This November, voters will pick their next president and who they want to represent them in the U.S. House and the state Capitol.
But we wanted to know: What are voters thinking about as they consider their picks in this historic election?
We spent a couple weeks visiting communities throughout Southcentral Alaska — plus a couple towns off the road system — to get a sense of what is on voters’ minds.
Here’s what folks told us. (By the way: if you find yourself inspired to share your own opinion, we’d love to hear from you for our next edition. There are instructions for submitting your own thoughts at the end of this post.)
Mike Dunlap, a retired plumber in Nikiski
Mike Dunlap has lived on the central Kenai Peninsula for 65 years.
“They were just inventing the dirt when I got here,” he told us outside the Kenai post office.
He told us that public safety was his top priority. He has faith in local police, but Dunlap said courts too often let offenders off with lighter sentences.
That law-and-order focus plays into his choice for president this time around, he said, referencing the January 6 insurrection.
“I voted for Trump. I’m ashamed I did,” he said. “Only because, when that deal took over on the Capitol, he kept his mouth shut. He could’ve opened up and said something like, ‘You all protest all you want, but don’t enter.’ And if he’d have said that, they’d have listened.”
Dunlap said he’s “not big on Biden,” but said he would vote for Kamala Harris, whom he said “seems to be an honest individual.” He also said he would vote against a ballot measure seeking to roll back Alaska’s open primaries and ranked choice voting reforms. He said it gives him the freedom to vote for whatever candidate he likes because all of them appear on the same primary ballot.
Gary Oskolkoff, a former tribal chairman in Ninilchik
One of the questions we posed to voters boils down to, essentially: What do you want politicians to say as they compete for your vote?
The less talk, the better, Gary Oskolkoff told us.
“I kind of want the politicians to shut up and do the work,” he said outside the post office in Ninilchik. “I just want the stuff to happen that’s supposed to happen. You defend the country, you run the infrastructure, and then you leave us all alone.”
We also asked whether his community felt more politically divided than it had been in years past. Oskolkoff told us he thought people spent too much time judging their neighbors and picking at their differences.
“When I grew up here in the 60s, everybody stayed out of everybody else’s business,” he said. “Everybody was different. Everybody was a different color. Everybody spoke with a different accent. But there were so few of us. We worried about the woods and the sea and the bears. And drowning and freezing and those kinds of things. All this other stuff is just fluff.”
Lyudmila Macy, Chugiak
Lyudmila Macy told us outside an Eagle River grocery store she also thought her community had grown more divided in recent years.
“I think race definitely became more divisive after Barack Obama became the president,” she told us. “He seems like [he] started more focus on the Black people, and I think he created more division.”
Macy was one of several conservatives who told us racism was a prime cause of polarization in their communities — and what they meant was that they see accusations of racism as divisive, not necessarily racism itself.
Macy told us she’s an enthusiastic Trump voter. She thinks the 2020 election was unjust and worries about the 2024 election.
“They did it once. They’ll do it again,” she said. (Contrary to Trump’s claims, there’s no evidence of significant fraud in the 2020 election.)
She sees illegal immigration as her most important issue.
“I am [an] immigrant. I’m totally against illegal immigration,” she said. “I think we should not allow them to be here because they take away jobs from [the] young generation.”
Shonda Morelli, a CBD vendor in Soldotna
Immigration was also top of mind for Shonda Morelli, whom we met at an outdoor market in Soldotna.
“I know we have immigrants up here,” she said. “They live like queens, kings. They have better things than we do.”
We asked: Do you mean here, in Soldotna? She did not.
“Our little community’s our community. But I have seen it up in Anchorage — or heard about it, I can’t say [I’ve] personally seen it,” she said.
Like Macy, Morelli said she thought accusations of racism had driven a wedge in her community.
“Every time I turn around, I hear ‘racist,’ you know? ‘You’re racist. They’re racist,’” she said. “No one’s racist to me.”
She told us she was a conservative Republican — but Morelli was leaning toward voting for state Sen. Jesse Bjorkman, a Republican facing a more conservative challenger in Rep. Ben Carpenter.
Her choice was driven less by ideology than by her personal experience with Bjorkman’s office. She said the Nikiski Republican had offered assistance with a problem she was facing and had driven customers to her booth.
“He is strictly community, community, community, and he is there for the people,” she said.
Jered Gebel, pilot, Palmer
A self-described conservative, Jered Gebel says he sees too much waste in government. He described a recent occasion on which he’d flown a group of eight engineers to inspect a runway on the North Slope that had recently been resurfaced.
“It’s like, do we really need eight people? And they just chartered an entire plane for this when they could have taken a scheduled flight?” he said. “It’s great for our business. But it’s like, man, there could have been a more efficient way to do that.”
Gebel wishes politicians would focus on the nuts and bolts of good governance.
“The boring stuff — the budgets, the appropriations,” he said. “If you’re focused just on the culture war issues, you’re going to leave out the good governance of things.”
At the same time, Gebel said Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s first-term budget cuts went too far in some areas, including on the Alaska Marine Highway System. (Gebel recently moved to Palmer from Juneau.)
“I know he has good intentions, but he just kind of fumbles in the execution of his intentions,” Gebel said. “Like, yes, cut the budget, spend less. But you did it this way? It’s like, what?”
But don’t get him wrong — Gebel isn’t exactly neutral in the culture wars, either.
“Some of those cultural things are important — like, for me, I’ve got a nine-year-old daughter and a three-year-old daughter, and I’m definitely concerned about this whole transgenderism thing,” he said.
Megan Corazza, fisherman, Homer
Click or tap to play
Megan Corazza has one big issue on her mind: it takes far too long for fishermen to get federal aid after disastrous fishing seasons.
“Right now, we’re still all waiting for disaster relief from 2020,” she said. “That doesn’t help you save a business.”
This year, she said, fishermen are struggling with lackluster pink and sockeye salmon runs in Prince William Sound. There were only a few fisheries that weren’t disastrous this year, Corazza said, and folks are trying everything as they try to scrape by.
“People are emptying out their retirement accounts, trying to sell boats, but the boat market is flooded, trying to sell permits, but permit prices are down,” she said. “If it goes according to recent history, it’s going to be four years before we have any help, so I think we’re all looking for politicians who are sensitive to that and willing to push something forward.
Owen Glasman, college student, Homer
Click or tap to play
The turmoil in the fishing industry is even pushing some to consider other careers. Owen Glasman fished for three summers in Bristol Bay in high school but is now pursuing a degree in marine transportation.
“If I had more faith in just, like, it being a more year-to-year function, and having it be more consistent, I think I would be very keen to buy in the fishery — buy a permit, buy a boat,” he said. “But, I just — for me, with where I’m at right now, I don’t see it.”
Kathy Nielsen, shop owner, Valdez
Kathy Nielsen owns a coffee shop and store in Valdez called A Rogue’s Garden. And though we heard a lot about shortages of housing and child care, transportation was on Nielsen’s mind when we stopped by.
“Transportation is kind of the cornerstone of commerce,” she told us. “Under the present administration, and even [former Gov. Bill] Walker, to an extent, they cut the budget quite a bit, trying to make Alaskans feel like they were doing something. … We lost a lot of funding for [the Department of Transportation], especially, that we haven’t regained.”
And that’s manifested in all modes of transportation, Nielsen said: roads are potholed, ferries come infrequently and air travel is expensive and unreliable.
“I’m proud of the way our businesses, our transportation businesses, have operated, but it is the government’s responsibility to provide the infrastructure so that everyone can benefit,” she said.
Though Valdez is connected to the road system, Nielsen was one of several folks in town who told us that the community still feels isolated — it’s six hours by car to Anchorage or Fairbanks when Thompson Pass is open.
It makes for a tight-knit community, she said. Even so, Nielsen said she’s seen community members end relationships over political disagreements, especially after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’ve had friends unfriend friends,” she said. “It’s definitely a trend that we need to really check at the gate.”
Ken Mack, fisherman, King Cove
Ken Mack doesn’t feel like he has choices that represent his interests in the race for U.S. House. He fishes in Area M, an intercept fishery off the coast of the Alaska Peninsula that’s faced criticism in recent years amid crashing salmon runs in the Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim region.
And though Democratic Congresswoman Mary Peltola famously casts herself as “pro-fish,” Mack doesn’t think that includes him.
“She’s talking about trawlers stripping bycatch,” Mack said at the King Cove harbor house. “To her, bycatch is us catching chum salmon. So our fish, our major June fishery, if it was up to her and her counterparts, we would never fish.”
He doesn’t see Republican Nick Begich as a viable alternative, either — the more he learns about Begich, the less confidence he has in him, Mack said. And that’s not the only race where he’s not a fan of his choices.
“Our European counterparts are saying, [in] the greatest nation, the most freedom, the wealthiest nation, these are the only two people you can pick running for president? It’s embarrassing,” Mack said. He said he wished the Republican Party hadn’t coalesced so quickly around Trump.
Across the room, Ken’s cousin, Eddie Mack, says he’s not even sure if he’ll vote this year.
Denise Koutchak, non-profit consultant, Kotzebue
Denise Koutchak wants political leaders in Juneau to address the lack of treatment in rural communities for substance abuse disorders.
“When people are ready to go to treatment, it’s most often not available at the time that they’re ready to go,” she said. “And as we know with people battling addictions, once they decide, it’s so important to try to get them in as soon as possible. Otherwise, you know, they just continue the destruction of the addiction.”
That was top of mind for her. But her second issue was one almost everyone in Kotzebue named: The high cost of living.
“Because we’re in a rural area, because we don’t have a port, at least here in the Kotzebue area, the prices tend to be higher, which is generally passed on to us as customers,” she said.
She supports construction of a deep-water port at Cape Blossom, which would eliminate the need to lighter goods to shallow-draft barges. A road to Cape Blossom is being built but funding for the port has only just begun.
That’s all for this first edition of The View From Here. But we want to hear more. What’s on your mind this election season? Send us an email and we might include you in our next post.
Here are a few questions to consider. Feel free to answer any or all of them.
- What issues are most important to you and your community?
- What do you want politicians to talk about as they compete for your vote — what would get you excited about voting for someone?
- Does your community feel more polarized or divided than it has in years past? If so, what have you noticed?
- What do you want for the future of your community? What could your political leaders do to move toward that goal?
Email us at news@alaskapublic.org with “The View From Here” in the subject line. Make sure to include your name, community of residence, age and occupation. (Sorry, no anonymous submissions.) And send us a selfie too!
Or, if you prefer, type your response in the box below.
Eric Stone covers state government, tracking the Alaska Legislature, state policy and its impact on all Alaskans. Reach him at estone@alaskapublic.org and follow him on X at @eriwinsto. Read more about Eric here.
Liz Ruskin is the Washington, D.C., correspondent at Alaska Public Media. Reach her at lruskin@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Liz here.
