Barring a write-in campaign, Haines voters won’t have a choice about who represents them in the Alaska House of Representatives when the next legislative session starts in January.
For the first time in at least 16 years, there is only one major party candidate running for the House seat that includes Haines.
Incumbent Sam Kito III, D-Juneau, was the sole candidate to file for House District 33 by the June 1 deadline.
Kito was appointed in February 2014 to complete Beth Kerttula’s term after she resigned. He defeated Peter Dukowitz, R-Juneau, in the November 2014 general election.
“I was expecting that there might be another candidate, but I guess I am actually pleased that I don’t have a competitor,” Kito said this week.
Alaska Division of Elections online records go back to 2000 and indicate Haines hasn’t had an unopposed election for the state House seat during that time.
But House District 33, which includes Haines, Skagway, Klukwan, Gustavus, Douglas Island and downtown Juneau, is not the only district where voters won’t see a choice of candidates this fall.
Including Haines, nine of Alaska’s 40 House districts have only one candidate running. Of those nine uncontested races, seven candidates are Democrats.
Tuckerman Babcock, chair of the Alaska Republican Party, said Juneau resident and Kito’s former Republican opponent Dukowitz had intended to run for the House seat this year. However, Dukowitz is building a new home but temporarily renting outside of the district, and sold his original home sooner than he expected.
“That caught us by surprise. It’s not that he didn’t want to run,” Babcock said. “He just decided not to make a controversy.”
Recruiting Republican candidates for the district – especially on short notice – can be difficult because downtown Juneau and Douglas Island are solidly liberal, Babcock said.
“It’s not an inviting race because it is an uphill race. It can be hard to recruit. Just like it is hard for Democrats to make a play in the Mat-Su Valley or Kenai Peninsula,” he said.
Former state Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Haines, ran and won as the Republican candidate in 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2010 before falling to Sitka Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins in 2012.
Thomas agreed recent redistricting, which lumped Haines in with downtown Juneau and Douglas, is a major reason Republicans won’t run. “You can’t unseat a liberal in a liberal district,” Thomas said. “The demographics are such that a Republican couldn’t win.”
“I don’t want to run against (Kito), because I don’t think I could win in there,” Thomas added.
Thomas said he couldn’t remember the last time a Haines House race was uncontested.
Mike Doogan has watched Alaskan politics since he started writing for the Anchorage Times in 1972. Doogan was a political columnist for the Anchorage Daily News from 1990-2003, and a Democratic member of the House representing the 25th District from 2007-2012.
“There have always been uncontested seats,” Doogan said. “There have been more, there have been fewer. I can’t really say this is average by any means, but it is no surprise.”
Of the nine uncontested elections, eight of the people running are incumbents.
“Generally speaking, incumbents are going to be able to raise more money and in that case, nobody really wants to throw themselves on their sword,” Doogan said.
Newcomers don’t have as much name identification and usually don’t have the same financial backing, Doogan added, reiterating Thomas’ comment that certain districts are almost irreversibly Republican or Democrat.
When asked whether redistricting and gerrymandering – the practice of manipulating district boundaries to favor one party – has anything to do with the number of uncontested elections, Doogan said, “Definitely it does.”
The lack of opposed races “creates a real hole in the system as it was imagined” with voters getting a choice between candidates who will represent them.
“The reason you are supposed to have competitors is that will force candidates to talk about important things,” Doogan said. “You end up in situations (like this) in which none of the important issues get discussed at all because people think that they might explode in their face.”
“If you had a bunch of people who would make decent candidates and they said, ‘Hey, look. The problem here is the guy I am running against is part of a group that doesn’t seem to be able to make this work,’” Doogan went on. “But this way, people think they are going to be able to run and hide from these things during this election, and probably they are right.”
Rep. Kito said despite running unopposed he plans to make the rounds to towns in his district. “I still want to talk to people in the districts and have dialogue and make sure I am representing constituents,” he said.
Candidates can still launch write-in campaigns for the general election on Nov. 8. No write-in votes are allowed during the Aug. 16 primary, said Alaska Division of Elections director Josephine Bahnke.
Write-in candidates must file a letter of intent no later than five days before the general election, Bahnke said.