Dear Friends and Neighbors,
The past six years it has truly been an honor to represent downtown Anchorage, Fairview, Government Hill, Mt. View, Airport Heights, and South Addition in Juneau. Together, we have accomplished a lot in those six years, though I am most proud of how we have truly worked to create and promote a political environment where we look past politics and work across the aisle to achieve sound policy that moves this state forward.
This year we established transformational education policy through a bipartisan effort that will provide the opportunity for universal, voluntary pre-Kindergarten for every Alaska child, coupled with a reading intervention program to make sure every child can read by 3rd grade. We’ve increased the Base Student Allocation for the first time in seven years and secured increased funding for high energy costs and deferred maintenance for our schools.
We were also able to negotiate a strong capital budget for the first time in seven years – a capital budget that will create new jobs, provide much-needed infrastructure maintenance, and establish a sound economic basis for our future.
Over the last few years, we soldiered through a worldwide pandemic unlike any we had seen in over a hundred years. Republicans and Democrats came together to work across party lines to protect Alaskans and ensure our health and economy survived. We did not make it political; we based our responses on facts and data. We protected Alaskans, and now we will come out of this pandemic stronger than ever.
While it has been an honor to serve the people of District J and all Alaskans this past six years, I have decided not to seek re-election to the Alaska State Senate. The work we have accomplished together is humbling and I am confident that our state will be left in good hands as our next generation of leaders steps up to carry on this work. Make no mistake, they will have a tough job ahead – we still need a long-term fiscal plan, we need to transition to new industries and jobs, we must rebuild our university system, improve teacher retention, and establish a real pension system for all our state employees.
I write this note to you after having spent much of the last two weeks traveling through small towns and back roads of the United States. I visited friends and listened to the people I met along the road. In doing so, I’ve seen a need to reestablish trust, civility, and respect for one another in our political dialogue. I am committed to doing that and that is one critical reason for why I have decided not to run for reelection. A great deal of my next chapter life will be working to restore civility to American politics.
So, as my time in the legislature comes to an end, let me leave you with a song to remember me by. This time, it is easy: I’m “On the Road Again…” and never “So Far Away.”
