Congressional hopeful Alyse Galvin donned her trademark yellow blazer and gathered together sign-waving supporters Thursday in Anchorage for the first press conference of her new campaign. She announced a plan that, as Galvin puts it, aims to “get big money out of politics.”
Galvin, an education advocate, is running as an independent for Alaska’s lone seat in the U.S. House for a second time in as many election cycles. A little over a year ago, she lost the general election to longtime Alaska Congressman Don Young by a little less than 7 percent of the vote, the closest anyone has come to unseating Young since 2008.
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Galvin announced that she would continue to refuse campaign contributions from corporate political action committees and, if elected, would push to overturn Citizens United, a 2010 Supreme Court decision allowing such contributions in unlimited amounts.
“Those who have been in office, and in this case, Don Young has been in for, we’re on almost half a century,” Galvin said. “And so that many years of listening to special interests, big money lobbyists, I think, makes it tough for him to make the really important decisions that need to be made right now.”
Speaking in front of Providence Alaska Medical Center, Galvin’s supporters included a student at the nearby University of Alaska Anchorage who said he suffered from an auto-immune disease and described high medical costs and cuts to federal health insurance programs as “terrifying.”
Galvin said getting rid of “corruption” among members of both the Democratic and Republican parties in Washington D.C. will help solve high healthcare costs.
Galvin said Congressman Young had done a lot for the Alaskans who’d voted for him, but added, “We don’t need old solutions to new problems.”
Don Young’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment Thursday. His congressional office earlier in the day announced Young had voted in support of the Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act, which the U.S. House passed Thursday.
Casey Grove is host of Alaska News Nightly, a general assignment reporter and an editor at Alaska Public Media. Reach him atcgrove@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Caseyhere.
