In Alaska’s congressional races, challengers to the incumbents are common, particularly because incumbents’ tenures have traditionally been extraordinarily long.

Former Senator Ted Stevens served for 40 years before Mark Begich beat him after his (later overturned) criminal conviction in 2008. And he faced prominent Anchorage banker Dave Cuddy, among others, in that year’s primary election. In 2008, now-Governor (then-Lieutenant Governor) Sean Parnell, with then-Governor Sarah Palin’s backing, challenged Congressman Don Young, who barely fended Parnell off. Young’s now in his 37th year in congress.

In the August 24 Republican primary, Young faces a mostly unknown challenger, businessman Sheldon Fisher, while Senator Lisa Murkowski is being challenged by Fairbanks attorney Joe Miller, who’s garnered the endorsements of Sarah and Todd Palin as well as the financial support of the California-based Tea Party Express. The Young/Fisher race has been mostly low-key, in stark contrast to the Murkowski/Miller race, which has drawn national attention because of the Tea Party Express’s promise to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to defeat Murkowski (and because of a controversial blog post by that organization’s spokesman, Mark Williams, addressed to Abraham Lincoln on behalf of “colored people” asking for a return to slavery; though the Tea Party Express didn’t remove Williams as spokesman, he cut his ties with the organization a little over a week later). Both challengers believe they have a good chance against the incumbent—Fisher is banking on Congressman Young’s being stripped of committee chairmanships and falling out with the Republican Party over his rebellion against the GOP’s earmark ban; Miller paints Murkowski as a RINO (Republican in name only) who believes in big government, and believes the momentum of the tea party, with its philosophy of limited government, will catapult him into the general race.

The challenger – Sheldon Fisher

Sheldon Fisher came to Alaska six and a half years ago to work as an executive for Alaska Communications Systems, after working for Sprint in the Lower 48. He says he was “very disturbed” that there was no serious challenger to Young in the Republican primary (although former legislator and gubernatorial candidate Andrew Halcro at one time announced his intention to run for the seat). “We need a different type of politician in Washington,” Fisher says. “Part of the problem is the professional politician. I’m confronting it—it’s hard as a newcomer to build support, name recognition, volunteer awareness… But I view it as a chance to be of service and make a difference.”

Fisher’s prime issue is fiscal discipline. He says projections show that within 12 years interest on the national debt will be the largest line item in the federal budget, eclipsing defense, social security and health care. “Every category of the federal budget has to be discussed,” he says. With social security, he believes citizens should be able to invest their payments in the marketplace, and also thinks social security should grow at the rate of inflation rather than the rate of wage increases.

He also believes health care should be more subject to market forces. “The crisis is really about cost,” he says. “We spend twice as much more per person for health care than any industrialized country in the world. We don’t see tremendous market forces in health care; we’re becoming insulated from the price.”

On the issue of defense spending, he believes the United States should continue to be a force for change in the world, but says we need a dialogue with our allies so they contribute their fair share of the costs.

“We can’t solve this deficit without touching all of these areas,” he says. “It’s everything. We have to be willing to take on every sacred cow out there and make some hard decisions.”

Incumbent Congressman Young proudly boasts about the earmarks he brings home to Alaska, and Fisher concurs that earmarks are an appropriate tool for Congress, but believes the process should be more stringent. “When we spend money, a congressman should be able to go to his peers and advocate for the money as if they were a bank or a business. This is what we need, this is why we need it, this is what it’ll do for us—a business case.”

Fisher believes in energy independence for America—particularly in reducing the trade deficit by becoming self-sufficient when it comes to energy. He advocates for responsible development of Alaska’s resources, but also subscribes to T. Boone Pickens’ plan to shift our transportation fuel from oil to natural gas.

As a Mormon, Fisher is socially conservative, and is advocating for a “family friendly” internet, free of pornography. “I respect an adult’s ability to make choices for themselves,” he says, but he thinks there is a “huge market” for content providers to offer a PG rated version of the internet.

As to why he thinks Alaskans should elect him to replace the long-serving Congressman Young, he says Young has been “neutered in some respects, diminished in his influence. In this election I believe you’ll have a freshman class, probably 40 or 50 Republicans, and if we wait two or four years, that freshman class is going to be grabbing up all the committee assignments as they grow up in congress. I believe the seniority argument cuts in favor of making a change in this election.”

The incumbent – Congressman Don Young

When asked why Alaskans should return Don Young to congress for a 20th term, his answer is simple. “One is experience; two is passion; three is love of the state,” he says.

Young points out that, in contrast to his opponent, he’s been to every corner of the state of Alaska during his time in congress. “Each area has a problem; water in Seward and the rural areas, congestion in the urban areas, natural resource development—all that has to be taken care of, as well as trying to make sure the federal government doesn’t interfere, which they’ve been doing quite enthusiastically since Obama’s been elected, and before then, too.”

He says his priority has been looking at regulatory reform, essentially laws that the congress has never voted on. “We have 160,000 pages of regulatory law; that doesn’t include the health bill or the energy bill or the financial reform bill. That adds up to about 1,500,000 regulatory laws that were never voted on. Congress hasn’t done their job. We keep transferring the power to the bureaucracy, the executive branch, instead of keeping it with ourselves, and we need to start reviewing those regulatory laws or this country is not going to recover from this recession.”

He calls the Obama administration’s offshore drilling moratorium “the dumbest thing the administration’s done,” and says he wouldn’t be surprised if Shell abandoned its investments in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. “The promotion to use no fossil fuels is dead wrong,” he says. “I recognize the president and the speaker and quite a few people don’t think we need fossil fuels, but it’s what runs our commerce, it’s what moves our trucks, our planes, our automobiles and our ships. To say we’re going to use something else is ridiculous.”

When the Republican leadership in congress announced a ban on earmarks, Young proudly defied it, and defends that decision. “The dustup is I’m right and they’re wrong,” he says. “Just because they’re the leaders doesn’t mean they’re right and I’m wrong. They were leading us in the wrong direction, and most people don’t have the courage to stand up. I do have that courage, and when it’s wrong, I’m going to let them know.”

Though he doesn’t have the backing of any prominent tea party groups, Young believes the movement is good for the nation. “People are starting to realize they’re losing their freedoms, their money’s being taken from them—it goes back to the regulatory law; they’re being told what to do all the time.”

Young says his proudest accomplishments aren’t legislation, but representing Alaskans. He talks about thousands of letters he’s received, requests for help he’s been able to supply (sometimes in the form of earmarks). “Constituent work is what this is all about; that to me is the proudest thing I’ve been able to do.”

“I’m their voice in Congress,” he says. “And there’s nobody running I’ve seen that wants to be that voice; they just want to get elected. They don’t understand, the job is so doggone important for the state, they at least ought to have experience not only legislatively, but outside the metropolitan areas of Alaska.”

The challenger – Joe Miller

Not many people had heard of Joe Miller, a one-time candidate for the state house, when he declared his candidacy for Senator Murkowski’s seat in April. But that changed quickly with the endorsement of former Governor Sarah Palin and the subsequent support of the Tea Party Express.

“What motivated me in this is the point to which this nation’s fallen,” Miller says. “Every week additional troubling economic indicators are disclosed—this is a country in decline, at least on the economic front, because of a crisis of leadership in D.C.” Miller blames both parties, and says our representatives are looking to government for all the answers. “I’m convinced that if we continue to reelect these incumbents, there’s no hope for our country.”

Miller describes himself as a constitutional conservative, and believes the federal government should be limited to only what the constitution specifies. “The founders specified a number of enumerated rights; those enumerated rights included defense, border control; all the things we aren’t doing well are enumerated rights, but those other things that are not included within the constitution we’re spending money hand over foot on and that’s detracting from our ability to do those things that our founders originally intended us to do.”

He points to the president’s health care bill as an example. “Obamacare mandates I have to go buy private insurance. It’s taken away my right to choose not to have health insurance. I now get penalized, fined, if I don’t have it.”

Miller doesn’t believe in man-made global warming and opposes cap and trade legislation that’s likely to be in an upcoming comprehensive energy reform bill. He’s also concerned about what we pay other countries for hydrocarbon fuels. “We have extraordinary resources in this nation untapped,” he says. “From a regulatory perspective, we need to loosen things so we can extract more of the resources we have.” To accomplish this, he believes states should be fully in control of what they do with their land—and he thinks the nearly two-thirds of Alaska under federal title should be turned over to the state. “The endgame for limited constitutional government is extraordinary for the state of Alaska,” he says. “Alaska regaining title of its lands would mean exceptional wealth.”

Miller says he doesn’t hold membership in any tea party organization, but says the movement reflects a “high degree of diversity.”

“The one central thing that seems to unify the tea party movements is the concept that government needs to come back to the model that our founders intended it to follow,” he says. “Limited constitutional government, that seems to be the one unifying theme.”

In November’s election, Miller believes the congress will shift towards control by constitutional conservatives who hold the same ideals he does. “This country may have one election left to turn the fiscal boat around,” he says. “The attitude of incumbency will result in more business as usual, irresponsible spending, and a complete lack of leadership in D.C.”

The incumbent – Senator Lisa Murkowski

Though there was a strong degree of resentment towards Lisa Murkowski when her father, as governor, appointed her to the senate seat he once held, that sentiment seems to have faded over her nearly eight years in office. A poll in April of this year (the same month Joe Miller announced his primary challenge) by Dittman Research showed 49 percent of Democrats thought she should retain her seat, along with 75 percent of Republicans.

Miller and his supporters on the far right call Murkowski a liberal, while those on the left say she entered the senate as a moderate but has become more conservative as she gained leadership positions within the senate—she’s currently the ranking GOP member on the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, and was elected to the senate Republican leadership team last year as vice chairwoman of the senate GOP conference.

“I’m starting to feel a little like Goldilocks,” Murkowski says. “The conservatives say I’m too liberal, the liberals say I’m too conservative, so I have to figure that this is just about right.” She attributes the perception to the President Obama’s election and decisions his administration subsequently made. “The issues I’ve been dealing with during the past 18 months coming out of an administration that doesn’t really favor resource production and extraction like we have in Alaska, and my efforts to push back and say no on so much of what we’re seeing in terms of government outreach, this is not a change in political perspective at all. I am fighting a very different front coming out of this Obama administration and it has required saying no about a lot more things when it comes to policies.”

Murkowski believes the role of representing Alaska in the senate is as important now as it has been at any time since statehood, with the federal government putting policies in place that limit the state’s resource development.

She also supports using oil and gas revenue to develop renewable energy resources, and has proposed a deployment fund to invest in those. “You think about the ocean energy, you think about the miles of coastland we have, the tidal energy we can tap into, the hydrokinetic energy on our rivers—it’s practically limitless. Our geothermal potential is something I find quite exciting,” she says.

On the matter of the tea party movement, Murkowski says she thinks Alaskans relate because of our independent streak. “A lot of people are concerned about debt and spending and ensuring we’re sticking to our constitutional principles, and I agree with all that,” she says. She is critical of the Tea Party Express’s spokesman’s racist satire though, as well as the fact her opponent, Miller, never condemned his statements.

Like Congressman Young, Murkowski says her proudest moments as a senator haven’t been legislative, but working to help her constituents in Alaska. She tells the story of a veteran with pancreatic cancer who came to her a month or so ago and told her he couldn’t receive his chemotherapy in Alaska, where his friends and family are. “We went to bat for him,” she says, and now he’s receiving all of his treatment at home in Alaska.

“I have an incredible passion for this state,” Murkowski says, “and I would not be giving up my summers in Alaska being out on the river or out on the ocean and fishing or out on the hills hiking around, I would not give that up, as I have, if I did not believe the work I have to do here is so important not only for my family but for Alaskans and the state.”

bjk@anchoragepress.com