Howard Jones and Alaska PoliticsAfter yesterday’s Primary Election, an old song I loved back in the 80’s keeps ringing in my ears. Howard Jones silvery voice in the 1986 song “No One Is To Blame” talks about a desire being close enough to touch but just out of reach.“You can see the summit but you can’t reach itIt’s the last piece of the puzzle but you just can’t make it fitDoctor says you’re cured but you still feel the painAspirations in the clouds but your hopes go down the drain.”Conservative aspirations in the Great Land are certainly high election after election and for good reason. Yesterday’s results have conservatives Sarah Palin and Nick Begich III totaling almost 89,000 compared to Biden-clone Mary Peltola with just over 53,000. The three leading Republican Gubernatorial candidates, Mike Dunleavy, Charlie Pierce and Christopher Kurka, racked up nearly 80,000 votes compared to the two liberal candidates, Bill Walker and Les Gara, getting just 66,000.Those are big margins of victory for conservative statewide races.But then there’s Lisa Murkowski, the liberals’ trojan horse, who garnered over 66,000 votes compared to Trump-backed, conservative stalwart Kelly Tshibaka who received just over 61,000. Whether Tshibaka is able to work the ranked-choice system in November is a tall order albeit achievable if we galvanize the church to stand up and vote Biblically. Certainly, there is cognitive dissonance in wrapping your head around what Alaskans are thinking and how they make their decisions in the voting booths.Same thing for the Alaska State Legislature. Yesterday’s elections were a mixed bag of some good wins, tough losses and nail-biters. Will conservatives finally be able to get enough principled leaders to form Republican majorities or will we get another legislative session where we are so close but yet so far away. The track record for the GOP in Alaska is not good for being able to play in the sandbox together. We shall see.
