On the third floor of the court plaza building is Josephine Bahnke\u2019s boat.<\/p>\n
For the new head of the Alaska Division of Elections, it\u2019s one of the few touches of her Nome home in her office.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was one of my going-away presents in Nome,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
At this point, there\u2019s one thing important to note: The boat, a trophy from the years spent developing the town\u2019s port into an Arctic gateway, is only about a foot long.<\/p>\n
She pointed to one side of the boat. \u201cStaff had put my dad\u2019s name on there, my dad\u2019s nickname: \u2018U.S.S. Stinky.\u2019 Stinky was his nickname.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lloyd \u201cStinky\u201d Hardy\u2019s daughter, called Josie by friends, on Oct. 1 assumed control of a state agency facing \u2014 as many are \u2014 significant changes in the coming months.<\/p>\n
When Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott named her the successor to longtime elections commissioner Gail Fenumiai in July, there was criticism from some corners. Critics said Bahnke was too inexperienced and unsuited to replace Fenumiai, who had monitored the state\u2019s elections through the Murkowski write-in campaign, numerous controversial ballot initiatives and the sudden creation of the Unity Ticket, which saw an independent candidate elected Alaska governor for the first time.<\/p>\n
Bahnke doesn\u2019t hide her lack of elections experience. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn my role as city manager, I wasn\u2019t that involved with elections,\u201d she said on Tuesday, the same day she oversaw the state\u2019s rural education election.<\/p>\n
But those who have worked with Bahnke said her experience can be misleading. Experience can be gained. It\u2019s difficult to train intelligence.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s very intelligent, and she\u2019s very, very quick at learning new things,\u201d said Tom Moran, Nome\u2019s former city clerk and Bahnke\u2019s replacement as manager. \u201cI do realize that some people took umbrage at her lack of experience, but I think she\u2019s absolutely up to the task.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou think about other departments, but elections are such a fundamental part of our democracy,\u201d Bahnke said. \u201cIf it doesn\u2019t run well or if it\u2019s not run well, if it\u2019s not effective or secure, that leads to a whole other host of problems.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nFrom Juneau to Barrow and back<\/strong><\/p>\n Atop the budget issues faced by other state agencies, Bahnke must implement a federally mandated voting rights settlement, negotiate an impending ballot initiative, prepare for the 2016 presidential election, upgrade the department\u2019s computer systems and cope with the day-to-day personnel turnover and issues faced by all state departments.<\/p>\n \u201cThe lieutenant governor has said that he wants Alaska to have the best elections, so really, I think those are my marching orders,\u201d Bahnke said.<\/p>\n Bahnke, who is married and has no children \u2014 she has a dog, a 13-year-old black lab \u2014 was born in Nome and raised mostly in Fairbanks.<\/p>\n She attended Fort Hays State University in Kansas, graduating in 1996, and worked as a staffer in the Alaska Legislature for Sen. Bert Sharp, R-Fairbanks. After Sharp retired in 1998, she was a staffer for Senate President Drue Pearce, R-Anchorage. <\/p>\n \u201cReally, it was an opportunity for me to get my foot in the door at the capitol,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n That time working with the Legislature marked her first experience with Juneau, and in an interview she recalled enjoyable times at Eaglecrest Ski Area and Perseverence Theatre, places she hopes to experience again.<\/p>\n In 1999, she started attending graduate school at Portland State University and worked with the Denali Commission, as well as Kawerak Inc., the regional Native nonprofit for Bring Straits Native Corp.<\/p>\n In 2004, she took a state job, working out of Nome for the Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development. In 2008, she left that job to become Nome\u2019s city manager.<\/p>\n \u201cFor a local person, she\u2019s been pretty good,\u201d said Nome city councilman Louis Green Sr., who said he\u2019s known Bahnke \u201csince she was a kid.\u201d<\/p>\n As Nome became the launchpad for the federal government\u2019s Arctic efforts, Bahnke also wore the hat of the city port director. The federal government is preparing to spend millions to deepen Nome\u2019s port as a way to further Arctic efforts, and until Joy Baker became the city\u2019s full-time port director, Bahnke was the city person monitoring the effort.<\/p>\n \u201cShe is extremely driven, and she is very, very good at the political side of her job,\u201d Moran said, explaining how Bahnke was able to lobby for millions of dollars in federal grants for Nome projects. \u201cShe has a lot of good connections in Juneau and Washington, D.C.\u201d<\/p>\n A \u2018new normal\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Juneau is a big switch from Nome, said Bahnke, who is renting a house in Douglas \u2014 and yes, she has already switched her voter registration. <\/p>\n The little differences stand out the most: having a country music radio station, paying $7 for a Subway sandwich instead of $10 or $12, even the mail.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had a post office box in Nome. You had to go and get your mail,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd here, we have our own mailbox, with its own little flag, and we have a mailman who shows up every day. It\u2019s like \u2014 this is so cool. That, to me, is just thrilling. It\u2019s something that for most people, it\u2019s normal. It\u2019s my new normal.\u201d<\/p>\n Bahnke said she was happy in Nome but felt she was ready for a new challenge. <\/p>\n \u201cHad I not been asked to fill this position, I\u2019d probably still be in Nome, in the same job,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n When the Unity Ticket of Mallott and now-Gov. Bill Walker visited Nome on a campaign trip \u2014 it was their \u201cfirst date\u201d after forming the ticket, Bahnke remembers \u2014 she was enthusiastic about the new look. She reached out to let them know: \u201cI love Nome, I love my job, but I would be honored if you saw fit to let me into the administration and work in Juneau.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018It\u2019s not my first rodeo\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Asked about her lack of elections experience, Bahnke said she\u2019s prepared to learn from staff already in place, and when it comes to state work, \u201cit\u2019s not my first rodeo.\u201d<\/p>\n The Division of Elections has 28 full-time employees, but under the federal settlement of the Toyukuk v. Treadwell lawsuit, the state will be required to hire a 29th: A monitor to ensure the state is providing the Native-language translators and documents called for by the settlement.<\/p>\n In the coming months, Bahnke will attempt to recruit those translators, then return to the Legislature where she once worked to ask for money to pay for them. Bahnke may also make the case for new equipment and computer systems to replace the aging ones now used statewide.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the long run, if we\u2019re not mindful of that, if we\u2019re not educating the Legislature about those kind of things, you could be in a situation where the voters aren\u2019t talking about the results of the election, they\u2019re talking about how the voting equipment failed. That\u2019s something we definitely want to avoid,\u201d Bahnke said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On the third floor of the court plaza building is Josephine Bahnke\u2019s boat. For the new head of the Alaska Division of Elections, it\u2019s one of the few touches of her Nome home in her office. \u201cThis was one of my going-away presents in Nome,\u201d she said. At this point, there\u2019s one thing important to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":426,"featured_media":16111,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-16110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/426"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16110"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=16110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}