Two Democrats are running for Lisa Murkowski’s U.S. Senate seat. Both men are the same age. They’re running low- or no-budget campaigns. Both used to be Republicans. And right there, the similarities come to a dead stop. By disposition, these two candidates are polar opposites.
Edgar Blatchford is 65, and it’s hard to imagine a more boyish senior citizen. He’s got the slight build of a long-distance runner (he claims a marathon personal best of 2:49) and he comes across as guileless. When Blatchford wants to point out a harsh truth, he’ll sometimes preface it with “Good golly!”
“I think I’m beginning to realize more and more why I’m running. It’s like, I feel good about it!” he says. “I feel good about putting my name on the ballot and saying ‘I’d like to be a U.S. senator.”
He’s got political credentials. He was mayor of Seward. He served in the cabinets of two Alaska governors, Wally Hickel and Frank Murkowski. He was CEO of what’s now Chugach Alaska, the Native corporation of Prince William Sound. He also founded a chain of rural newspapers. Now, he teaches journalism and public policy at the University of Alaska.
Still, Blatchford is running an unconventional, shoestring campaign.
“What I found out is it’s incredibly difficult to raise money to go in against an incumbent,” he said. “Most people, I think, are intimidated. They don’t want to say anything. They’ll pat you on the back and say ‘Good luck. We wish you well, Edgar!'”
He says he did speak to the state Democratic Party before he filed and a committee coalesced urging him to run for U.S. House. He decided, though, that Murkowski needed a Democratic challenger.
“And I lost half my committee,” he says, with a laugh that shows no trace of bitterness. “Which is ok. I understand. I understand.”
Many of the state’s frequent Democratic donors are supporting independent Margaret Stock. Blatchford, who describes himself as a big fan of Hillary Clinton, says party affiliation matters.
“This is not the time to abandon Democratic values and try to develop relationships with people who aren’t totally reflective of Democratic values,” he says.
Blatchford has a thing for education. You’ll need two hands to count his college degrees: A BA from Alaska Methodist University, a law degree from University of Washington, a master’s in journalism from Columbia, an MA from Dartmouth, another MA from Harvard’s Kennedy school and a PhD from UAF.
Among his priorities are to improve corporate governance. Blatchford says Native corporations need more transparency and equality for shareholders, and he says maybe those changes will help Wall Street, too.
Blatchford says he has a few volunteers who are trying to get his word out on social media.
“Any of the normal tools that are used to convince voters to vote for the candidates, we don’t have that available,” he said. “But we do have a little bit of enthusiasm, a lot of commitment to Alaska values and perhaps a few smarts.”
The other Democrat on the primary ballot is Ray Metcalfe, a former legislator from Anchorage. Metcalfe calls himself “your anti-corruption candidate.” He has, for decades, distributed reams of documents detailing what he considers to be Alaska’s dirty politics.
“The dynamics of a corrupt state are such that it is the corrupt people who raise the money to put you in so you’ll give them more money so they can raise more money to put more people in,” he says.
Metcalfe seems world-weary, like he’s seen so much malfeasance that his outrage receptors have burned out and he’s operating on muscle memory. His focus is the intersection of politics and midtown real estate development. Ride with him to an Anchorage coffee shop and he’ll tell you where, as he sees it, political
influence was bought and sold.
“This is just the mid-section of my three-hour tour of skullduggery, bribery and how politicians launder money through real estate,” he says.
He’s not kidding about the tour. A few years back he had a bus and took people around to show where the bodies are buried.
Some of the scenarios Metcalfe cites were the subject of public corruption investigations, several resulting in convictions. Metcalfe also connects dots in ways no authorities have verified. His targets say his accusations are false and over the top.
As a legislator in the late ‘70s and ‘80s, Metcalfe was a Republican. But he fell out with the party, he says, after the religious right took hold. He founded his own party, the Republican Moderates. Then he went further to the left and became a Democrat. These days, he’s into Bernie Sanders’ ideas, including free college tuition and single-payer healthcare. He has some “Bernie-crat” volunteers doing his social media, he says, and he thinks Sanders’ popularity in Alaska bodes well for him.
“If you look at Bernie’s slate, I’m in 100 percent agreement with everything I’ve ever heard him say,” Metcalfe declares.
Metcalfe now feuds with the Democratic Party, which he says has mistreated the Sanders supporters.
“We still aren’t welcome. They don’t want us.They wish we would go away,” he says.
For an iconoclast like Metcalfe, it’s a comfortable spot to be in.
One of these two candidates, Metcalfe or Blatchford, will win the Democratic Primary on Tuesday. He’ll appear on the November ballot to challenge Sen. Murkowski – assuming she wins her primary against two lesser-known Republicans, Bob Lochner and Thomas Lamb.
See also: What $5M? Murkowski’s GOP challengers disregard long odds
Liz Ruskin is the Washington, D.C., correspondent at Alaska Public Media. Reach her at lruskin@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Liz here.
