Contributing by Rep. David Eastman
When the news hit that my senator, Mike Dunleavy, was resigning from the legislature to run for governor, I immediately began getting phone calls asking if I would consider allowing my name to go forward to finish the final year of his 4-year term.
While it would be a privilege to represent the Mat-Su in the Senate, I chose not to allow my name to go forward. More than enough people expressed interest in the position, and I was confident that Mat-Su Republicans would be able to send three qualified names to the governor for appointment, as both Republicans and Democrats have been doing for decades.
I remember six years ago when fellow firefighter, Rep. Carl Gatto, represented a portion of Dunleavy’s district. After serving as my legislator for nearly 10 years, Rep. Gatto succumbed to cancer during the legislative session in 2012.
Local Republicans interviewed candidates and selected three names, mine among them, to go to the governor. Each of the candidates were interviewed by the governor, and Governor Parnell selected Shelley Hughes from that list. While I was disappointed at not being chosen, the process was both open and fair and, most importantly, it showed respect for the people who had succeeded in choosing their legislator in the last election: Mat-Su Republicans.
While Alaska’s Constitution assigns the governor a role to play in that process, the governor performs that function on behalf of the people. That same constitution declares, “All government originates with the people, [and] is founded upon their will only.” Certainly, the governor’s role in replacing legislators who have died in office or resigned is no exception.
I expected that Governor Walker, as every governor before him, would honor the will of the people. But I was wrong. Two weeks after making the decision not to let my name be put forward, Governor Walker did something that no Alaska governor had ever done: He ignored the three candidates sent to him by the Democratic Party and recruited his own candidate: someone who had never been a Democrat.
While the governor’s choice in replacing Rep. Dean Westlake in January is certainly an endorsement of the person he selected, that endorsement is largely overshadowed by what it says about the governor’s relationship with the people. In two words: Not good.
By choosing someone who had never been a Democrat to replace a Democrat legislator, Walker’s action was a breach of the public trust, no less so than his decision to unilaterally decide his own amount for the PFD while ignoring the fact that state law already spells out exactly how the amount of the PFD is to be calculated.
Similarly, current state law (Alaska Statute 15.40.330) requires that the governor appoint an individual who is of the same political party as the legislator being replaced. After rejecting the three individuals put forward by local Democrats, Walker selected his own candidate and then asked that individual to change his voter registration to Democrat. Such gimmicks may be expected of a lawyer like Walker, but they erode the trust placed in that office by the people.