Two years ago, Democrat Maxine Dibert defeated Republican Bart LeBon for the state House seat representing downtown Fairbanks.
The two are facing off again this year, in a district that’s closely divided between Republican-leaning voters and Democratic-leaning ones. With the state House also closely divided between a Republican-led coalition and a predominantly Democratic one, the result in Fairbanks likely means a great deal for control of the House overall.
“It is so 50-50,” Dibert said, talking about her district’s partisan breakdown. “It’s very close. It might be the closest district. So that just encourages me to work hard every single day.”
House District 31 is the smallest state House district outside the Municipality of Anchorage. Its boundaries cover a geographically tight, densely populated — by Alaska standards — area of downtown Fairbanks.
It has the largest Alaska Native population of any urban state House district in Alaska, with more than one in five residents identifying as Alaska Native.
It’s also poorer than average, with the sixth-lowest median household income among the state’s 40 House districts. Almost a third of its households with children are on food stamps, and the child poverty rate is above average for Alaska.
Under Alaska’s elections system, the top four vote-getters, regardless of political party, advance from the primary election to the general election. In the general election, a winner is chosen by ranked choice voting. That won’t matter in this year’s head-to-head election, but it did matter two years ago.
In 2022, LeBon had more votes than Dibert in the state primary but lost to her when they met again in the general election.
Conservative Republican Kelly Nash earned more than one in five of the first-choice votes in that year’s general election, splitting the Republican vote.
After Nash was eliminated, only 53% of her voters chose LeBon as their second preference; almost 10% of them chose Dibert, and the remainder chose no one at all.
That divide helped Dibert win the general election, but it won’t be present this year.
Working in Dibert’s favor is her name recognition — she’s had two years in office, and more people know her now than did two years ago.
“Being an incumbent now has a lot of strength and power behind it too,” Dibert said. “And a lot of my neighbors and people at their doors, they say they’ve read about me and watch me.”
But while LeBon has been out of office for two years, his 50 years of residency and long history of local involvement haven’t gone away, and he’s well-known within the district.
Getting to know the candidates
LeBon, 72, has two children and four grandchildren. He attended the University of Alaska Fairbanks before working as a banker for more than 40 years in the Fairbanks area. Starting as a loan officer in the 1970s, he rose to become executive vice president of Mt. McKinley Bank before retiring in 2017.
Befitting the district’s balanced partisan preferences, he won the election in 2018 by a single vote against a Democratic opponent. He won re-election in 2020 by a much wider margin.
His collective life experience makes him the better candidate for office, he said. LeBon hasn’t just lived in Fairbanks for 50 years, he said. He’s had 42 years in banking, six years on the school board and been an active promoter of many local nonprofits.
“That life story, if you will, makes me a very attractive candidate to serve Fairbanks,” he said. “It did so in 2018 when I won my election by one vote. It still does so today.”
Dibert, 49, is a former Fairbanks North Star Borough teacher with two children and degrees from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Lesley University in Massachusetts.
During her time as a teacher, she developed curriculum for statewide use and was a consultant for the public-television show “Molly of Denali.”
Most of the Alaska House of Representatives is white, and a majority of its members are male. Dibert is the only Alaska Native woman in the House.
“I believe we just need more representation in our Legislature, more working-class moms, dads, more voices,” she said.
She said she was in Anchorage recently and met a young woman from a rural village who told Dibert that her role in the Legislature was the reason that the young woman decided to run for her local city council.
“She’s like, ‘I just wanted to say, thank you for being a role model to me,’” Dibert said, recalling the encounter.
“Those things are powerful,” she said.
Dibert, LeBon pursue different roles in state House
Dibert says she’s willing to serve in a tripartisan House majority that includes Democrats, Republicans and independents in leadership roles. To that end, she says that the past two years proved she can work across party lines in that kind of majority.
She offered a recent example: Last week, Gov. Mike Dunleavy signed Senate Bill 13, a textbook price transparency bill from Sen. Robb Myers, R-North Pole. Dibert coordinated the bill’s passage in the House.
LeBon said he believes that this year’s election results will lead to some kind of coalition majority because any majority needs to have at least 23 members to be effective, and neither Republicans nor Democrats will hold 23 seats.
“I just don’t see it,” he said. “I think there will be a bipartisan coalition in the House, and my expectation is that it will be Republican-led, that Kathy Tilton will return as the speaker, and Republicans will hold the majority of key positions in leadership and committee chairs.”
During his prior stint in the Legislature, LeBon was a member of the House Finance Committee, and he said he intends to return to that role, regardless of whether it’s as a member of the House’s majority caucus or its minority.
That’s the most effective way to help his district, he said, in part because it positions him to negotiate well with the Senate to advance local priorities. During his prior time in office, he advanced two bills through the Legislature.
“I have a reputation for being reasonable and effective, and I can work across the aisle, not just in the House — I could interact with most anybody in the Senate, and I had four years to prove that, and I think I did,” LeBon said.
Dibert has spent the past two years on the House’s resources and education committees, and indicated that she’d like to return to those roles.
“I was the only Fairbanks legislator on the Resources Committee, so that helped me see a broader part of Alaska, not just education,” she said.
During his time in office, LeBon voted for the final version of the state’s operating budget each year, even when he disagreed with the result. By phone, he called that a strategic move intended to help relations with fellow lawmakers.
He criticized Dibert for not following suit and voting against the final version of the budget. Dibert said she considers it “a tactical vote” and knew the budget would pass without her support.
Both support BSA increase
The two candidates agree that the base student allocation — the core of the state’s per-student funding formula — should be increased.
Dibert was among the legislators who attempted to override Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of a bill that would have raised the BSA. LeBon said he also would have voted to override, but feels that better communication between legislators and the governor could have avoided the need for a veto showdown.
“With a little bit more communication, there would have been an agreement,” he said.
Permanent fix for Permanent Fund woes?
Forecasts show that the Alaska Permanent Fund could run out of spendable money in as little as three years, causing a financial shock. LeBon said he supports a constitutional amendment to fix the problem, something preferred by the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp.’s board of trustees.
Dibert expressed unfamiliarity with the problem but said that “whatever the solutions are, it cannot fall on the backs or the pocketbooks of Fairbanks families.”
Differences on transgender sports legislation
Dibert and LeBon disagree on legislation that would prohibit transgender girls from playing on girls school sports teams. The House passed such a proposal this spring, with Dibert opposed, but it failed to pass the Senate, killing the idea for the year.
The restriction remains in regulation, instead of state law.
LeBon said that if the bill returns, he would support it. He said that, as a basketball player and the parent of a basketball player, he saw the success of federal Title IX, which required schools to start girls sports teams. A restriction like the one that died in the House would protect Title IX sports, LeBon said.
“It was a game-changer, and it is worth protecting,” he said.
Dibert said that as she’s gone door to door, the issue of transgender girls in sports hasn’t come up more than once or twice.
“It’s a solution in search of a problem,” she said of the failed bill.
State pension differences
Dibert and LeBon also disagree about whether the state should revive a pension program for public employees.
Dibert favors the idea, which the Senate approved. It but failed to advance in the House during the last Legislature.
“Teachers are leaving, and it’s really hard right now to attract and retain teachers and police officers and firefighters. I think that a solution would be returning to a modest retirement pension system,” she said.
LeBon opposes the concept because of its potential cost and because of lingering debt from the state’s prior pension program, he said. During his prior term in office, he opposed the advancement of a pension idea that came to the House Finance Committee.
“You’ve got to convince me that it’s not going to create an unfunded liability like the one we’re still looking at today,” LeBon said.
Dibert said LeBon’s fears are out of date.
“This time, it’s a little bit different because some of it falls on the employer and the employee. The risk is shared,” she said.
Differences on ballot measures
When Fairbanks voters go to the polls on Nov. 5, two ballot measures will be below the state House race on the ballot. LeBon and Dibert disagree on both measures.
LeBon supports the repeal of Alaska’s ranked choice voting law, while Dibert wants to keep it in place.
Dibert supports an increase to the state’s minimum wage and mandatory sick leave for workers, while LeBon opposes the measure that would provide both.
How to vote
Alaskans must register to vote by Oct. 6 in order to participate in the state House election.
Early voting begins at select locations Oct. 21. Absentee ballots are available by request through Oct. 26 for any reason for those who want to vote by mail.
Regular Election Day is Nov. 5, and a map of polling places is available online. Preliminary results will be available by the morning of Nov. 6, but ballots arriving late by mail will be counted until Nov. 15 if they are sent from within the United States and Nov. 20 if they are sent internationally.
Ranked choice tabulations — for races with at least three candidates — will take place Nov. 20 if no candidate has at least 50% of the vote in that race.
In their own words
Ahead of the election, the Alaska Beacon submitted a 15-question survey to all of the state’s legislative candidates. Dibert and LeBon each responded, answering questions about the state’s economy, fishing industry, education and more.
