Lesil McGuire, candidate for governor, visits Nome

Margaret Sutherland (KNOM)
You are currently running for Alaska governor in this upcoming race. Can you tell us a little bit about your campaign?

Lesil McGuire
I'm a lifelong Alaskan. I served in the House and Senate for 16 years. Worked a lot on rural energy, housing, the development of our Arctic port, and have been to Nome many times over my lifetime. Really love your community.

Our campaign, we are the first all-woman ticket in the State of Alaska to run, so that's historic and exciting. And part of our candidacy is seeing what the moms can do for a little bit. I have been out of politics for the last 10 years, working in satellite connectivity, connecting rural villages across the state, and in my travels I just really started to feel that Alaska was at a turning point, and that it was time for me to step up to serve again, should the people wish for me to be elected.

So much of what I've been hearing from people has to do with housing availability, affordability of housing, affordable reliable sources of energy, and schools, our education. And so it feels like a good time for two moms who've previously served the public to come in and see if Alaskans want to give us a chance.

Margaret Sutherland
I have so many questions, but I guess I want to start with that last point of your running mate. So, you announced on Friday that you have changed your running mate. Can you talk a little bit about that decision, and who your new running mate is?

Lesil McGuire
One of the things I love about women leaders is our ability to be resilient and not to focus on egos and titles, I feel like, as much as I've experienced sometimes with the tickets with men, and some of the hierarchical things I served with in the Senate and the House when I was a young woman, and there were only a few of us.

Our decision was made to elevate Liz Rexford into a position we need her more of. She is an extraordinary policy maker and leader, she is a Dartmouth grad, first woman to graduate from college in her family, deep roots in Utqiagvik, in Kotzebue, and in Fairbanks. And so she is going to be helping us augment our reach out in rural communities, and she's working on some really important policy solutions in housing and energy.

She has a very young family, and theres just a lot of travel and other kinds of things with the lieutenant governor role. So Sarah Rasmussen, who is a moderate Republican, like myself, really nonpartisan, I would call all of us actually nonpartisan, we're solutions-oriented people. Had time at this moment in her life and was willing to step up and join our team.

So we've added her to our team, and we look forward to that. We know that it's going to take a lot of ground to cover, and Sarah has really good name ID, and has served before, so she's ready to just step up into some of those pieces where the lieutenant governor is kind of a secretary of state role, and it's a lot of elections issues that come through there, so we made the swap for them in those roles, and it's actually made our team much stronger with people positioned where they're more suited, and we look forward to continuing to add more Alaskans.

Margaret Sutherland
You were elected to the legislature in 2000, is that right?

Lesil McGuire
That's right.

Margaret Sutherland
At 29 years old, from what I read, the youngest sitting member of the legislature at the time. You served for many years, 16 years. Tell us about your time in the legislature and what you learned in that position, and how that would impact your approach to serving as governor.

Lesil McGuire
I started very young. I did not think, like most women who end up serving in office, they end up being called by their communities. We don't naturally sort of put our names forward, so it can be a longer process to get women to step up to serve my community, where I went to elementary school, junior high, and high school, asked me to run, and I stepped up for that service.

I was one of six women serving between the House and the Senate, out of 60. It was eye-opening.

And how do I plan to use it? 16 years of service gave me the very important understanding of a process that is important in how you change substantive policy, how you create budgets, how you work with an executive branch. I got a chance to observe many governors from each party with different styles, and all of that became a part of my leadership style, learning how to communicate with the legislature, learning how governors don't communicate with the legislature, and how that doesn't work.

So I think one of the biggest things that experience will bring me is a very keen understanding of the issues that face Alaska. How a bill becomes law in reality, how to negotiate, how to work across bipartisan regional lines to create good policy that benefits all of us, and then how to work with a legislature.

I think one of the things that a lot of Alaskans have shared with me as I've made my way throughout the state is a frustration in the last administration, the last two years, there is a feeling that the most recent governor really didn't get out much, didn't spend a lot of time in communities, and didn't spend a lot of time working with the legislature.

I feel that experience number one, for anyone listening, you can look up my record, you can see what bills I proposed, what my policy values are. And I feel that so many times when people run for office they can say a lot of things about what they'll do, and then we don't know if they'll do that.

So the most important thing is it gives a really established record for people to see where my priorities are, and then I think that experience, given where our state is right now, will be needed on day one. And that's what I'm hoping, is that Sarah and I, with our past experience, will be able to negotiate with outside companies, will know the process, so we'll have that credibility, we'll know how to work with the legislature, and then we'll be ready to serve all of you on day one.

Margaret Sutherland
As of June 26 there were 17 candidates running for governor, which is a pretty crowded field. Can you talk a little bit about what sets you aside from the other 16 candidates in the field?

Lesil McGuire
I think my candidacy is unique in that I am a lifelong Alaskan who got elected very young, and as a result, I've had the opportunity to experience many changes in our culture, in our lives. And being a person who got to experience those changes at the helm of policymaking gives me unique insight over the span of decades into where we sit today. What worked, what didn't work.

There are other candidates who have served, none of them for as long as I served, but some of them for some pretty lengthy terms. I think the next most important thing is what did I do during those terms. I think what sets me apart is I'm a doer, I'm a visionary. I'm one of those people that is dissatisfied when things aren't working well in people's lives. So, the kind of service that I demonstrated was a very active, effective, forward-looking type of service.

Also a very moderated – I'm not a partisan person. I think that's very unique in this particular group of people running. You have people that are running for the Democrats and people that are running for the Republicans, and I find myself in a very unique position where I'm running for the people of Alaska. I wish I could be the party of Alaska. I've said this over and over and over again, we still have many changes, I was a huge proponent and widely viewed as one of the architects of open primaries and ranked choice voting. That's one step. I think we need to go further, I'm running as a very pragmatic solutions-oriented lifelong Alaskan woman who loves people and really has spent her life traveling and being inside rural Alaska.

My family had a fishing lodge in Naknek all during my childhood as well, and so it isn't just coming out to visit. I grew up inside the space of energy cost challenges, when supplies are coming into town, and how that works. So, I think there are some very unique things about me. I encourage people to go to my website, which is lesilmcguire4governor.com and you'll learn more there, but I also want people to know that as they're listening, I'm available anytime to talk by direct messenger on Facebook, on Instagram, and to reach out to our campaign at any time.

Margaret Sutherland
And as part of that, you did just come out to Nome this last week. Can you tell me a little bit about your trip out here?

Lesil McGuire
It was wonderful to be in Nome last week. I am so proud of Nome. Having been to Nome for my first time in the 80s, and then probably over 50 times by now through decades, it is just incredible to see the high school, the elementary school, the roads are in great shape, the connectivity that is reshaping the opportunities for telehealth, for education, for people's business growth.

I just want to say that, huge shout out to Nome. I'm not going to say other places that don't look as good. I don't want to do that to those communities, but I want to say Nome is looking really good. You have some good leaders. There is a real sense of growth and buzz on the ground.

I met with your mayor, and I was talking about how tourism and this next gold boost, gold rush is really shaping the growth and the opportunities for people in Nome. He was very sad that the ship didn't come in with the 3,000 passengers, and how many people had stopped their lives and were ready to come and take advantage of that moment. So I'm very hopeful another one comes through. And if there's anything I can do as governor, I think one of them is to promote our beautiful state, our beautiful people, and I think it's one of the underutilized elements of being governor that people miss, the governor has a platform nationally and internationally to draw attention in a positive way. It would be my goal as governor to visit Nome often, to do YouTubes from Nome, to show what's happening, and to invite more cruise ships, invite more people to come and visit.

I will say in challenges, there is the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women. There is the issue of drugs that are coming into the community. There is the issue of housing, and I spoke with your mayor, your city manager Lee (Smith). There are no easy solutions, but I am committed to working with the City of Nome on how we address those issues. We've got to tackle those, and they're real, and they're important, and they're affecting people's lives.

Margaret Sutherland
You talked a little bit about your work in the Arctic. I read that during your time in the legislature, you also served as co-chair of the Alaska Arctic Policy Commission and helped craft Alaska's Arctic policy in the mid 2010s. So we're roughly a decade out of this Arctic policy, which covered topics of climate change, infrastructure development, economic development. Can you talk a little bit about the work that you still think needs to be done in the Arctic, and what would you like to address if you became governor?

Lesil McGuire
Just really quickly, I want to share that it was my time in Nome and my time in Utqiagvik, Barrow in 2006 that led me to write Alaska's first arctic policy. I joined together with Bob Herron, who's from the Y-K Delta region, and we put together a team of Alaskans – both inside the legislature and then outside the legislature, from all the regions. We wanted to take stock of what was it going to look like for Alaska to have the Northern Sea Route open for that first time, and that's where the elders were coming to me in 2006 and they were saying, “Lesil, the Arctic Ocean, it's open now, earlier, and it's staying open longer. We are going to start to see traffic, we're going to see it come down to Nome. We're going to become a more pivotal place,” and so it really occurred to me that, as much as Alaska is so many other things, that we were going to hold a national and international place in being the state that makes the United States an Arctic nation.

That policy has led to some really great things. We're finally seeing Lisa Murkowski took that policy, that exact policy that myself along with other Alaskans helped to write, and implemented it at the federal level, and we're now seeing, you know, the first Arctic port coming in at Port Lay, the foundation for that being built. We're also seeing Arctic icebreakers finally coming to Alaska. We've been begging for them since we wrote that policy in 2010 so it's taken 16 years, but they're finally coming.

What I think is still unaddressed, and what I will address as governor of Alaska is energy. As I mentioned before, when we think about the Arctic, it's a place, most importantly, for our families to live, work, and grow. And even though it's front facing, and we're talking about tourism development of our minerals and natural resources responsibly, we also really need to talk about our families. And I think the disappointment for me has been to see that we are still in a place where very few Alaskans have affordable, reliable, available sources of energy for their own homes, for their businesses, and then to grow. We do have some wind. I saw the windmill there when I was in Nome. We have Fire Island (Anchorage), which I catalyzed. We have some solar farms that are building up, but that really is the key in rural Alaska to look at these sources.

There are all kinds of interesting microhydro, micronuclear sources of energy now, and we just need to be attracting and retaining people who are interested and willing in building those systems to reduce that dependency that we have on sources of energy that aren't predictable.

The next thing I would say is our coastal erosion. This is a really big issue, and I feel that we need a long-term plan, 50-year out plan for how we assist in that coastal erosion as climate change continues to impact us. We do have, as you know, climate change refugees in Shishmaref. We have schools that have had to be relocated. I would like to see us go back to that policy and put more of that long-term planning in for the quality of life and the very survival of our villages and our arctic communities. I think those are just two of the really important things. There are many more I could go into, but I intend to make the arctic one of my top priorities to see us through with long-term planning.

Margaret Sutherland
We could talk all day about energy, but you have done so much in your career, and I want to make sure we get to everything. You also established the Women's Summit in Alaska, which took place for several years. It sounds like your ticket is in many ways an embodiment of the work that you did with that summit. I'm wondering what work you would do around addressing the current MMIP crisis that is affecting Indigenous women across the state, including here in the Norton Sound region, and how that women's summit work extends to that community.

Lesil McGuire
I am so grateful for the question. My campaign is absolutely meant to be an embodiment of not only the work that I did to commission a study on the state of women in Alaska and then put together a women's summit to bring more of those statistics to light. But I would say my commitment as a lifelong Alaskan woman, I remember the case of Sonya Ivanoff. I followed it when I was in my early career, I brought it to light on the House of Representatives floor. I remember at that time the caution I was given about speaking into that, that there was an idea that it could create fear, that it might bring shame, that these were questions that shouldn't be brought up, and that still holds true today.

I would say we have made minimal progress. Missing and murdered Indigenous women, domestic violence against women of all color, these are huge parts of my campaign. Coming up this next week Sarah and I and Liz intend to go in for the entire week on the issue of our women, our children, and public safety, and to put forward some real meaningful proposals.

We both worked on Erin’s Law and Bree’s Law to make more awareness in our schools and in our communities about what domestic violence looks like, what early stages of coercive control look like, and it is our intention to keep bringing it to light. Every life has value. The women of our state, I like to say, are our most underdeveloped natural resource. We still receive less pay than our male counterparts. We still are subjected to abhorrent rates of violence.

When I was in Utqiagvik two weeks ago, the elder women there also shared stories with me. Many of the women who have not been named, and so as we end this I would like to know if you're willing to name who this woman is. We're going to go forward and start putting together a list of the unnamed that are willing to be named by their families.

Eliza Simmonds is willing to be named by her family, and she also went missing about 10 years ago in Utqiagvik. She came to one of the elder women's house, asking for help. The police were called, and that was the last time anyone saw her. They attempted to do missing posters, which kept being removed. They tried to do a march for her, and were told that they shouldn't do that, that it would upset people, that it would cause, again fear and shame, and their voices were kept quiet. Her body washed ashore, naked, broken, and wrapped in bed sheets, and there's still no one that has been held accountable for that crime.

Margaret Sutherland
Thank you so much, Lesil. Thank you for taking the time and sitting down and talking with us.

Lesil McGuire
You are welcome.