{"id":32537,"date":"2016-03-11T00:28:27","date_gmt":"2016-03-11T08:28:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/gruenbergs-replacement-sworn-into-legislature-as-budget-hits-house-floor\/"},"modified":"2016-03-11T00:28:27","modified_gmt":"2016-03-11T08:28:27","slug":"gruenbergs-replacement-sworn-into-legislature-as-budget-hits-house-floor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/gruenbergs-replacement-sworn-into-legislature-as-budget-hits-house-floor\/","title":{"rendered":"Gruenberg&#8217;s replacement sworn into Legislature as budget hits House floor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Alaska Legislature\u2019s newest member was sworn in on Thursday morning and found herself in a hotly contested budget debate 15 minutes later.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat a day to come in,\u201d Rep. Mike Chenault, R-Nikiski and Speaker of the House, told Ivy Spohnholz.<\/p>\n<p>Rep. Spohnholz, D-Anchorage, was named and confirmed to the seat left vacant by the late Anchorage Democrat Max Gruenberg, who <a href=\"http:\/\/juneauempire.com\/state\/2016-02-14\/anchorage-rep-gruenberg-dies-sunday-age-72\" target=\"_blank\">died at his Juneau home last month<\/a> at the age of 72.<\/p>\n<p>Thursday was Spohnholz\u2019s first day in the Legislature since being <a href=\"http:\/\/juneauempire.com\/state\/2016-03-08\/walker-names-gruenberg-replacement\" target=\"_blank\">appointed<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Spohnholz\u2019s addition to the House gives it 18 female members. At 45 percent female, the House closely resembles the state as a whole. Alaska was 47.4 percent female in 2014, according to U.S. Census Department figures. One more woman would make the body 47.5 percent female.<\/p>\n<p>As she took the oath of office in the Speaker\u2019s Chambers, she was surrounded by members of the Democratic-led House minority and a handful of majority members, including House Majority Leader Rep. Charisse Millett, R-Anchorage.<\/p>\n<p>There was also Spohnholz\u2019s mother, Ann, who served in the Legislature in 1989. Ann served for three months, after being appointed to a seat by Gov. Steve Cowper amid a legally contested race between David Finkelstein and Brad Bradley.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is like lightning striking twice,\u201d Ann Spohnholz said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think that nobody would have wished for this situation to occur,\u201d Ivy Spohnholz said, referring to Gruenberg\u2019s death. \u201cI certainly can\u2019t fill his shoes, and I won\u2019t try to. \u2026 I\u2019ll do my best.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Contact reporter James Brooks at james.k.brooks@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Alaska Legislature\u2019s newest member was sworn in on Thursday morning and found herself in a hotly contested budget debate 15 minutes later. \u201cWhat a day to come in,\u201d Rep. Mike Chenault, R-Nikiski and Speaker of the House, told Ivy Spohnholz. Rep. Spohnholz, D-Anchorage, was named and confirmed to the seat left vacant by the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":426,"featured_media":32538,"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-32537","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\/32537","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=32537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32537"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=32537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}