(American soldiers guard a field during World War II)
Dear Jubilee,
The 34th Alaska Legislature will convene this week, and I want to share some of what you will be facing when it does. It has been my part to serve as the most conservative legislator in the house for a number of years (with welcome competition from Rep. Sharon Jackson and Rep. Christopher Kurka during their tenure in the legislature). In her last election, Lisa Murkowski fared worse in our district than anywhere else in the state, so it goes without saying that a legislator who faithfully represents our district is very likely to be labeled as the most conservative legislator in Juneau. Don’t be afraid to embrace that title and the great responsibility that goes with it. In doing so, you will not only have my gratitude, but also the gratitude of a great many of the voters you are now to represent.
As a representative from our district, you are likely to face temptations and trials that your peers will never experience. In Juneau, your vote is your currency, and rewards are available to legislators for moving in the direction of greater (rather than less) state spending, more (rather than less) cronyism, and for embracing rather than resisting the many forms of political corruption that predominate in Juneau. When your starting point is furthest from the status quo in Juneau, you will have a greater distance to retreat than your peers. In Juneau, every step away from your constituents in Wasilla constitutes currency that can be bartered for something.
On the school board, your constituents could reach out and shake your hand at every school board meeting. In Juneau, the people you serve will be six hundred miles away, and most will never have the opportunity to visit you at the capitol building. On the school board, you and your peers were in an environment where Republican and conservative were said to be the same thing, and you could easily take your place in the majority. In Juneau, organizations like Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and the Democratic Party rule the roost. The precinct in which the capitol building is located voted more than five to one for Hillary against Donald Trump, and voted five to one for Kamala again in November. Conservatives will always be in the minority in a place like Juneau.
Being in the minority means that the pressure in Juneau to retreat even further to the left will always be stronger than the pressure to advance conservative state policy. Those back home will often seem far away. The message from those in the capitol building will be that it is the people back home who are out of touch, not the politicians in Juneau. You will be tempted to believe them.
Juneau will be exceedingly jealous for your loyalty. Call it the Good ‘ol Boy Club. Call it the Get Along Gang. Call it the Corrupt Bastards Club. Call it the Caucus System. Call it whatever you like. It will be exceedingly jealous for your loyalty and it will brook no competition. If you faithfully represent our district in the legislature, the number of bills that get passed with your name on them will be zero, just as Sen. Mike Dunleavy, Sen. Mike Shower, and I each experienced during our time in the legislature. Other legislators who have sided with their constituents against the interests of Juneau have experienced that same cold jealousy. Whenever you stand with your constituents against what goes on in Juneau, you will as well.
Juneau has many ways of bringing a legislator to heel. Alternatively, make it known that you are distancing yourself from your conservative constituents, and your chances of being wined and dined in Juneau will shoot through the roof!
In Juneau, effectiveness is measured in how helpful you can be to those in power. Well-funded special interests always have the means to express their gratitude for your help in moving their agenda. The governor has even more ways to express his gratitude to those who support his personal priorities. In contrast, from the perspective of the political establishment in Juneau, your constituents don’t matter. If they did matter, that was only at the last election, and it will be a long two years until the next one. What goes without saying is that your constituents do not possess power in Juneau only because they have already placed that power in your hands. You will be tempted to forget this.
From the moment you are sworn in, and even before, you will be encouraged to go in search of power from others connected to Juneau. You will be told, as all of us were at one time or another, that you can never be influential without first lining up on the side of those in power. In exchange for doing so, they will offer you things; titles, positions, resources. You will be told that this is “being effective” and that this is power, but this is not power, and those in Juneau never willingly relinquish what power they possess anyway. What some in Juneau try very hard to forget is that the source of true political power is the people; and yes, the power and authority they delegate to you is only on loan. This fact is terribly discomforting to many politicians, which is why, whenever it does come to mind, they strive so diligently to forget it.
Of course, if you want to be thought well of in Juneau you must never allow yourself to be known as the most conservative legislator. To be effective, in the way Juneau measures effectiveness, you must always let someone else take on that role. Of course, no matter how charming that more conservative legislator is, the left will always be aggravated by their presence, and will be perpetually lashing out. If history is any guide, your Republican peers will likewise ensure that they are always standing at a healthy distance from that person lest they become collateral damage. Don’t get me wrong, being the legislator whose foxhole is farthest forward on the front lines is a place of honor, but it is not a place of comfort. The legislator standing furthest forward will have to be especially well dug in, in order to withstand the incessant pounding that will be thrown at them. Pray for them, but don’t be them, if you want to be thought of as “effective” in Juneau.
If that person gets taken out, you might become the most conservative legislator by default, and that would seriously throw a wrench in your ability to “get things done”. It’s terribly difficult to get things done when you are busy absorbing incoming enemy artillery fire.
Juneau is currently moving left at a speed that would shock your constituents today. To take an objective moral stand on any issue in the legislature, and to back it up with your vote consistently, is to risk a confrontation with the Goliath of the Juneau political establishment, and the likelihood of being left behind by your more pragmatic peers. The tried and true path to politics “success” is to adopt a conservative posture, but then be sure to retreat from that position by the time a vote comes that might actually impact state policy.
The Swamp has its own language. The words are the same, but the meanings are often very, very different, Oftentimes it is not what is said, but what is left unsaid. I remember my senator giving a presentation a few years back about just how different the language is in Juneau. It confused him greatly when he first took office.
One of the examples he cited was what a politician means when he says “I’ll support your bill.” You may think “Great! he is going to support my bill”, but that is where you would be mistaken. What the typical politician actually means is that he won’t support your bill. Are you perfectly confused yet? My senator was too.
In my experience, when a politician says “I’ll support your bill”, what he may really be getting at is “I’m not an absolute NO on your bill.” In other words, “under the right circumstances, I will support your bill.” In that sense, it’s more of an invitation than a declarative statement. Perhaps a further example will help put a point on it.
Before I first served in the legislature, I was invited to make a deal. If I dropped out of the race and endorsed a current legislator, I would be offered a “free” seat in the legislature at the next election. In other words, I wouldn’t have to campaign because a number of different organizations would be a part of the deal and they would collectively ensure that I had a very easy go of it in the next election. And the kicker; if I dropped out and endorsed the incumbent, that legislator would then turn around and honor the commitments he had previously made to those organizations to support conservative, pro-family legislation. The obvious implication was that if I didn’t drop out of the race, and I didn’t endorse the incumbent, he would feel under no obligation to keep his earlier commitment to support the pro-family bills. Only if the politician got something tangible out of it would he feel the slightest obligation to uphold his end of the bargain.
Said a different way, to many politicians, “I’ll support your bill” just means “I’ll support your bill if you make it worth my while.” The words are the same, but it’s a very different way of communicating. There are some things that can’t be said out loud.
Conservatives from all parts of the state will hope to find in you a champion for a variety of conservative causes that many of your Republican colleagues would rather you not support. The temptation will simply be for you to remain silent. Silence has its rewards in Juneau. As the representative from the most conservative district, your silence grants permission to every other Republican legislator to ignore whatever conservative or pro-family issue they are being asked to champion. Your colleagues will say to themselves (and to others), if the legislator from the most conservative district didn’t have the courage to take on a particular issue, how is it right or fair to expect me to stick my neck out, being from an even less conservative district?
You will discover, if you have not already, that those in Juneau have no intention of passing any of the conservative policies that you campaigned on and that the voters in our district are asking for. This is not something new. Ask yourself, when was the last time the legislature actually passed a conservative piece of legislation? It’s been awhile. Recently, the governor vetoed HB17, the contraception mandate bill which Planned Parenthood has been trying to pass for decades. There was nothing conservative about HB17. From an economic perspective, it was a progressive bill. From a fiscal perspective, it was a progressive bill. From a social perspective, it was an exceedingly progressive bill supported by the most left-wing organizations in Juneau. Even so, most Republican legislators voted to pass one or another version of this truly horrendous piece of legislation. That is where the front lines are within the legislature today.
The questions Republican legislators are talking about aren’t whether they will fight to reduce state funding for abortion, or join other Republican states in banning puberty blockers, or even ending state membership in left-wing organizations like ERIC. Remember, HB17 passed the house under predominantly Republican leadership, was supported by most current Republican legislators, and had to be vetoed as a last resort by the governor. In 2025, a question many of our Republican politicians will be asking one another is whether they should continue to support Planned Parenthood’s legislation to impose long-term contraceptive mandates on every health insurance provider in Alaskan.
How will you respond when told by your peers in the legislature that a majority of Republican legislators aren’t ready to support the conservative policies that you campaigned on? You can be our voice, and the voice of Alaskans from all parts of the state, to champion and push forward those policies because they are what Alaskans truly want and need (to the chagrin of your peers in the legislature), or you can quietly set those policies and priorities aside, and be content to simply give them lip service ahead of the next election, to the great dismay of those who placed their hope in you.
Legislation is about priorities. What will your priorities be? And when your peers express their contempt for conservative policies and priorities, as many of them will, how will you respond? Will you go along with their priorities instead, or will you simply say no, and vote them down?
That decision will now be yours to make. Welcome to the legislature.
