Party infighting shadows House 9 race

In the wild, when musk ox are threatened, adults circle around the young calves, horns facing outward to meet danger head on.

Head-on collision could be a metaphor for the so-called Musk Ox Coalition, a group of House Republican majority legislators which broke from majority leaders last year when they voted against using Permanent Fund earnings reserves to balance the state budget.

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Palmer’s Republican incumbent Jim Colver stood with the Musk Ox Coalition, and now party brass is backing the Republican challenger for his House 9 seat in next week’s primary.

Two sites vital to national security – the TAPS terminal in Valdez and the Ft. Greeley missile base – bookend the House 9 district, which follows the Richardson Highway from Valdez to Delta Junction. Along the way, it winds through mountain passes, Alaska Native communities, truck stops and barley farms. The sheer diversity of the district keeps Representative Jim Colver busy.

“I am on the road a lot, I don’t get a lot of sleep,” Colver said. “I try to be there for them, sometimes I’ll do a Skype town hall meeting if I can’t be there, or phone in to community councils.”

Colver said he spends as much time as he can traveling his district in person, flying Juneau to Fairbanks on weekends, then driving the highway back down.

“They tell me, cut the budget first, then we can be supportive of some revenue going forward,” Colver said.

And he said his years on the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assembly has given him plenty of experience with budget balancing.

Colver is up for re-election this fall after his first term in the state House. But Republican party leaders, fronted by new state chair Tuckerman Babcock, want him out of the House 9 seat. The party is backing primary challenger George Rauscher. Why? To hear Colver tell it, it’s because he voted with a faction of House Republicans to support Democratic opposition to a 2015 budget deal.

“Somebody dreamed up this scheme, that well, if they took five billion dollars out of the earnings reserve account of the Permanent Fund, and that pays our dividends, and moved it to the corpus of the account, in other words put it into the principal, would trigger a provision in the [state] constitution that said there was less money available to appropriate, less money out there that was available to the legislature, therefore you didn’t need thirty votes to access the [Constitutional] Budget Reserve, and a simple majority would do it,” Colver said. “And they tried to force that issue.”

A number of legislators, Colver among them, were uncomfortable with doing that.

“Pressure was building on us to cave and go with the leadership’s plan to move the five billion dollars… I had eight legislators scream at me for an hour that I had to be a team player and do this,” Colver said. “And I’m like, there is no way I am going to mess with the people’s Permanent fund it’s the people’s money, you got to bring it out to the public.”

Since then, Colver has butted heads with majority leadership in votes on an House oil tax credit bill and a move to put legislators on the Alaska Gasline Development board.

Now, party chair Babcock is on record as labeling Colver ” a con”, or worse, a Democrat, masquerading as a Republican. In a letter to local newspapers, Babcock said he fears Colver may “flip” to the Democrats any time.

And this has thrown the Republican spotlight on primary challenger George Rauscher. Rauscher is benefitting from large campaign contributions linked to the Accountability Project PAC and to independent expenditure groups in Alaska.

Rauscher, a contractor with eight years on the Sutton Community Council, challenged Colver in the 2014 primary. Rauscher insists he’s not a hit man for the Republicans this time around. He said party leadership selected him as a candidate because he better reflects conservative values than Colver does. Rauscher said a party survey earlier this year prompted Republican leaders to swing support away from Colver.

“He’s really not representing our district in a way that is as conservative as we are, and we are willing to take the gamble, because Jim is not as conservative as we’d like,” Rauscher said.

Rauscher defended the hefty Republican party contributions to his campaign, saying that he’s just a working man, with no fundraising capability.  He said the majority of his support comes from individual donations, and he points to Colver’s generous union support.

“I’m saying he’s got a lot of special interest money, that’s what I am saying,” Rauscher said. “And that’s what bothers me.”

Rauscher said local issues are getting lost in the party infighting, and points to his work on the Sutton community council building consensus on trails, bikepaths and library issues. He said more attention is needed to promote development.. mineral, gas or agriculture… in his district.

“And I don’t see that happening,” Rauscher said. “I don’t see that happening with our legislators, I don’t see that happening with our current legislator in our district.”

Colver said his legislative work has helped to develop Copper Basin hydro and gas exploration projects.

Although Colver downplayed the concept of a House “coalition” saying that four bush Democrats routinely belong to the the House Republican-led majority anyway, he will say the faction formed last year has had an impact this session on property tax legislation and on an oil tax reform bill.

And Colver said, the Republican Party’s strategy has actually given him a boost.

“Since I’ve been under attack by the establishment, OK, Alaskans have come to the table, ponying up their cash to support me,” Colver said. “It’s been great, all of a sudden my online contributions just went nuts.”

For his part, Rauscher bemoaned the fact that the party’s beef with Colver has overshadowed his race.

“A lot of my race is more about Jim Colver than me,” Rauscher said.

The voters will decide who gets the Republican nod this time on August 16.