Alaska’s primary elections are coming up on August 20th. Voters will select their favorite single candidate in each of the state and national offices that represent them. Then, the four candidates that receive the most votes will advance to the general election this fall. In the District 1 House race, there are three candidates. So, they will all be headed to the ballot in November.
The primaries are still important though — they will gauge how the public is feeling about each candidate right now, which will inform their strategy going into the generals. District 1 covers Ketchikan, Metlakatla, Saxman, Wrangell, Hyder, and Coffman Cove and Whale Pass on Prince of Wales Island. The seat is currently held by Independent Representative Dan Ortiz. Ortiz announced in May that he won’t seek reelection for the seat. A fourth candidate, Robb Arnold, dropped out of the race in February.
In the lead-up to the primaries, KRBD interviewed each of the three House candidates – Jeremy Bynum (Republican), Grant EchoHawk (Independent), and Agnes Moran (Independent). They were given three questions and eight minutes to tell people who they are and what they stand for.
Who are you and why are you running?
Jeremy Bynum: My Alaska story started back in 2011. I started coming here to this beautiful place and tried to figure out a way to make it my home, and that happened in 2016 when I got offered a position here at [Ketchikan Public Utilities]. My background is in energy, and that really started back right out of high school when I went to the U.S. Air Force and began my career working in power plants. My first assignment was McClellan Air Force base down in California. I worked in a big diesel plant there, and then I had the opportunity after that to go overseas and work in four deployed locations and supported the first combat column. I then got out of the Air Force and went to college and got my engineering degree. After I got my engineering degree, I had opportunity to work a little bit in energy – specifically with the Army Corps of Engineers and hydropower. That’s kind of what led me to my career in energy. And now I’m the manager for the local electric utility, and it’s a great opportunity to serve our community in that way.
As far as having a desire to serve in a different way and getting into the political realm, I decided that I wanted to serve by giving to the community in a different way, and that was through service on the [Ketchikan Borough Assembly]. And back in 2019 was the first time I’d run for the assembly. I looked at the slate of candidates that we had – they were good, good people, but there was only two, and there were two open seats, and a lot of folks had been telling me, ‘Hey, if you want to get more involved, you have to be able to be willing to serve.’ And so I did. I didn’t win that first election, but I tried again and was successful, and now I’m in my second term on the assembly, and the path that really drove me to do that was the wanting to make sure that we have positive forward motion in our community, and the way to do that would be serving.
Grant EchoHawk: I was born in Fairbanks, but raised here in Southeast Alaska – in Metlakala. The experience of Southeast Alaska is what I grew up with, and then I moved down south and came back in 2018. I actually had no political aspirations at all, not even in the far future. It just wasn’t even in my consideration. But I did find that I really enjoyed engaging in different nonprofits here in town, helping out on various boards.
Then, with everything that was happening during Covid and a lot of the unrest that was happening throughout the nation, I just felt like there was an opportunity to add my voice to the dialogue and try to bring what I believed was a more reasoned, tempered approach to the political arena. And so that’s what kind of prompted it. So it was the the serving on different boards for the community, seeing some of the things that the community needed, and then also wanting to change the trajectory of conversations in the political landscape.
So that led me to running for office, and now I’m on the Ketchikan Gateway Borough Assembly. I really enjoy it, and with that enjoyment – on top of the other two things – I thought, ‘Well, since there’s an opportunity to serve the community at the state level, and would not only represent my hometown [Metlakatla], but would represent where I currently live [Ketchikan], and allow me to get to know the other communities in the District’ – which I’ve been able to do so far and it has been great. I thought this would be a perfect time to throw my hat into the state ring and see if I can represent and bring those same philosophical values to Juneau and hopefully bring a new perspective, and a new trajectory of the conversation to the state political landscape.
Agnes Moran: I was born and raised in Ketchikan, so I’m a lifelong Alaskan. I’m running for House District 1 because I understand the issues that our communities are facing. We’ve seen years of stagnant education funding. We have a lack of affordable housing. Our fishing industry is in crisis. Our marine highway system is in disarray, and we’ve seen years of cuts to our PFD. In my roles as the Executive Director of WISH, a member of the Alaska Mental Health Trust Board and a director of First Bank, I have worked to address these issues. At WISH, I developed a housing program that placed over 100 homeless families and individuals into safe and stable housing. I secured funding to place counselors and social workers into Ketchikan and Metlakatla schools. During my time on the First Bank Board, I’ve seen firsthand the difficulties that our fishermen are facing. They have higher costs, the lowest fish prices in decades, and fewer processors to sell to. So I’m running for House District 1, because I understand the issues that our communities are facing, and I have a proven track record in addressing them.
How do you differ from the other candidates?
Jeremy Bynum: Well, I think I differ from the other two candidates in the fact that I do have diverse experience in my background. I’ve had the opportunity to travel the world. I’ve had the opportunity to serve my country as a veteran and work in different diverse groups, not just overseas, but in the United States. I’ve been to every state with the exception of one – Maine. So, I’ve done that in my professional career. And that’s one thing that sets me apart. I think the other thing that sets me apart is that I’m not afraid to talk about what my political stances are and where I politically align. When I see an issue, even if it’s within my own political party, I’m willing to stand up and say, ‘We need to make sure that we have clear level headed voices, and that we need to make sure that we are being inclusive and collaborative in political discussions,’ and so that’s something else I bring to the table. That’s a little bit potentially different than my competitors.
Grant EchoHawk: It’s been fairly busy, so I haven’t really necessarily been following the other two [candidates] as far as what they’re campaigning on. I’ve been kind of keeping an eye on it but I get the impression all three of us are really giving each other the space to have our own voice. And it’s been quite nice, but I will say that that I think a couple of key things that I’ve been very vocal about: properly funding our schools.
I’ve been very vocal about not only funding, but forward funding, and looking at inflation-proofing our school budgets. The last round of lack of funding from the State and the political “hot potato” around this issue at the state level, I feel is pretty devastating to our community. I think that when our educators have to live in this state of uncertainty, it puts pressure on the system. It puts pressure on our young people. In particular, our most vulnerable folks, and so I’ve been a very vocal advocate of the State fulfilling its obligation. I don’t quite hear the other candidates leaning into this as quite as vocally.
And then the other piece is I’ve also been very vocal about making sure that I speak to “why?” Let’s say our shelter is important – having a low barrier shelter for the community – and there are things that are really, really important to me from a community support and community program standpoint – and I wouldn’t say that those are not important to the other candidates – I’m just saying that they’re very front-of-mind for me. You’ll see me at the podium. You’ll see me advocating for these things and being part of those discussions, because they are so important to me. Those are things are very front-of-mind for me. And again, I don’t want to imply that it’s not the same with the other candidates, because I haven’t necessarily been following their direct campaigns, but I will say that that it is something that is kind of a driver on why I’ve been in this race and why I’ve been out communicating and speaking with folks. I’ve been saying we’ve got to figure out a way to get the funding into our community so we can support our schools, so we can support those most vulnerable – our elders, support our veterans, make sure that we get as much food out to people who need food as we can, find them a warm place to sleep.
These are things that are just vitally important to me and and I truly believe that the data shows that if we do that, it solves for a lot of problems on the back end. We have less opioids, we have less crime, we aren’t having to pay for as many emergency room visits and prosecution and incarceration. So those are definitely things that are really core to why I’m running and what I hope to accomplish if elected. Bringing that into the state legislature – saying ‘We absolutely need to invest in our communities,’ and I think we need to figure out an effective way to do that by focusing on our communities and not not allowing ourselves to get distracted by “wedge issues,” “culture war issues,” things that – at the end of the day – are, in many cases, just intrusive in people’s lives and don’t actually solve for anything. So at least those are the key things I’ve been really trying to vocalize while I’ve been out on the campaign trail.
Agnes Moran: How I differ from the other two candidates is that I have decades of experience working to tackle the issues facing District 1. Currently, our schools are struggling with years of flat education funding. I was on the Borough Assembly when we established the education reserve account, which was essentially a savings account for the school district to utilize. When they were having difficulties with funding, they were laying off critical staff, and so I secured funding to place counselors and social workers into the schools in Ketchikan and Metlakatla.
If you want to move on to affordable housing, Ketchikan is the second most expensive community in the state in regards to housing. I was a part of the original team that developed the first overnight warming center, where we took Ketchikan’s most vulnerable residents and in the wintertime, gave them a safe and warm place to stay at night. My housing department has placed over 100 homeless individuals and families into safe and stable housing. When I started at WISH, that organization was failing. Its major funder had put it on probation, and many in the community were calling for WISH to be closed down. Well, I got to work, and since 2017 I’ve brought in over $20 million in grant funding into the communities of District 1. I built a new shelter, I renovated a Community Services Building, I brought a child advocacy center online. I secured training and funding for law enforcement across the region. I developed a housing program, a legal services program and a food distribution program that feeds over 50 families every month. Now, each one of those activities was a collaborative effort between WISH and other organizations within Ketchikan and across the state. So I have the ability to get the right people to the table and I get things done.
Obviously, District 1 isn’t just Ketchikan. It encompasses a diverse group of communities. What can you offer the District as a whole?
Jeremy Bynum: We have a big, diverse district. There’s travel between islands and there’s different needs in those areas of our district. So when you look at it from a high level – that 30,000-foot level – and we look down, we see that we all are experiencing a lot of the same issues. We are experiencing issues in housing. We definitely are experiencing strain on our education system and available funding for that. We know that the cost of living is impacting our community, and that is driven from the cost of shipping. We know that the Alaska Marine Highway functioning is important to our communities, and seeing it revived and becoming a thriving transportation system again is really important to us. Those are all very similar needs in our communities.
However, the the specifics of the details in each one of those is a little bit different, right? And so when we talk about housing, for example, in Ketchikan, we know that it’s a need, but the specifics of the housing problem here are different than they are in Wrangell, right? And the same thing can be said with education. In Wrangell and in Ketchikan, we have organized boroughs where we have different responsibilities for funding schools, as opposed to what’s happening over in Metlakatla or on Prince of Wales Island. And so the overarching problems are very similar, but the actual solutions and how we get into solving them are very different. So, having an understanding of that, I think, is important. Listening to the people on the ground and their specific interactions with those problems is also a very important part of trying to come up with comprehensive solutions to solve them.
We know that in the state, when we look at the overarching problems that we’re facing, housing is definitely a big one. Here in Ketchikan, it is going to be the pinnacle issue of making sure that we have a thriving economy. And what I mean by that is that we have a lot of opportunity for work here, but when we try to have people come into our community to take those good paying jobs, or we’re trying to keep people in our community as they’re coming out of high school and segueing into the workforce, the cost of being able to live here is one of those impediments. Housing is a direct driver of that, and so we need to make sure that we’re keeping that high up on the list.
The other thing that I think is an important aspect of what’s happening right now in the state of Alaska, and is also impacting our community, is the discussion around energy. As I mentioned earlier, I’m the manager for the electric utility here, and we know that low-cost energy is a direct driver in our ability to have a robust economy. And that isn’t just true here, that’s true in the state as a whole. So as we move forward in the next legislative cycle, energy is going to be a big conversation that’s happening, and one thing that is important is that Southeast Alaska – and specifically our district – remains relevant in that conversation. A lot of the other things that are going to be happening for economic growth in our community – that’s going to have a direct impact on on the ability to bring in and create housing. So those two are big issues that we’re going to be facing, and I think that that’s one of the things that I can bring to the table is having a good understanding of that problem.
Grant EchoHawk: I think the most important thing is – I feel like I know Metlakatla very well. I feel like I know Ketchikan very well. And because I understand these communities so well, I have a good foundation of understanding the needs of the communities. And so to serve the District, it’s going to be critical to understand the needs of each individual community.
I just came back from Wrangell, had a great time. I went to several community events, and throughout that, I was able to get a clear picture of what Wrangell needs – which is similar to, maybe, let’s say, what Ketchikan needs, but there are some slight nuances within each community. So, making sure that I fully understand the community as a whole. And then within each community, there are other communities – there’s the LGBTQ+ community, we have a very, very strong Filipino population, we have different tribal organizations and entities – and so making sure that I connect with each of those communities, just to make sure that I understand those individual needs. Because I don’t belong to each community. They’re my neighbors, they’re my friends, but my perspective is going to be through my own eyes and my own experiences.
So it’s really important that I do listen to the community at large, and then each of the other communities within the community, to get a full picture of the needs. So, for that reason, I have been traveling quite a bit, and, like I said, I just got back from Wrangell, had a lovely time, and then I’ll be in visiting Coffman Cove and Whale Pass over the weekend, and then I’ll probably be back in Ketchikan through the primary and then visit Hyder, Meyers Chuck, and Loring and make sure that they know who exactly is the one that’s offering to represent them, and make sure I have an opportunity to listen to what’s important to them.
Agnes Moran: Well, a lot of people don’t realize that WISH’s service area extends from Wrangell through Metlakatla, and that we provide emergency shelter services for the communities on Prince of Wales Island. So my entire time at WISH, I have been focused on providing supports and services to the communities throughout District 1, and not just to Ketchikan. For example, when we secured the funding for counselors and social workers for the school district, we didn’t just limit that to Ketchikan. We also found funding to place a counselor and a social worker into the Metlakatla schools. When I wrote the grant to secure funding for law enforcement training, I didn’t limit it to Ketchikan. I structured the grant so that law enforcement agencies across the region could participate and benefit from that training. My legal program supports clients throughout southern Southeast Alaska. My housing department has placed people in housing in Wrangell and Metlakatla and on Prince of Wales Island. We wrote the grant and handed it over to the Wrangell Cooperative Association that pays for their prevention specialist. So my entire time at WISH, I have been dedicated to providing supports and services to the communities throughout southern Southeast Alaska, and it was never limited just to Ketchikan.
