Robb Arnold, a District 1 Republican candidate for the Alaska House of Representatives, withdrew his candidacy Feb. 1. On Jan. 31, Arnold placed an ad in the Wrangell Sentinel newspaper announcing his campaign for the seat. The following day, he sent KRBD a statement announcing he was dropping out of the race. “It’s been an interesting day,” he wrote.
Robb Arnold mounted his campaign as a Republican in December, with hopes to unseat Independent Rep. Dan Ortiz as District 1’s delegate in the Legislature.
Arnold quietly filed for candidacy around the same time as fellow Republican Jeremy Bynum. But seemingly just as his campaign began, it ended. He claimed there was a statute he missed buried in his employment contract. Arnold is a purser for the Alaska Marine Highway System. He said that is what dealt his campaign the killing blow. That – and a heavy dose of what he referred to as “Chicago politics.”
“You play the game, you know, but I was just kind of shocked. I’m a pretty positive guy. So, you got to take the licks, but when it’s coming from the inside, you’re just like, ‘Well, okay,'” Arnold said over the phone.
When asked what that meant, he was equally vague. His official statement announcing his withdrawal began with “forces that were beyond my control that were exploited by my competitors.”
Arnold also ran for the Ketchikan City Council and Ketchikan School Board last year. He narrowly lost the School Board race – coming in third for two open seats – and was the sixth place in for Ketchikan City Council.
“Somebody needs to start sounding the alarm,” declared Arnold, who said he decided to run for the District 1 seat because other candidates didn’t reflect what he wanted as a voter. “I mean, in Southeast especially, our infrastructure is falling apart and our ferries – but I think we’re on a good track now with our ferries. But the problem is, we can’t get people to come up here to work because it’s so darn expensive. They can’t find housing.”
Arnold said the main areas he had hoped to tackle on the campaign trail were the PFD and the Ketchikan Indian Community’s bid to change Ketchikan’s classification from urban to rural so that residents can subsistence hunt.
“People pay a high, high, high price to live [in rural Alaska],” said Arnold. “And what they rely upon is subsistence – they go out and they get their deer, they get their fish – that’s how they offset paying so much for fuel and paying for all these things.”
Jeremy Bynum, Arnold’s competitor on the Republican ticket, said he hadn’t spoken to Arnold since he issued his statement the previous day. Bynum said he had no idea what Arnold meant about being “exploited by his competitors.”
Though Arnold said his job’s fine print prevented him from running, he also said that he asked his regional union director and his supervisors on the ship before entering the race and all gave him their blessing.
Arnold said he plans to run again in the future, adding that “tomorrow is another day.”
