The campaign slogan is odd and unique, although cute in its rhyming simplicity: “I know Bob Poe.”

The buttons and stickers, with blue letters on a yellow background, are popping up in increasing numbers. Mr. Poe was the first officially announced Democratic candidate for governor in 2010 (Homer resident Rob Rosenfeld filed his letter of intent shortly after Poe did), and he’s begun his campaign particularly early; candidates can’t even begin fundraising for the 2010 gubernatorial race until May 2, but Poe announced his candidacy in January.

The “I know Bob Poe” paraphernalia addresses the first hurdle Poe faces: name recognition. Although he has worked in government and public sector jobs for much of the 28 years he’s been in Alaska, Poe’s never run for public office. So although he’s held prestigious executive positions in state government, and worked for four different governors’ administrations (Governors Sheffield, Cowper, Hickel and Knowles), the voting public doesn’t know much about him—yet. “When I connect with Alaskans they actually get that; they understand that who they choose is a lot more than just ‘have I heard of you before?’” Poe says. “My pin that you’ve seen, ‘I know Bob Poe,’ is really about people getting to know us. The reason we [he and his wife Terzah Tippin Poe] started in January is that probably gives me a reasonable chance to meet personally those 315,000 voters in Alaska, and I’m gonna do my best to do that.”

Poe’s relative anonymity contrasts sharply with the broad name recognition enjoyed by other Democrats whose names are being bandied about as possible entrants to the 2010 race: former legislator Ethan Berkowitz, whose recent run for U.S. House against Congressman Don Young had his name perpetually in the media; state Senator Hollis French, whose oversight of the initial Troopergate investigation kept him in both local and national news; Representative Les Gara, whose outspoken advocacy for social justice issues like foster care (and public as-seen-on-YouTube berating of Palin “truth squad” spokesperson Meg Stapleton) has made him a popular figure in the state Democratic party.

Outside of Poe, none of the aforementioned Democrats, who are all campaign veterans, have announced their candidacies. Still, it’s all but certain that one or more of these well-known former or current legislators will throw their hat in the ring for 2010. So Bob Poe is hitting the bricks, working to get his name—and, more importantly, his accomplishments—into the public’s consciousness.

For the time being though, Republican Governor and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is his only opponent, and, he says, a motivating factor in his decision to run. “If Sarah Palin had come back off the campaign trail and said, ‘gosh that was an interesting experience, alright, golly, let’s get back to running Alaska,’ y’know, I don’t think you’d see nearly the interest by folks in running for governor,” Poe says. “I watched it really carefully, and I didn’t see that coming from her. I saw that she was really somewhat blinded by the bright lights of the national experience, and it was very hard for her, no matter what words she said, to really come back and care about Alaska. There’s nothing more important in my mind than Alaska.”

Bob Poe grew up in a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri called Webster Grove, and received his MBA with a concentration in international finance and economics from the University of Missouri–St. Louis in 1979. An avid mountain climber, he set a goal upon getting his MBA that by ten years into his career he’d be a mountain guide half the time and a business consultant the other half.

He joined Price Waterhouse as a business consultant, and three years into that job he was working in Springfield, Illinois for the firm. He’d just finished a project he describes as “tedious,” when a partner came in and announced that the company had just gotten a project in Alaska to design a family of financial systems, and wanted to know if anyone was interested. “All these kids from Chicago just dove under their desks,” Poe recalls, “and I’m thinking, hell, they’ve got mountains up here. Pick me! Pick me! Pick me!”

He arrived at the Juneau airport on January 6, 1981—in a torrent of horizontal rainfall—with two other Price Waterhouse employees; the other two had their fold-over suit bags, while Poe had a four-wheeled cart loaded with climbing gear. According to Poe, the partner in charge of the job who’d met them at the airport questioned his amount of luggage: “Poe, you know this is only a two year job, right?” “Yes sir, we’ll see,” Poe recalls telling him. “But I knew from that moment I was here to stay. Alaska would have had to really disappoint me for me not to be here, and it’s never disappointed me.”

The project that brought Poe to Alaska in 1981 was the creation of an accounting system for the state; the Alaska Statewide Accounting System (AKSAS) is still used today, a point of pride for Poe.

In 1983, Democratic Governor Bill Sheffield appointed Poe to a position at the state’s Office of Management and Budget, where he worked on a new budget system for the state. In 1985 Poe went to work for Coopers and Lybrand, where he worked on financial projects including the valuation of the Eklutna and Snettisham hydroelectric plants.

In 1987, Democratic Governor Steve Cowper appointed Poe as Deputy Commissioner of Transportation and Public Facilities. According to Poe, the state had a $900 million deficit at the time, but he was able to clean up the Department of Transportation’s failed project accounting system and free up $240 million to return to the state’s general fund.

Cowper appointed Poe Director of International Trade in late 1988. Former Democratic Governor Tony Knowles was mayor of Anchorage at the time, and lauds Poe as the driving force behind getting Federal Express and U.P.S. to establish their cargo hubs at Anchorage International Airport. “[Poe] pushed the start of the entire airport FedEx/UPS cargo business. They were really torn whether to put their next headquarters for the growing Asian market in Portland or Anchorage,” Knowles says, “and they managed to get it to Anchorage. That was one of the most significant diversifications of our economy that’s happened.”

In that same position Poe managed the state’s international trade offices in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, and oversaw trade relations with the newly receptive Russian government.

In 1993 Poe worked for the state Senate Finance Committee, reporting to Republican Senator Drue Pearce, before being appointed by Governor Wally Hickel (who won office on the Alaska Independence Party ticket, though he was previously, and is now, a Republican) as Director of Administrative Services for the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.

Poe returned to the private sector in 1995, assisting physician practices in forming limited liability companies, but rejoined the public sector in 1997, when Governor Knowles appointed him Business Development Manager of the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA). In late 1998 Knowles asked Poe to work in the governor’s office as the Y2K Senior Project Manager, and also appointed him Commissioner of Administration, a confirmed cabinet position that Poe held until Knowles appointed him Executive Director of AIDEA and the Alaska Energy Authority in mid-2000.

In 2002 Poe became Senior Vice President of ASCG Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, and in 2004 he assumed the position of President and CEO of the Anchorage Economic Development Corporation (AEDC).

“AEDC had become fairly irrelevant,” Poe says. “For the economic development arm for the biggest city in Alaska, where half of Alaska lives, to not be relevant, it was a big missing hole in terms of Alaska and Anchorage’s ability to present itself as a place that companies would want to invest. Over the three years I worked at AEDC I think we brought it completely back to relevancy.”

This résumé of Poe’s, as he tells it, is impressive. But sooner or later, a career in such visible positions means having a part in controversial projects.

During his tenure at AIDEA, Poe was involved in a few such ventures, notably the Healy coal plant and an Anchorage seafood processing plant. A few critics mentioned these—though none would do so for the record—and Poe is prepared with responses. Expect to hear much more about these issues when the gubernatorial campaign begins in earnest.

The preceding tale of Bob Poe’s business experience in Alaska could be even more detailed, but readers should get the picture: Bob Poe knows business in Alaska.

“He comes to running for political office from a very different perspective, as really an accomplished economic development person,” Knowles says. “He certainly understands the importance of the private sector, but the role of the public sector in terms of partnering with the private sector is essential in Alaska. I think he’s uniquely qualified to understand how the economics of this state works and how to move it forward.”

Poe notes that over Alaska’s history there have been plenty of businesspeople who’ve come to public office in Juneau, “and say, ‘by gosh, we’re gonna run Juneau like a business and we’re gonna straighten government out.’ What happens is they find out getting things done in a political environment is a lot more complicated than getting it done in business,” he says. “In business, you say, ‘alright, do we do A or B, which one adds more to our profit, our bottom line,’—very straightforward metrics. In government, getting something done is: How does this senator feel about it, or their constituent who has a loud voice about a particular issue? How do we get that guy comfortable with what we’re trying to do? When you think about a cabinet table, each of them have different goals and things they want to accomplish, and often they’re competing for the same limited resources. Balancing that and still getting things done is a very interesting science.”

Bob Poe considered entering the 2006 gubernatorial race. “Honestly, this is a big deal to run for governor, you have to know you want to do this,” he says. “And I wasn’t sure that the fire was really in my belly, that I was the right guy to do it, and so forth.” Plus his wife, Terzah Tippin Poe, was recovering from a brutal but successful fight with breast cancer.

“It was a very aggressive treatment both surgically and with chemo, and I was just coming out the other end,” Terzah says. “So when you think about the energy and focus, with me as his partner, that just probably didn’t seem like the right moment. I could not imagine a better support person when I was going through that. And the fact that we talked about it, he felt then he had a lot of qualities and energy to go be governor, the fact that our decision was he was gonna take care of me and make sure I got through that fully, before taking that leap, I thought that said a lot.”

Bob Poe first noticed Terzah, an Iñupiat whose family is from Barrow, when she was working at a doughnut shop in Juneau when he first came to Alaska. She was just 15 at the time, and their romance didn’t blossom until they met again in the early ‘90s. They were married in 1995. Terzah currently works as Social Performance Manager for Shell.

“From being married to Terzah now for 14 years, I’ve been really fortunate to understand life through a Native person’s eyes in Alaska,” Poe says. “I’ve done a lot of learning. I think two things: We’re not in a post-racist society; racism is alive and well. The other is I’ve gotten to know a lot of Alaska Native people, and there’s a huge range of hopes and aspirations and dreams and wants, views on the world, just like other people have. And I think that, when we think about Alaskans working together as a unified state—Alaskans first—we really have to get past these racial issues.”

He’s also concerned about the rural/urban divide in the state. “I think all too often we’ve got this polarized Alaska; it’s us and them, it’s Native versus non-Native. I think we really have to work at broadening the discussion a great deal. All rural Alaskans aren’t the same; all urban Alaskans aren’t the same.”

“[Poe] has a very keen knowledge of rural Alaska and the role it plays in economic development and the importance of it,” Knowles says.

Bob Poe was a registered Democrat as a young man, and says he was briefly a registered Republican when he worked for Republican state Senator Drue Pearce on the Senate Finance Committee, but that he’s been nonpartisan or undeclared the rest of the time—until he registered as a Democrat in January, the same month he announced his candidacy as a Democratic contender for governor.

He says he’d love to see fewer abortions, but he believes in a woman’s right to choose. He supports civil unions for gay couples. “In every case, on social issues, I come down on the Democratic side, by and large,” he says. “But I am a fiscal conservative; I am a pro-business, pro-development Alaskan. I do not think that being a pro-business, pro-development fiscal conservative is mutually exclusive from being a Democrat.”

Nearly 60 percent of Alaskan voters aren’t registered with the Republicans or Democrats, and Poe argues that the healthy economy a pro-business government would bring about will make it easier to afford to deal with social issues like health care or homelessness. A strong economy will also benefit nonprofits, he points out—the sort of fiscally conservative, socially moderate platform he believes will appeal to those undeclared voters. “Those nonprofits benefit when people have money in their pockets and are able to give. If you wanna make those social services possible, you have to also make a vital economy possible,” he says.

He thinks his candidacy—and his perception of what a Democrat is—will help broaden the party “so that people like me feel it’s okay to be a Democrat; it’s okay to recognize that you are pro-choice, anti-death-penalty, and other social issues. You do wanna see us try to live a cleaner life and not contribute to global warming, that there’s a number of things you really do support but you also recognize we need a vital economy.”

If you haven’t noticed by now, economics is Poe’s key pitch to the voters. He’s critical of Governor Palin saying that the proposed AGIA gasline is the state’s new “lifeline.” “That’s a terrible way to think about your future and economy. We ought to have 20 projects going on, of which eight or nine will happen, and those eight or nine will lead to future opportunities,” he says.

Like most every Alaska politician, Poe thinks the state should be a leader and innovator in alternative energy. “We could become the place where the experts live, in terms of energy development. We could be a leader—we don’t have to let Europe be a leader; they don’t have nearly the proximity to these technologies that we do.”

His goal is to focus on the so-called third leg of Alaska’s economy: oil and gas revenue is the first; federal spending the second; and the third leg is everything else—fishing, tourism, air cargo, international trade, etc. “That leg needs to be grown significantly,” he says. He sees opportunities with China, both for trade and for broadening our tourism base. And he should know: Poe’s been to China nearly ten times in the last three years.

Among the other names on the Democratic side rumored to be interested in entering the race as well are the aforementioned Berkowitz, Senator French, and Representative Gara. The state Democratic Party doesn’t pick favorites in the primary (at least not officially), but in a statement Democratic Party Chair Patti Higgins says, “After years of mismanagement and neglect under Palin and Murkowski, we are looking forward to electing a Democratic governor who will put Alaska first. The Democratic Party has a rich field of talented candidates and we are pleased that someone of Bob’s caliber has stepped out so early.”

Pollster Ivan Moore, who’s worked extensively with Democratic candidates, handicaps Poe’s chances thusly: “If Bob runs opposed, his chances are very good. But he’s not going to be running unopposed. Right now it appears likely he’s going to have to run against some established figures in the primary.” When asked who, Moore replied, “Berkowitz is almost certain to run, and that’s going to make Bob’s chances not too hot.”

Dave Dittman, a primarily Republican pollster, points out an interesting wildcard factor in Poe’s primary run: If Palin runs for reelection, and there’s not much primary competition on the Republican side, independents (who can choose to vote in either primary) could swing the Dem side for Poe; if Palin decides not to run in 2010, or has a serious competitor in the Republican primary, those independent voters would likely choose to vote in the Republican party. That would likely mean that those voting in the Democratic primary would be the core base of the party, and Poe’s chances of winning the primary would dip considerably. “I think Bob would be more likely to appeal to independents and nonpartisans, and some Republicans too. The only drawback that Bob Poe has among Democrats would be the feeling that he hasn’t paid his dues,” Dittman says, “that he hasn’t been elected to anything—hasn’t served in the trenches, so to speak.”

Berkowitz, French and Gara all admit that they’re interested in the race, but all say they haven’t made a decision thus far.

“No one should be running while the fish are running,” Berkowitz says, also mentioning the election fatigue that Alaskans have due to the barrage of intense, high profile elections that included Palin’s V.P. run, Senator Mark Begich’s victory over Senate legend Ted Stevens, Berkowitz’s own unexpected loss to Congressman Young, and the still as-of-press-time undecided Anchorage mayoral race.

Gara also brings up the recent mayoral general election, but for a different reason. Three Democrats entered a race that had only one Republican, resulting in intra-party mudslinging and hard feelings amongst the losing candidates once Eric Croft sealed his slot in the runoff election.

“We all learned a lesson about the mayor’s race, right?” Gara asks. “You have three Democrats running against each other, all you’re doing is helping the other guy. I hope Bob will keep his mind open to who the strongest Democratic candidate will be, because I think a number of other people are gonna jump in, and the last thing you want is for a bunch of Democrats to beat each other up and lose in November. My view is you wait, see who the strongest candidate’s going to be, and rally around them.”

On the Republican side—and assuming that Palin bows out to pursue her presidential aspirations—names being mentioned include former legislator and recently retired talk radio personality and blogger Andrew Halcro, state Representative Mike Hawker, and Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell.

“Honestly I can say as people start to get into it, a lot of the names you’ve mentioned are really good people,” Poe says. “I think Alaska’s really lucky that that quality of person wants to run. Frankly I’m going to enjoy the debate; there’s nothing more energizing than a good intelligent debate about the future of Alaska. I think I have experience that’s more particular to the job of governor, and I’m the most qualified, but I think we’ll hear a lot of good ideas.”

Meanwhile Poe continues to work so that the voting public in Alaska does indeed come to know Bob Poe. Though none of his experience is as an elected official, his record is public and is certain to undergo extensive scrutiny as this race proceeds. “Because I’ve been in all these public jobs, not as a politician but as a guy responsible to Alaskans, responsible to the press, I’ve lived my life as if everything I do could end up on the front page,” Poe says. “I’ve lived ‘on the record’ most of my 28 years in Alaska. I’m very comfortable with what’s there.”

bjk@anchoragepress.com

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