Complete Interview:
The race for one of Alaska’s Senate seats is one of the most closely watched in the country. The Republican Party believes that it can take control of the senate by defeating Democratic incumbents in traditionally red states. KTNA’s Phillip Manning recently spoke with the race’s incumbent, Senator Mark Begich, and has this report:
The race to be an Alaskan Senator for the next six years is tight. Most forecasts call it a toss-up, with some giving a slight edge to Senator Mark Begich’s Republican opponent, former Alaska Attorney General and DNR Commissioner Dan Sullivan.
One tactic that has been widely used by the Sullivan campaign is to link Senator Begich to President Barack Obama, whose current approval ratings are hovering around 40%, according to the most recent Gallup poll. Begich responds by saying that, while he often agrees with the President and the Democratic Senate majority, he is not afraid to go against the grain.
“When it comes to Alaska issues, if the President’s wrong…people are going to hear from me, and the President will, too. I’m going to push back to make it very clear how important Alaska issues are and convince the administration. If I can’t convince the administration, then vote against them.”
There are numbers that back that claim up. According to Open Congress, Begich ranked 45th amongst Democratic Senators for how often he voted with the party in 2013.
Some of the issues where Mark Begich says he has broken ranks are the President’s budget proposal, moving a squadron of F-16s out of Alaska, and oil and gas development. Most recently, he’s criticized the President’s plan to arm Syrian rebels in an attempt to combat the group known as the Islamic State. There is a possibility that funding for those weapons could find its way into the continuing resolution that keeps the government funded in the absence of a regular budget.
“I would work to try to separate the vote. If I’m unable to do that, the odds of me voting against the continuing resolution increase pretty dramatically. I think the issue of arming rebels to the tune of half-a-billion dollars, unpaid-for, not knowing if these weapons would end up in terrorist hands, is not acceptable to me and should not be acceptable to Alaskans.”
Over the last few months, anyone with a television has likely seen some of the attack ads that both the Begich and Sullivan campaigns have aired. Recently, the Sullivan campaign released an ad featuring Julie Fate Sullivan, Dan’s wife. The thirty-second spot discusses Sullivan’s tenure in the George W. Bush administration, as well as his deployment to Afghanistan as a United States Marine. The ad ends with Julie Fate Sullivan saying:
“…Now, Mark Begich is attacking Dan for that service. As someone whose family has been in Alaska for thousands of years, I have a message for Mark Begich. Alaskans respect military service, we don’t attack it.”
In response, Mark Begich says:
“It’s not true at all. There’s no proof of that, but they just say it. I recognize it’s an attack mode that they’re in to, but my goal is going to be to talk about the issues.”
Senator Begich’s campaign has also been running attack ads, one of which referenced a double-murder and sexual assault of a child which the Begich campaign says could not have happened had the man accused of the crimes not been granted a lenient plea deal for another offense. The victims’ family spoke out against the ad, and the website PolitiFact rated it as a “Pants on Fire” lie. Mark Begich maintains that the core assertion of the ad, the claim that Dan Sullivan was soft on sentencing as Alaska’s Attorney General, is true.
“There’s no question the ad I ran was truthful. It talked about–he OK’ed these plea bargains…”
Congress will likely recess for the fall later this week. After that, the final stretch of the campaign begins. Mark Begich says he intends to conduct a strong ground-game once he is home, but he admits it’s likely to be a very close. The final verdict will be delivered by Alaskans on November 4th.
The rest of my interview with Mark Begich, including further discussion of the campaign and a number of policy issues, is available online at KTNA.org.
