Former Haines Borough manager Annette Kreitzer is running for state legislature, seeking to unseat incumbent representative Andi Story, a Democrat who has represented the Chilkat Valley, along with Skagway, Gustavus, and parts of Juneau, since 2018.
Kreitzer served as borough manager from 2021 to 2024. Prior to her retirement in 2012 she spent 18 years as a legislative staffer and commissioner in the Alaska Department of Administration.
She’s long considered running, she said in an interview Wednesday, going back to her time as a state employee. But even so, she said she was “still on the fence” Sunday night, less than a day before the state’s deadline to file for candidacy.
“I called my sister Sunday and she said, ‘you’re not going to be happy unless you’re back doing policy,’ and she’s right,” Kreitzer said. The next morning, she sent a letter to Story informing the representative of her intention to run.
Kreitzer described one of her motivations in challenging Story as having “a different vision for the state” than the incumbent.
Story has done her highest-profile work in office on education issues. She has co-chaired the House Education Committee and co-sponsored a bill last year that increased state payments to public school districts.
Kreitzer said she hoped to shift discussion in the legislature away from education funding and toward revenue generation from new resource projects.
“I hear a lot of discussion about school funding,” she said. “I think there has to be concurrent discussion about how we’re going to develop our massive resources, because that’s the foundation for a lot of this funding.”
“It’s been education, education, education,” she added. “In the media, that’s all that’s being reported… I get Representative Story’s newsletters and I don’t see ‘this is how we fund what we want.’”
Kreitzer said she would hope to review state incentives for resource development. In doing so, she plans to draw on prior experience, citing her work as a legislative staffer for Senator Loren Leman on the Senate Resources Committee.
“You have to have this very balanced approach. You talk to the folks who are interested in investing, you talk to the state and say ‘how do we protect Alaska’s best interests?’”
On education, Kreitzer said she would take a different tack than Story, hoping to save money rather than add new spending. “How many things has the legislature put in statute that schools have to teach in addition to curriculum?” she said. “I think we need to look at what all is going on in school and what we are funding.”
Kreitzer gave CPR training as one possible example.
“I love the idea of teaching CPR in schools… but when you’re saying you have a shrinking pile of revenue, do you displace some other time that students could spend on other things? I think we have to look at that.”
On a broader ideological level, Kreitzer would flip the Chilkat Valley’s seat: Story is a Democrat, currently in the House majority, and Kreitzer is a Republican.
If elected, Kreitzer may have a decision to make about who to caucus with: both the House and Senate majorities this session were bipartisan, made up of both Democrats, Republicans and Independents, with all-Republican minorities.
Kreitzer said it would take something “really drastic” to caucus with Democrats if there was a Republican majority in the House following the election in November. Kreitzer, however, didn’t rule out participating in a bipartisan caucus should Democrats win out.
“I have a very dear friend who’s a Democratic senator, but he’s also pro-life and a strong advocate for rural Alaska, so there are a number of things I could see agreeing with him on,” she said. “So it depends. But if the line is, we just need to spend money and to pay for that we’re going to tax people, well no, I’m not there.”
The legislature would represent a return to familiar territory for Kreitzer. In her role as borough manager, she said she leaned mostly on her experience at the state level, treating borough government as she would legislative committee work.
That approach, and her state government experience, she argued, delivered benefits for the borough.
“It wasn’t just a lobbyist that helped us obtain the matching funds for the Lutak Dock and Public Safety Building. It was because I could go back to the people I had known for many years and say this is the need, and this is why, and bring the appropriate people with me to talk about it. I think my state experience influenced the manager’s role.”
The date for the general election is Nov. 3.