Election day is right around the corner, and Upper Valley residents will be choosing their representatives in the State House and Senate as well as the numerous statewide campaigns. On Wednesday, KTNA’s Phillip Manning spoke with State Senate candidate Warren Keogh about the race.
Warren Keogh is one of two candidates running for Senate Seat E, which includes the Upper Valley. He is running against Republican incumbent Mike Dunleavy. Keogh is not running as part of a party, and in fact says he has never belonged to a political party. Warren Keogh is a Vietnam veteran and has worked as a nurse, a paramedic, and for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In 2010, he was elected to the Mat-Su Borough Assembly to represent District 1 in the southeastern section of the borough. After his term expired last year, Keogh thought he was done with politics. He says discussions with people from across the political spectrum have helped persuade him to run for office once again.
“It’s been my growing sense and concern that the State of Alaska has gone off the rails, here, with some errors of leadership and some wrong turns on the part of the legislature. I’m of a mind, as an individual, if you think you would like to change the process or improve the process, then offer yourself up as a political candidate to represent the interests of the people.”
Keogh believes that running as an independent frees him from obligations to vote along party lines. He says he is an option for a legislator not beholden to party politics.
“I think people, generally, are really sick and tired of partisan politics, and one of the things I’ve heard more often more recently on the part of Republicans is that, ‘I am a Republican,’ or ‘I used to be a Republican, but where did my party go? It’s not the party that I used to know in Alaska ten, twenty, or thirty years ago.’ So, there’s some disenchantment with hardcore partisan politics.”
Warren Keogh says that the state’s budget is one of his biggest concerns, and would be among his first priorities if elected.
“We have to change the way we operate, we govern, and we expend public monies. If we continue to do it at the rate and the way we’re doing it now, we’re heading for financial crisis.”
Warren Keogh believes that the capital budget is one place to start making cuts. The state currently has a number of projects with price tags ranging from hundreds of millions to billions of dollars. Keogh says that needs to be re-examined.
“I think we’ve been not very smart, especially in the last couple years, on how we’ve gone about funding capital projects and prioritizing capital project. I’ve use the analogy of a kid running around in a candy shop, recently. We really do need to prioritize things and separate the projects that we really need from those that we really want.”
There are some projects Warren Keogh believes the state should finish, such as the Port MacKenzie rail spur. Others, like the Susitna-Watana Hydroelectric Project, do not make fiscal sense, according to Keogh.
“We poured all this money into a re-look at a project, an extraordinarily expensive project, that does not pencil out. The project is not going to fly. I just don’t see it.”
In addition to the budget, Warren Keogh says he would prioritize education in the state. Last legislative session, Warren Keogh’s opponent, Senator Dunelavy, introduced an amendment in the Senate that would have allowed public funding to go to private schools. Keogh says that would have caused problems for Alaska’s public schools.
“That would diminish–or really begin–the process of defunding public schools in Alaska, something we can’t afford to do…”
Keogh believes that funding for education should be increased through the payments made to schools based on how many students are enrolled, known as the base student allocation or BSA.
“Essentially, over time–over several years–the same dollar amount was going in, but it didn’t keep up with the cost of inflation, so we need to inflation-proof the BSA, for one…”
Warren Keogh and I also discussed the ballot issues for the general election. He says he is a likely no vote to legalize marijuana, but admits he has not fully read the initiative. When it comes to Proposition 3, which would increase the minimum wage to $9.75 over two years, Keogh says he is definitely a yes vote, because he believes the current minimum wage is not enough to live on.
Finally, on Proposition 4, which would require a vote by the legislature before any large-scale mining projects could be permitted in the Bristol Bay region, Keogh says he will vote yes.
“I think, in this case, it’s warranted to have the legislature weigh in to make sure that, whatever action we take, elected officials are more accountable to whichever direction we go.”
You can listen to my full interviews with all five candidates running to represent the Upper Valley in Juneau under the Su Valley Voice category.
