Why I’m supporting JKT for governor

By Bud Carpeneti

I’m 80. I came with my wife to Alaska in 1970, just out of law school, “for a year.” We fell in love with the state, raised all four of our children here in Juneau, and now have the distinct pleasure of watching our four grandkids grow up here. I want them to have the same opportunities we had.

We had good schools that had adequate support and teachers whose salaries were among the very best in the nation. We took pride in those statistics back in the ‘80s; they meant to us that our state valued education as a way for everyone to get ahead.

We had a functioning political system that wisely set aside a portion of our immense oil wealth into a Permanent Fund so that future generations would benefit from the oil windfall —- thank you, Gov. Hammond and the other founders of the fund, who worked together across party lines to make it happen.

We had a legislature that could come together to fund programs to deliver needed health care for children like Denali KidCare —- thank you, Gov. Knowles and the legislators of both parties who supported it.

And we had a system that could see the need for the oil companies to pay a fair amount for the state’s oil that they were taking from their leaseholds with the state —- thank you, Gov. Palin and the legislators of both parties who passed the ACES legislation that brought to the state “Alaska’s Clear and Equitable Share” of that bounty.

Now, not so much. And the last eight years have been the worst — stagnation from a governor who absolutely refuses to work at all with the legislature, setting the record for most bills vetoed, and creating gridlock at every turn.

We need a candidate for governor who respects all participants in the political process, who can work across party lines to get things done and who has a proven record of getting results, who has the energy needed for a long campaign and for the hard job of governing, and who has shown through five election cycles that he can win over not only voters of his party but Independents and Republicans. There is only one such candidate on the ballot: Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins.

JKT respects every participant in the process, even those whose views are just diametrically opposed to his.  Here’s what Sarah Vance, the hard-right representative from Homer, said about him after serving with him on the State Affairs Committee: “Republicans will be like, ‘I can’t believe she said this,’ but [JKT] was chair and he just treated me well, he was an easy-going chairman and … very fair. He had a very respectful way about him that I have remembered and honored.”

JKT is unparalleled in working across party lines to get things done. Only 14 years after Alaskans voted by a two-to-one margin to pass the so-called English Only Initiative, he successfully secured legislative passage of HB 216, establishing 20 indigenous languages as official languages of the state, joining English.

JKT has incredible energy, not only for the campaign but for governing. He has visited 51 distinct communities across all 19 Alaska boroughs in the last 180 days. Can any other candidate say that? His travels have included 300 miles by snowmachine across the Arctic in February and 450 miles down the Yukon in July, visiting a total of 18 villages on those two excursions. Energy!

JKT won five successive elections for the state house in a district that voted for Donald Trump and in which Republicans had registration advantages over Democrats. No other candidate for governor can say the same.  To win the governor’s race, any Democrat must win Independents and Republicans in substantial numbers in a place in which Republicans outnumber Democrats and Independents outnumber them both. JKT is the only candidate who has done that. Five times.

There are not a lot of years left for someone starting his ninth decade. That’s why I’m working hard to support JKT, because he offers the only chance among the current group of candidates to return Alaska to its former status as a state that highly values and supports education, delivers health care to those needing it, protects the permanent fund, gets a fair return its oil resources, and reaches these goals by working tirelessly with members of any party that is willing to do the hard work. Please join me in voting for him now, in early voting, or on Aug. 18.

• Walter (Bud) Carpeneti was an Alaska judge for 32 years, the last three as Chief Justice of the Alaska Supreme Court.