ANCHORAGE, Alaska—
Next Tuesday, voters will decide which one of the three leading Republicans running for governor -- Gov. Sean Parnell, Ralph Samuels or Bill Walker -- should end up on the November ballot.When you're running against other candidates from the same party for the same job, you get pretty good at summing up your ideas in plain terms. For Samuels, it's "stop spending."
“If you have to define me, I'm the small-government conservative businessman,” Samuels said.
Walker says stop planning a natural gas pipeline, and start building one.
“Well, the enthusiasm is the fact is we're running out of oil,” Walker said.
And for Parnell, it's about economic growth and strengthening families.
“You can measure where I'm going by what I've done,” Parnell said.
As conservatives go, the Republican candidates say they want to make state government more efficient.
“I'd look at (the Department of Environmental Conservation), I'd look at the Department of Revenue, some of the regulatory issues with Department of Revenue,” Walker said. “(The Department of Natural Resources) is an area that I think has, in many ways, inhibited the development of resources in our state.”
“I've directed the departments to keep spending down, to evaluate each new initiative that they are going to propose in light of fiscal restraint and benefit to the public, results for the public,” Parnell said.
“You're going to look at this whole suite and go, ‘OK, what do we want to provide, how much can we afford over the long run and what do we want to do?’” Samuels said.
The dilemma of how and when to build a natural gas pipeline is turning out to be one of the primary issues in this race.
When he was a state representative, Samuels was the only House member to vote against the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act. He still thinks it’s a failed process, and would consider exiting the agreement in favor of his plan to build an in-state line from the North Slope through Fairbanks and Anchorage, terminating on the Kenai Peninsula.
“I don't believe that the group that is in charge right now, the governor and his team, is enthusiastic about moving forward with getting Alaska's gas to Alaskans,” Samuels said.
Walker is so passionate about building an all-Alaska gas line that he's molded his campaign around the single issue. He says as governor, he would immediately try to make AGIA's open season results public -- and if those numbers show a failed open season, he would exit AGIA.
Walker says an in-state line would spur manufacturing along its route and diversify the economy, thereby providing jobs and revenue to the state.
“Right now we ship a lot of our resources, leave Alaska in the raw form. and then we return a finished product -- that's not an economy, that's a colony,” Walker said.
Parnell recently signed off on a plan to combine all the in-state proposals under a single authority to streamline the process. He's now waiting for results of the open seasons for both TransCanada pipeline under AGIA and the competing Denali pipeline project, as they plan their large-diameter gas lines from the North Slope to markets in Canada and beyond.
“We have never been in a place where companies have bid Alaska gas into a pipeline,” Parnell said. “We're there now, so every step beyond this, every step beyond this, we're in historic territory.”
Parnell also wants to provide scholarships for Alaska high school students to attend college in-state. He made some progress in the last legislative session, when lawmakers passed a bill which sets up a framework for such a program.
“Well, my belief is that the young people of this state will have those scholarships in hand the fall of 2011,” Parnell said.
Samuels says he does not support Parnell's plan.
“Rather look at something like a loan program, where there's a little bit of personal responsibility involved with it -- wasn't a big fan of a C student getting a free ride,” Samuels said.
Walker returns to his central theme, saying that if a gas line is built the state may be able to afford scholarhips.
“Pick a program, pick someone's favorite program or function of government – 90 percent of our income comes from an oil pipeline that's two-thirds empty,” Walker said.
There's no easy answer to Alaska's problems, but for a candidate trying to win votes, the solution often starts with a few simple words.
A reminder for anyone heading to the polls: only voters registered as Republican, non-partisan or undeclared are allowed to vote in the Republican primary.
Contact Ted Land at tland@ktuu.com
