar organization existed in Homer in the past.

“My goal with being a part of a group or starting a group is that we can find a solution to giving people beds,” she said.

The group has held two meetings so far and it plans to continue to meet once a month. By the spring, Dammam hopes its plans for a teen shelter will become more concrete.

The group is also starting a fund to help homeless teens who come to the R.E.C. Room. It additionally plans to hold a resource event in January, which will offer items and services such as clothing, cab vouchers and medical care to homeless residents.

But the Homelessness Action Group isn’t the only one seeing an increase in need. David Nofziger is the board president of the Homer Community Food Pantry. He said the pantry has seen more people coming through its doors in recent years.

“In 2017 [there] was about 10 percent more households than were in 2016,” he said. “This year we have had essentially the same number of households come in the 10 months that have passed that we had all year last year. So we’re going to have more total households this year again.”

Nofziger said not everyone who utilizes the food pantry’s services comes regularly. He said there is a large number of area residents who just come in a handful of times per year.

But he said regulars are coming more often than in the past. He adds that clients often need more than just food. Sherry Stead, a board member of the pantry said that’s why the organization offers additional services.

“We provide needed emergency assistance including heating oil, wood, laundry and shower vouchers,” she said. “We have camping gear that we give out if people need camping gear.”

The nonprofit also gives financial assistance so people can afford prescription medication and partners with other organizations to help those coming through its doors find and pay for housing.

The pantry also recently started offering a number of kids a backpack of food weekly. But Stead said one of the biggest changes is the board hiring a staff member this summer. The pantry used to pay a few people to help clean but otherwise, it relied solely on volunteers.

“We do have the paid coordinator now for half-time and that has really allowed us to offer more to our clients,” she said.

The food pantry is holding its annual Empty Bowls Fundraising Luncheon on Nov. 9. The Homelessness Action Group is hosting an ecstatic dance fundraiser Friday at KBay Caffé.

This week we’re hearing from Quinn Bennett in Anchorage. Bennett is a lifelong Alaskan who’s done everything from outdoor guiding to teaching. He moved to Anchorage from Soldotna at the age of ten.

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BENNETT: I don’t know if it’s rural versus urban, or what it is, but at the time moving up to Anchorage, to the big city, there was a culture difference, in the sense of… my first curse words were learned here in Anchorage. The first time that I had any “adult” conversations were had in Anchorage. I didn’t have any of that in Soldotna whatsoever.

I’m a pretty big outdoorsy person, growing up especially but today as well. I like to hike and backpack quite a bit. I work in the summers as a kayak guide and a glacier and ice climbing guide, so I’m always outside doing something.

I have a nine-month-old right now that’s kinda slowed me down a little bit. But overall, we try to get even her outside a quite a bit. The first camping she ever did was tent camping, and she did better outside in the woods than she did at home at the time. She was sleeping and waking up every 20 to 40 minutes at home. We brought her outside and she slept like… a baby.

I think definitely I don’t have anything to prove anymore. I still do solo stuff, ut the big thing for me is, you know, if I’m gonna do a 12-mile plus hike, or go boating, I’m gonna do it in a couple days, at least two. I don’t need to push it. I don’t need to test myself anymore. I don’t need to try and climb the highest peak anymore. I don’t need to try and climb these cliffs because I don’t have anything to prove anymore.

When voters head to the polls Tuesday, many will be confronted with a list of judges they probably never heard of. However, controversy surrounding an Anchorage judge’s recent ruling in a high-profile assault case is bringing more attention to the power the electorate has over the judiciary.

Alaska is one of 20 states where judges have to run for retention. That’s according to the National Center for State Courts, and the center said Alaska is one of four states that provide state-sanctioned evaluations of judges on the ballot.

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“Alaska was the first state to really mandate evaluation of Judges standing for retention, and the council’s been doing this since 1976,” Suzanne DiPietro, executive director of the Alaska Judicial Council, said.

The council runs the evaluation process. It factors in interviews with judges, public hearings, how well judges’ rulings hold up in appeal and several other factors. Then, the council scores judges from one to five.

None of this is very exciting, but a recent decision by Anchorage Superior Court Judge Michael Corey has galvanized an organized campaign to throw him off the bench.

That’s because Corey sentenced an Anchorage man named Justin Schneider to probation in an assault case that grabbed national headlines. Schneider pled guilty to second-degree assault. Many viewed his actions as premeditated sexual assault.

Elizabeth Williams is a social worker who started a political action committee encouraging voters to check no when they see Corey’s name on the ballot. Voters from Talkeetna to Homer will vote whether to retain Corey on Tuesday.

“I don’t think I would have started this campaign if Schneider had even gotten six months,” Williams explained. “Would I think that’s woefully inadequate? Yes, but I probably wouldn’t be taking to the streets in the way that I have.”

What’s vexing for the judge’s critics is Corey’s evaluation doesn’t take this controversial ruling into account. That’s because it was completed before Corey issued the decision.

Even so, DePietro said it might not have had much of a bearing on the council’s recommendation to retain him.

“We’re looking at the judge’s entire performance,” DePietro explained. “On a controversial case, the question is not, ‘Do I personally agree with that decision or like that decision?’ The question is ‘was the decision legally correct?’”

Williams is aware of the system. She used to perform research work for the judicial council while working for the University of Alaska Anchorage. She knows both its strengths and its shortcomings.

“I think that’s what the Alaska Judicial Council is good at is going over their entire record, and I fully respect that,” Williams said. “But I think there are some cases that are so egregious that we need to put more weight on that.”

Some in the legal community see a silver lining stemming from the controversy surrounding the Corey ruling. They say rulings like these get people, much like Williams, to focus on the judicial system.

“When there’s controversy, people look, and I’m an optimistic person, I think people learn,” Elaine Andrews said.

Andrews has been there. She’s a former superior court judge who said the law has dictated some of her unpopular rulings while on the bench. And she cautions people not to let one controversial ruling shade their judgement while voting.

“I mean, I certainly have had cases where I know the public is going to be extremely unhappy, and in fact, I’m personally unhappy about the decision I need to render,” Andrew added.

There are 15 judges up for retention in Alaska’s first, third and fourth judicial districts. The full list judges on the ballot and their bios is on the Alaska Judicial Council’s website. A summary of each judge’s evaluation score can also be found in the voter’s pamphlet.

If you’re one of those people who’s been in suspense about the election on Tuesday, here’s some bad news for you.

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It’s unlikely that we’ll know the results from all of the races in Alaska tomorrow night.

First of all, it takes a long time for the state elections division just to count all the ballots cast on Election Day. The last counts on primary night, in August, didn’t arrive until after 2 a.m, said Samantha Miller, a spokeswoman for the division.

Then there are absentee and other types of votes. Absentee ballots count as long as they’re postmarked on or before Election Day, which means many of them arrive afterwards.

The state also waits to count questioned ballots — like ones cast at the wrong precinct — and ballots cast on Election Day by people who went to regional elections headquarters, rather than the polling place where they live.

In the past, thousands of ballots have been counted after Election Night.

One person who’s intimately familiar with how Election Night results can change is Mark Begich, the Democrat who this year is running for governor. In 2008, U.S. Sen Ted Stevens was 3,000 votes ahead of Begich in the initial count.

But two weeks later, after absentee and other uncounted votes were tallied, Begich was declared the winner of the U.S. Senate race.

Another person who knows the feeling is Sitka Democratic Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins. His first race, in 2012, wasn’t resolved until absentee ballot counts that happened after Election Night.

“Every day it was like watching the stock market ticker go up and down. Because my margin would shrink and grow. And it flipped. I was down for a while. At one point I was tied, 4,421 to 4,421, something like that,” he said. “Every day was sort of growing drama.”

Kreiss-Tomkins said he thinks more than one race could be that tight this year — including the races for governor and U.S. House, and the ones that determine whether the Alaska House stays controlled by its largely-Democratic majority coalition.

“The Congressional race and the gubernatorial race, really, have all the makings of being a nail-biter, days or weeks beyond election night,” Kreiss-Tomkins said. “Don’t expect instant gratification in knowing what Alaska’s going to look like in the next couple of years, in terms of elected officials.”

The state will make an initial tally of absentee and other uncounted ballots a week after Election Day. A final count will be done by November 21. Elections officials hope to certify the results by November 23.

In the last few days before an election, it’s pretty common for political groups to start playing fast and loose with Alaska’s campaign finance laws — and the state’s cash-strapped campaign finance regulators say they’d need a larger staff to monitor all the ads in the last-minute barrage.

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Alaska law requires independent expenditure groups — the state-level version of “super PACs” that can accept unlimited donations from unions and corporations — to disclose their leaders and funders. Last week, Anchorage Democratic Rep. Les Gara filed a formal complaint accusing one such group backing Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Dunleavy of playing an accelerated disclosure that breaks a part of that law requiring the information to be “easily heard.”

The group running the radio ads was Families for Alaska’s Future – Dunleavy. Nearly all of its money is from the Washington, D.C.-based Republican Governors Association — a GOP political group whose big donors include casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam, Nike founder Phil Knight and Koch Industries.

The Dunleavy group’s chair, Anchorage media executive Steve Strait, said the disclosure is comprehensible to his “trained ear.” But he acknowledged that there’s a “tendency to speed it up” when groups like his are paying steep prices for their ads — as much as $10,000 for a single, 30-second television commercial.

“There’s a price to this time. It’s the value to it, whether it be 30 seconds or 60,” he said. “A third of the ad could be taken up with this text. You’ve gotta get it out of the way, and your message gets lost in there.”

The group, out of what Strait described as “an abundance of caution,” slowed down its disclosures after Gara complained. The agency that regulates Alaska’s campaign finance laws, the Alaska Public Offices Commission, declined to issue an expedited decision on Gara’s complaint before the election, saying that since the disclosure was fixed, it could deal with any violations later.

Gara argued that the disclosure broke the state’s law because it made it impossible to hear who was actually funding the messaging, and why the group might be supporting a particular candidate.

With Alaska’s political campaigns coming down to the wire, you don’t have to look very hard to find other ads testing the law’s limits.

One recently-posted satirical online video featured an anonymous person pretending to be the late U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens. From beyond the grave, Stevens tells voters to get rid of the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Mark Begich, and vote for Mike Dunleavy.

The short video was shared by a conservative website. But there’s no disclaimer on it saying who created it or who paid for it, which is likely a violation of campaign finance law, according to APOC officials.

The agency, according to Executive Director Heather Hebdon, has two employees who monitor ads and respond to phone calls about possible violations. But she said there’s no way the agency can effectively monitor all the ads and communications from campaigns and other groups this late in the election. She estimated they’d need three more people just to stay on top of it all.

Lawmakers shrank the agency’s budget by more than one-third during the state’s budget crisis.

This story was written by Zachariah Hughes and Nathaniel Herz. 

Stories are posted on the APRN news page. You can subscribe to APRN’s newsfeeds via email, podcast and RSS. Follow us on Facebook at alaskapublic.org and on Twitter @AKPublicNews

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How will the next governor affect Permanent Fund Dividends?

Rashah McChesney, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Juneau

The two front-runners — former state Senator Mike Dunleavy and former U.S. Senator Mark Begich both say they want to raise PFDs.

Young and Galvin soldier through the last days of the election

Liz Ruskin, Alaska Public Media – Washington D.C.

In the final days before the election, Congressman Don Young preached an anti-government message at a Republican rally in Anchorage, while independent challenger Alyse Galvin worked to visit – or at least speak to – all 40 of the state’s legislative districts.

As Alaska’s elections come down to wire, ads test limits of campaign finance laws

Zachariah Hughes and Nathaniel Herz, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

In the last few days before an election, it’s pretty common for political groups to start playing fast and loose with Alaska’s campaign finance laws — and the state’s cash-strapped campaign finance regulators say they’d need a larger staff to monitor all the ads in the last-minute barrage.

Meyer, Call bring different backgrounds as lieutenant governor candidates

Andrew Kitchenman, KTOO – Juneau

While the spotlight has been on candidates for governor Mike Dunleavy and Mark Begich, their running mates also offer contrasting choices for voters tomorrow.

Absentee, other ballots could leave Alaska governor’s race undecided Tuesday

Nathaniel Herz, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Anchorage

Political junkies: close races could be decided by absentee and other ballots counted many days after the election.

Controversial ruling brings attention to judges on the ballot

Aaron Bolton, KBBI – Homer

Controversy surrounding an Anchorage judge’s recent ruling in a high-profile assault case is bringing more attention to the power the electorate has over the judiciary.

Marijuana industry backing cannabis-friendly candidates, favors Kawasaki over Kelly

Tim Ellis, KUAC – Fairbanks

For the first time since Alaskans legalized marijuana four years ago, members of the industry that grow and sell it are contributing to the campaigns of candidates they consider cannabis-friendly. The marijuana industry isn’t a big player in this year’s election, but some of its Fairbanks members have taken sides in the state’s most hotly-contested legislative race.

In the final days before the election, Congressman Don Young got some six-figure help from a Republican Political Action Committee while his campaign ran an ad accusing independent challenger Alyse Galvin of taking money from Democratic PACs. Galvin denounced the ad, for several reasons.

On Sunday, while Galvin was on a campaign swing in Juneau, Young was at a Republican rally and chili feed at Anchorage Christian Schools. He cheered the crowd by condemning federal overreach while lauding personal liberty.

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“This is a great nation. We basically have good people,” Young said from the stage of multipurpose room. “Don’t let – I call it the cancer of our society – socialism, take it over. And that’s where this nastiness is coming from. We have to stand up as Americans, and we have to stand up as Alaskans and say ‘we’re taking our lives back.’”

Young has been in office 45 years, longer that most Alaskans have been alive. He’s now 85. But he said he feels 35.

The Galvin camp was buoyed by a poll last week showing her one percentage point ahead of Young. That poll was conducted by Ivan Moore, who typically works for candidates and causes on the political left. Galvin isn’t the first challenger Moore has said was in the lead. Young’s campaign manager, Jerry Hood, isn’t buying it.

“With all due respect to Ivan, he was wrong in 2008, he was wrong two years ago,” Hood said. “I have had consistent and extensive polling since June, and we have maintained a good lead.”

The Young campaign has not made its polling public.

Nationally, Republicans are apparently concerned about their Alaska colleague. The Congressional Leadership Fund, a Political Action Committee affiliated with the leaders of the U.S. House majority, announced Saturday it had dropped at least $100,000 on a “hyper-targeted” phone campaign to help Young.

Galvin said that’s not right.

“We really need to rewrite our laws to get big money out of politics,” she said. “When they can come in and scoop up an election in a couple of days, with a heck of a lot of money that nobody really understands where it’s coming from. That just doesn’t make any sense.”

The Congressional Leadership Fund is required to disclose its donors. Federal Election Commission data show the Fund’s largest donors are Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam, who together donated $50 million. Another of its major donors is American Action Network, a group that doesn’t have to tell the FEC where its money comes from.

As it happens, the Young campaign began running ads last week accusing Galvin of going back on her promise not to accept “special interest” money.

“But wait: she already has,” the ad says. “Contributions from the Blue Momentum PAC and the Swing Left PAC, funded by New York and San Francisco millionaires, including left-wing George Soros.”

Galvin received contributions totaling $3,000 from the two PACs, which are linked to Democrats.

Galvin said she’s keeping her pledge not to accept corporate PAC money. She points out that Young has received $480,000 from Political Action Committees.

“That’s almost half of his money, just from PACs,” she said. “And I’ve received less than 2 percent in PAC money.”

Galvin said she also finds it “very distressing” that the ad points a finger at George Soros, whose name is mention twice in the one-minute spot.

Soros is a billionaire who gives money to liberal causes (and gave $50,000 to Swing Left). Soros is also at the center of a lot of far right-wing conspiracy theories that depict him as an evil person who secretly controls the levers power. The Anti-Defamation League says the theories are sometimes explicitly anti-Semitic.

“Don Young, whether he intended it or not, is perpetuating that anti-Semitism and hateful stereotypes, by putting out this ad,” Galvin said.

Young’s campaign manager called the charge of anti-Semitism “ridiculous.”

The ad calls Soros “left-wing” and “socialist.” It doesn’t mention that he’s Jewish. As one of Young’s long-time supporters put it, just because Soros is the subject of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories doesn’t mean all criticism of him is anti-Semitic.

Every official ballot cast in Alaska this election will be printed in English. But for voters whose primary language isn’t English, they will likely find assistance in a familiar tongue.

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“This work addresses deficiencies in the democratic process that have gone back for a whole generation or two in which Alaska Native voters were really disenfranchised,” said Indra Arriaga, who is the elections language assistance compliance manager at the Alaska Division of Elections.

Arriaga heads the state’s program to translate elections materials. Right now there are 10 full ballot translations available: eight Alaska Native languages and dialects, as well as Spanish and Tagalog. For historically unwritten languages, the state provides oral assistance, most often recordings.

Voters can use the translations side-by-side with the official ballot — the one that gets counted — reading or listening to translations of each section, then marking their choices on the English version.

Arriaga doesn’t write the translations: She oversees translation panels. Made up of fluent speakers, most of them elders, these panels pick apart dense elections materials, line by line.

“These are complicated measures that have huge impacts on the everyday lives of people. When you read a ballot, it’s usually so complicated that it’s very difficult to understand, even in English.”

The panels take that jargon and break it down. They want their translations to make sense to voters in their rural, majority Alaska Native communities. That means explaining concepts like like “the good old boy network,” or even “candidate.”

Arriaga said the translations are typically much longer than the English original and added, “I think that actually the translations that we do in Alaska Native languages, and this is simply my gut feeling, is the translations are probably better.”

That matters, especially for Alaskans without much access to lawmakers.

Arriaga recalled working this summer in New Stuyahok, a Yup’ik village of about 500 near Dillingham. Their task: to translate Ballot Measure One. That’s the controversial initiative that would beef up protections for Alaska’s salmon habitat.

Like many villages in the state, New Stuyahok relies on the salmon fishery for both subsistence and income.

“So there are a lot of emotions that are attached to it, regardless of where they stand on it,” Arriaga said.

That could be a problem.

“My job then is to work with them, so that even though they may have concerns we have to translate what is there. And that is where working with a panel is really important.”

The panel members help each other find the right words and hold everyone accountable, keeping out personal opinions and biases.

Arriaga sees the project as a piece of something much bigger. For all Alaskans.

“I want them to understand how important it is for Alaska. It helps everybody. You don’t have to be Alaska Native to support this. You don’t have to be a speaker of any language to support this, because the benefits of diversity and the benefits of a multilingual society is huge.”

Alaska voters who need language assistance on election day can call 866-954-8683 between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. to speak to a translator.