House District 22 is shaping up to be a real interesting race. There are four candidates. Two Republicans – Liz Vazquez and Sara Rasmussen, one democrat, Dustin Darden, and one self-described “independent”, incumbent Jason Grenn.
Grenn is young, fresh faced, has a pair of Republican parents, couple of strangely named kids, and ran as an independent in 2016. He defeated incumbent Liz Vazquez in that election, on what amounted to a clean-up politics basis. It took him all of 15 – 20 seconds after being elected to decide to organize with the democrat majority in the House, meaning that he took responsibility for supporting Walker’s PFD money grab and failure to repeal SB 91, the failed criminal reform legislation.
Grenn is fully supported by both the Governor and the unions. Walker and Berkowitz attended his campaign kickoff a few weeks ago. Most of his large dollar donations come from unions. I would say that Grenn will be a tough out. But he is not immune from defeat. https://aws.state.ak.us/ApocReports/CampaignDisclosure/CDIncome.aspx
The question is who amongst the other three candidates is best suited to beat him.
While I would love the leftist vote to split between Darden and Grenn, with the Governor, democrat leadership, and the unions all in bed with Grenn (tough to be independent if all the usual suspects on the left support you), I don’t expect Darden to do much in November.
So the question is who to support among Republicans. I must admit that I am biased, as I have known Liz Vazquez for over a decade, worked with her for three years on the Chugach Board, and the two years she was in the legislature. She is sharp, tough, reliable, and will keep pressure on the governor, whoever he might be, to control spending, keep his hands out of our pockets, and his minions out of our lives. She will steadfastly oppose that Great White Whale, the economic disaster that Governor Ahab (Bill Walker) is trying to talk the Chinese into building between Prudhoe Bay and Nikiski, aka the Liquid Natural Gas pipeline if for no other reason than there is no market for this product in a time of a worldwide glut of liquid natural gas.
I do not know Ms. Rasmussen. I have not spoken with her nor do I know what her positions are. I do know she is new in this business, which is precisely what we have with Young Master Grenn two years ago. Grenn does what the Governor and the House democrat majority leadership tell him to do, even though they allow him to write the occasional ADN op-ed. That has cost every man, woman and child in District 22 at least $2,200 over the last two years as Walker supported by the House democrat majority including Grenn stole from them via executive fiat.
Perhaps it is time to do something else, something better.
Alex Gimarc lives in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disabilities policies. His weekly column “Interesting Items” is a summary of news stories with substantive Alaska-themed topics. He is a small business owner and Information
