Les Gara attacked Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who attacked former Gov. Bill Walker, who generally decided against mentioning Charlie Pierce. <\/p>\n
A debate Wednesday night featuring all four candidates for Alaska’s governor, a rarity during the campaign, offered a rushed collection of quips, attacks and soundbites during the 55-minute forum (plus an intermission to show a video explaining ranked choice voting) hosted and broadcast<\/a> by Alaska Public Media, KTOO and Alaska’s News Source. All four candidates are scheduled to debate again Saturday morning at the Alaska Federation of Natives Convention, which will be webcast <\/a>live<\/a>.<\/p>\n The rapid-fire barrage of questions from moderators on Wednesday saw the candidates speaking rapidly to get as many words as possible into the maximum allowed response time of one minute, although it was less for many of the questions.<\/p>\n As such, the audience got more impressions than in-depth portraits from the candidates:<\/p>\n – Dunleavy, a Republican, defended his first term and responded to many questions by talking about various ways he could relate to residents’ struggles. He noted the statewide crime rate reached a 41-year low (which Walker pointed out coincides with the COVID-19 pandemic), this year’s Permanent Fund Dividend was the largest ever (not adjusted for inflation), and the state budget was reduced except for education and safety.<\/p>\n – Democrat Les Gara, a former state lawmaker, spent the majority of his time attacking Dunleavy with repeated phrases such as “he has left 50 communities without police officers” and “biggest disaster in Alaska history” when referring to a proposal in the governor’s first budget to cut education funding by about a quarter. Gara said he supports having education funding keep pace with inflation, and favors paying for that and other services he supports by eliminating more than $1 billion in annual tax credits on production to oil companies.<\/p>\n – Walker, an independent, split his time between defending controversial aspects of his term in office and attacking Dunleavy with lines such as “You have literally taken a wrecking ball to our state.” The former governor called his actions such as reducing PFDs in order to fund state government responsible public policy and challenged the current governor’s crime rate claims by citing a list of offenses where Alaska is among the highest-ranking states.<\/p>\n – Pierce, a Republican who finished a distant fourth in the August primary has been largely invisible during the campaign until recently, emphasized a platform to the right of Dunleavy’s — such as openly supporting a constitutional convention and restricting transgender bathroom access. The former Kenai mayor also questioned if voter approval of the state’s new ranked choice voting was legitimate and proposed reducing the number of school districts to help resolve funding issues. He attracted virtually no notice or engagement from the other candidates, although Dunleavy encourage voters to rank Pierce second.<\/p>\n A slightly more in-depth and revealing portion of the debate occurred when each candidate was allowed to ask another candidate a question, with the response followed by a rebuttal from the questioner and then a 30-second period for the other candidates to comment. Gara and Walker directed their accusatory questions at Dunleavy, while both Republicans targeted Walker.<\/p>\n Pierce began the questioning by asking Walker about stating he would repeat past actions to reduce future PFDs if necessary to balance the budget.<\/p>\n “I’ve not said that,” Walker responded. “This is the result of not having a fiscal plan. Going through $20 billion in savings is how we’ve kept things afloat. My goal is to make sure we have a sustainable dividend that we can possibly have, but not at the expense of other services.”<\/p>\n Gara followed the exchange by stating “the reason we don’t have a strong PFD is that this governor has given away our oil wealth,” while Dunleavy asserted “the PFD was going well until the Walker administration. Our Permanent Fund itself has grown tremendously under my administration.”<\/p>\n