{"id":23576,"date":"2018-01-16T18:58:00","date_gmt":"2018-01-17T02:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/three-finalists-named-to-replace-mike-dunleavy-in-alaska-senate\/"},"modified":"2018-01-16T18:58:00","modified_gmt":"2018-01-17T02:58:00","slug":"three-finalists-named-to-replace-mike-dunleavy-in-alaska-senate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/three-finalists-named-to-replace-mike-dunleavy-in-alaska-senate\/","title":{"rendered":"Three finalists named to replace Mike Dunleavy in Alaska Senate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A sitting state legislator is among the three names being forwarded to Gov. Bill Walker as possible replacements for Sen. Mike Dunleavy, R-Wasilla.<\/p>\n<p>On Monday night in Wasilla&rsquo;s Menard Center, Republican delegates from House districts 9 and 10 selected Todd Smoldon, Tom Braund and Rep. George Rauscher, of Sutton.<\/p>\n<p>The selections followed hours of interviews and discussion presided over by state party chairman Tuckerman Babcock, who shared the results with the Empire by email.<\/p>\n<p>Eleven candidates were considered, and five of the 11 were interviewed.<\/p>\n<p>Walker has 30 days to pick a new Mat-Su senator from among the three men. Walker&rsquo;s choice must then be confirmed by the other Republicans in the Senate. If not, the process restarts.<\/p>\n<p>Dunleavy <a href=\"http:\/\/juneauempire.com\/state\/news\/alaska-legislature\/2018-01-08\/state-senator-mike-dunleavy-resigns-legislature-boost\" target=\"_blank\">announced his resignation<\/a> in the first week of January, saying he intends to concentrate on his run for governor.<\/p>\n<p>Rauscher was elected in 2016 to the Alaska House of Representatives and is in his first term as a lawmaker. Smoldon is an economics teacher and Republican precinct leader from House District 10, and Braund is a retiree and Republican precinct leader from House District 9.<\/p>\n<p>In order to be considered, all candidates had to be Republicans living in districts 9 or 10, in addition to meeting all other constitutional qualifications for office.<\/p>\n<p>Whoever wins the seat will face a fall election to keep it, if he so chooses to run.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A sitting state legislator is among the three names being forwarded to Gov. Bill Walker as possible replacements for Sen. Mike Dunleavy, R-Wasilla. On Monday night in Wasilla&rsquo;s Menard Center, Republican delegates from House districts 9 and 10 selected Todd Smoldon, Tom Braund and Rep. George Rauscher, of Sutton. The selections followed hours of interviews [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":23577,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[34],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-23576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-alaska-legislature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23576","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\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23576"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=23576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}