My current conundrum: the options for the US Senate race are just abysmal. While I appreciate the diligent work the so-called Tea Party is doing to destroy the GOP, I'm obviously not voting for a Tea Party candidate, so Joe Miller is out. I do find it amusing that Miller was disciplined in writing for ethics violations in 2008 when he was the Fairbanks North Star Borough's part-time attorney. While Miller fans might try to claim that it's a partisan hatchet job, the guy making this public, the former borough mayor, isn't a massive Lisa Murkowski fan: "Whitaker has a long and mixed history with Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who is running a write-in campaign after Miller beat her in the Republican primary this summer. They served in the state Legislature together but Whitaker publicly complained of nepotism when Murkowski was appointed to the U.S. Senate by her father, then-Gov. Frank Murkowski."
To paraphrase Utah Phillips, "talking to a conservative is like talking to your refrigerator… you know, the light goes on, the light goes off, it’s not going to do anything that isn’t built into it" so Lisa Murkowski's amusing write-in campaign is out.
Who does that leave me? A whack job libertarian named Frederick "David" Hasse (the name in quotes is from the official election pamphlet from the State of Alaska, not my own embellishment.) Why is he a whackjob, you ask? Let's start with hypothetical question #3 in his official candidate statement: "Do you know [...] What the "New World Order" is about?" Somewhat inexplicable for a Libertarian is his #1 plan for the "People's Bailout": "Nationalize the Federal Reserve and place it under Congressional control." Okay, let's move on.
One of the only things I can say for Tim Carter, a retired optometrist from Florida, is that he lives in a ski condo in the shadow of a nice ski resort. He has lived in Alaska for less time (3 years) than I have, but did manage to work the words "Alaska" and "Alaskan" into his official candidate statement 14 times. (Confidential to Tim: "neverstop" is actually two words.)
Non-affiliated Ted Gianoutsos only uses "Alaska" and variants thereof seven times in his official candidate statement, which seems to be running against Frank Murkowski as much as Lisa: "father-daughter" shows up five times. Notwithstanding the opening exhortation in his candidate statement, "Elect me, and YOU win!" this guy = FAIL.
How about the Democratic candidate, a marginally qualified small town mayor? (Will Alaskans never learn our lesson on that?) Scott McAdams is the somewhat bumbling mayor of Sitka, which at population ~8,986, is the fourth most populated city in Alaska. (Yes, really.) To once again call up the memory of Utah Phillips, "Working for the Democratic Party now that’s kind of like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic..." Indeed. McAdams wants to destroy the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, is aggressively pro-war and pro-Afghanistan war, and generally, I just disagree with almost every one of his positions. I mean, this is really the Democratic candidate? It seems that one of the only things he and I agree on is abortion, though his own statement on ""Individual Liberty" is the political equivalent of mumbling with your mouth full of peanut butter and Wonder Bread, which forced me to google him specifically for a position on abortion. He does manage variants of Alaska and Alaskan a whopping 15 times, but he has lived in the Last Frontier for 19 years, so he's a little more justified than Carter in his pandering.
So I'm left with: nobody. I can't decide who to write-in, and I simply cannot, as a matter of personal morality, vote for someone I genuinely don't want to in office. And I don't want Scott McAdams in office. I guess I'm going to leave it blank. To continue with my theme of paraphrasing musicians, here's a little Rush: "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."
Not similarly problematic is the governor's race: I'm actually fine with voting for Ethan Berkowitz, who I have met and spoken with in person at some length. Unfortunately, I agree wholeheartedly with the analysis of Ivan Moore, a local politcal pollster:
"Ethan’s a very smart and capable guy, but [voters] don’t know the man. He’s a personally private person and very few people really know what he’s about, what makes him tick, and what he’s done in his life. The reason they don’t know it is because Ethan hasn’t told us. For years now, he’s shied away from that critical aspect of political life, the telling of his story, and the creation and maintenance of a personal bond with voters. Instead, we get the quips and the gimmicks, and his opponents defining him instead."
I know the man a little (though not nearly as well as a friend of mine does), but Moore is, tragically, correct: he largely lets his opponents define him. This is especially sad when the opponent is a boob, as Don Young is and was in 2008, or a machine tool and corporate lobbyist whore, as Sean Parnell is. (Let's be real: Parnell is really only gubnuh because a certain Tina Fey lookalike is chronically unable to not quit her jobs.)
On a related note, here is some awesome reading on Alaska's somewhat strange gubernatorial succession procedures. I'm particularly fond of the following quotes:
"The Palin administration is a clown car."
"...there have been [Alaska] Cabinet officers in the past who should not be running a hot dog stand, much less standing in line to take the helm of the U.S.S. Alaska."
"Besides, face it, there are only so many Wasilla High School graduates to go around."
No comments:
Post a Comment