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Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Reasons Why Alaska Legislature Republican Majority Leaders Hate Governor Walker

Alaska's Republican majority leaders have done their best to show their disdain for Governor Walker.  They refused to meet in Juneau despite his calling for the special session to be there.  They've said no to most of what he wants to do.  Why all this antipathy?  

I'm sure readers will think of a lot more reasons, but here are a few I can think of:

  1.   He left the Republicans and became an Independent
  2.   This let him by-pass the Republican primary
  3.   He joined with the Democratic gubernatorial candidate as his Lt. Gov partner
  4.   He won the election beating their oil company loyalist sitting governor Parnell
  5.   He's acts like an adult
  6.   He knows how to think for himself
  7.   He understands the economics of Medicaid expansion and thus supports it rather than stick to Republican ideological anti-Obamaism
But I think the most important issue for the Republicans is the fact that

8.  the next governor will be able to appoint two members to the 2020 Alaska Redistricting Board. 

They're doing everything they can to make him look bad, hoping he won't get reelected.  If the letters to the editor are any indication, they're making themselves look bad instead.  And Walker, as I mentioned above, is the one who looks like an adult in all this. 

Speaking of redistricting, it's not too early to start thinking about the next Board and how it will work.  By leaving all the decisions about technology to the Board, things get rather late to do the best job of surveying the technology available.  Mapping technology is getting much more sophisticated and much easier to use.  By the 2020 round there should be better technology to create the initial maps and the public should have access to play with the maps and come up with better alternatives.  Just something to think about. 

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