Richard Clement was born into a large family between Seattle and Tacoma.
“I’m one of nine kids,” he said. “My parents didn’t have any money. But, I mean, they raised me really well – and I just kind of found my way and I found what interests me. I went to college when I could, I’d take a year off and work, and so it took me forever to finish school.”
He studied geophysics and geology, fields that would later shape his career though he said he didn’t earn a formal degree.
“I was kind of in between stuff, you know how things are when you’re in your 20s,” Clement said, recalling how he packed up his car in Washington State and drove north to Fairbanks. His timing was perfect. It was shortly after the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, and Fairbanks was still feeling the economic surge of the oil boom.
But his path led him to a range of unique professional experiences. He worked as a geologist by day and a baker by night in Fairbanks and eventually got a job interning at the state Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.
“I stayed there about six and a half years and became an actual geologist,” he said.
“Did field work up in the Brooks Range, got to work with some really cool old-time geologists. It was the two old guys talking about the discovery well – they were the ones who talked their companies into drilling in a specific location that found oil on the North Slope.”
He later went on to work in project management and data systems, which eventually led him to consulting positions with companies like BP and the Alyeska Pipeline Service company.
In 2017, after he retired, Clement and his wife Laura moved to Haines. He said they had been searching for a quieter, seaside town – something that reminded them of the Puget Sound.
“We always wanted to live somewhere that smells like the sea,” he said.
For Clement, Haines offered an opportunity to stay connected to a community – and bicycles. A former competitive cyclist, he now spends a lot of his time restoring vintage bikes.
“I’ve got about a dozen bikes now,” he said, smiling as he showed off some of the rebuilt Italian frames.
He said he became more involved in the community in 2020 after the disastrous landslides.
“That was a tough one for everyone,” he said. He volunteered for the Emergency Operations Center as a logistics chief and said during this time people started encouraging him to run for local office – citing his background and dedication to the community.
Although his first run for assembly was unsuccessful, Clement ended up serving on the planning commission from 2022-2023 and, now, with more connections and experience – he’s making a second run for assembly.
A central theme of his candidacy is safety – which is something he did for most of his career, and he gets frustrated when he talks about the Lutak Dock.
“I was surrounded for 10 years with corrosion engineers,” he said. “That’s why I get all bent out of shape about the freight dock.”
In private industry, Clement maintains that the dock would have been shut down by now.
Clement’s professional experience also shapes his views on resource management. He said he doesn’t fall into a single camp.
“I am not one of those old families here that remembers the big sawmills and stuff, that’s not part of my history,” he said. “There’s some people here who look back and say ‘Those are the good old days. And, I think, well, the good old days ended because they were unsafe for the environment and unsafe for the people and we couldn’t keep doing it.”
Clement said what Haines needs is a balanced economy where tourism, resource extraction and light manufacturing can coexist.
“I keep hearing that people want year-round, full-time jobs. I mean, it’s been in comprehensive plans and surveys for years, and so I am open to any idea that somebody would have that would meet that criteria,” he said.
Another issue Clement would like to look into is the shrinking community. He said he was struck by a recent state Department of Labor and Workforce development population projection that predicted that the Chilkat Valley would lose 400 people in the next 25 years.
“What are we doing to attract people here? I mean, I was attracted to Alaska 40 years ago because there were jobs and things were booming and – is there anything we can do to.. Help things along?” he said.
While Clement said he values a diverse economy and diverse perspectives – he did not have a lot of patience for people in the community who he calls “environmentalists.”
When pressed on what he meant by that, Clement explained that he thinks there’s a difference between an environmentalist and a conservationist. In particular he said he views environmentalists as being on the extreme end of conservationism.
“It’s kind of like a spectrum, you know? There’s the real hardcore, like Earth First [people].” He said generally those people want to lock up resources and don’t want to see any development of any kind in an area.”
He views himself on the other end of the spectrum.
“I do conservationist kind of things. I fix old houses, I fix old bikes, I fix old cars. I don’t like to drive a lot. I don’t like to fly, I think it’s a waste of resources. As a geologist, I know that we will run out of oil, and that’s going to be a huge change to the way society works,” he said. I know these things are coming and I know that climate change is real, and some of it is human-induced. I have a worm farm, and I recycle and I compost.”
But for him, a conservationist can balance extractive and non-extractive uses. He believes that responsible development is possible and that it can be done with modern environmental and safety standards in place.