Interior race between political veterans could shape Alaska Senate

One of the most-watched races in the state is happening in and around Fairbanks, where two longtime politicians are running in a match-up that could help decide control of the Alaska Senate.

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The incumbent, North Pole Republican John Coghill, faces a challenge from Luke Hopkins, a Democrat and former mayor of the Fairbanks North Star Borough. The race hinges on how each candidate would approach the state’s budget crisis.

Hopkins got into the race with a splash last May, releasing a letter in which he wrote that the legislature had “utterly failed Alaskans.”

Hopkins said lawmakers ducked their responsibility when they left Juneau without passing a long term plan to deal with the budget shortfall.

“I got really concerned that there wasn’t a sustainable fiscal plan, and I thought that’s what the state really needs, and I still believe in that very strongly,” Hopkins said in a phone interview this week.

Hopkins said incumbent John Coghill, who served as the Republican Majority Leader, bears responsibility for that.

It’s a line of attack Hopkins’ allies have driven home. The outside group Together for Alaska, which favors higher oil taxes and is largely funded by labor groups and the oil and gas attorney Robin Brena, has run ads criticizing Coghill as a “do-nothing legislator.”

Coghill said that’s simply not true.

“The accusation, ‘do-nothing,’ is because somebody wanted one particular thing and didn’t get it,” Coghill said, with a laugh.

He ticked off a list of the legislature’s accomplishments in the last session: budget cuts, Medicaid reform, criminal justice reform. The Republicans in the Senate passed a bill to restructure the Permanent Fund and use the earnings to pay for part of the budget, though that idea died in the House.

The problem is, some things they got done aren’t all that popular. The Permanent Fund restructuring, for instance, would have cut the PFD in half — something Governor Bill Walker later did himself.

But Coghill said they were necessary.

He’s particularly proud of the criminal justice reform bill, which he sponsored with Anchorage Democrat Johnny Ellis.

“The thing that, I think, got my attention more than anything is that two-thirds of the people coming out of prison were going back within three years,” Ellis said. “And that’s just not an acceptable rate of criminal justice return.”

Ellis said a major goal is to cut the prison population and direct more people into behavioral health programs, cutting down on recidivism and saving money at the same time. The final bill included a wide range of reforms and won bipartisan support.

Coghill said the legislature should take that approach and apply it to two of the biggest areas of state spending: education and health and social services.

“And this is where Luke and I would probably disagree immensely,” Coghill said. “We have 130,000 students and our outcomes are not that good, but our costs are way high. I’d be willing to look at, can we do it better, can we do it more frugally?”

That might mean distance education or consolidation, Coghill said.

Coghill is open to a statewide sales or income tax — he said he’d prefer a sales tax — or even revisiting oil taxes. But only as a last resort.

Like Hopkins, Coghill has received significant support from outside groups. One is The Accountability Project, which has received contributions from business, industry and Republican sources. They helped pay for an ad attacking Hopkins, and saying he’s for “higher taxes, more spending, bigger government.”

But Hopkins said lawmakers kicked the can down the road when they didn’t pass new revenue measures in the last session.

“We have to come up with a sustainable fiscal plan, and there’s huge holes in it,” Hopkins said. “And I don’t think – and I agree with the governor’s assessment, and the administration’s – that we can’t cut our way out of this.”

Hopkins opposes any new cuts to the University of Alaska, and wants to preserve education funding.

And Hopkins said Coghill and Republicans were too quick to cut the Permanent Fund dividend and dip into savings.

While those actions are probably necessary in the end, Hopkins said, he wouldn’t support them until every sector of the Alaska economy is paying its “fair share.” That means revisiting oil taxes and doing away with certain tax credits on the North Slope. It also means an income or sales tax (he said an income tax would be more fair). And it means looking at the whole slew of new taxes proposed by the governor last year, from motor fuels to mining and fishing.

“Be the statespeople that you’ve been elected to be,” Hopkins said. “Look at these, compromise as necessary, and vote them up or down. But the issue is, what do we want our state to look like in one year, two years, five years from now? We see that the oil revenue is probably not going to be coming back, so that’s what we have to prepare for. What state do we want to see?”

How the district’s voters answer that question could have ripple effects across the state. Political observers say the race is one of two that could flip control of the Senate, along with the Anchorage match-up between Republican Cathy Giessel and labor leader Vince Beltrami.