Shelley Hughes Introduces Lieutenant Governor Pick

Hello, Alaskans. I'm Shelly Hughes, Republican candidate for governor. I've been speaking with you the last few months about the importance of selecting a lieutenant governor. As you know, before ranked choice voting, you picked the lieutenant governor. That changed now under law, and it is on my shoulders to pick the best lieutenant governor that I can.

And I took that very seriously because I was doing it on your behalf. I didn't rush it. We spoke with many candidates, some wonderful Alaskans, and I was looking for someone smart, competent, with demonstrated leadership, with good character, someone who is trustworthy because we've got a lot of work to do. And with the expanded role in my administration, different than previous governors, we're going to need someone who can do more than just ensure election integrity, but can move important important efforts to help us have a strong state. We've got a lot of work together.

So last night I announced who it is, and he's here with me today, and I'd like you to get to know him. Blake Geddes. Blake is from Eagle River. He also has roots down on the Kenai Peninsula, and we're really happy to learn more about you. So Blake, Alaskans want to get to know you.

So tell us a little bit about your background. Grew up in, uh, Berea, Ohio, which is a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. A fairly modest family. Neither of my parents went to college. I went through school and Catholic grade school and high school, and if I was going to go to college, I needed to find a way to get a scholarship or hope to attend a community college.

So I worked hard at sports and did pretty well at football and ended up getting some scholarship offers and decided to pick the United States Air Force Academy, and I played football there for 4 years, studied civil engineering, and after the 4 years, I stayed on to be a graduate assistant football coach. From there, I went on to pilot training. Pilot training in Louisiana— or I'm sorry, in Arizona. Louisiana was my first assignment. Deployed to Saudi Arabia in support of the First Gulf War.

And then after that, I was given my first choice of assignments, and I selected to go to Elmendorf Air Force Base. And what kind of aircraft were you flying? C-130s. Okay. At that point, C-130s.

And that's what my son flies, so—. In Arkansas. Yeah. Yes, it's been around for over 50 years, 60 years. So a great airplane.

I flew it in the active duty and then I did 5 years active duty up here, 10 years total, and then moved over to the Alaska Air National Guard flying pretty much the exact same airplane. I just changed patches and I was very happy to be able to stay in Alaska. At the same time, I was hired by Northwest Airlines, became an airline pilot. And then over the years, I bounced back and forth between flying for the airlines or being a part-timer with the, with the Guard, or full-time with the Guard with specific assignments they wanted me to be full-time. So I was blessed to be able to stay here that long, and this is a place I always wanted to be, and I knew if I got here, I would stay.

Right. And tell us about your rank as you, you retired. From the military. Was that 2018? 2018.

I ended up doing 30 years. I tried to retire a few different times, but every time I was ready to retire, something happened and they asked me to stay around, generally to fix something or to do something that they didn't really have the right person to do. So finally, the third time, so I was a squadron commander or group commander, and then finally the wing commander. Of probably the, the most complex wing in the entire Air National Guard.

From there, I moved up to headquarters and was a director of Joint Staff, different mission, no longer flying airplanes, but the state partnership with Mongolia and also for domestic response for natural disasters. I was trained to be a dual status commander so I could command both the active duty and the Guard forces if need be, if the governor said, "We need help, we need the military to augment the civil authorities." And you were, had been promoted to general at that point? Yes, for that position. Okay. Yes, and I did that for a couple years and was on the road so much that I, doing the Guard and doing the airlines was a big commitment on time and finally decided that it was time to retire.

So I want to rewind just a little bit, and I'm guessing people will Google you and find out you were the one that was mauled by a bear in 2012 and survived it. It's a fascinating story, and I'll just say, if you haven't Googled it, Googled it, because it'll grip you and you'll realize amazing miracle that you survived, and a tough thing. Recovery. And that was while you were in the military. Yes.

And had to recover in order to fly again. And so Alaskans, check that out. You know, I was laughing because a lot of times when people run for office, they want to go on a bear hunt so they can have a picture of killing a bear. I don't feel like I need to do that for this race because we have the best bear story of any ticket. So yeah, pretty fascinating.

You healed up very well. And so tell us a little bit more about things that might interest Alaskans. I know people may watch that video and learn a little bit more about you, but you want to touch on anything else? I'll touch a little bit on that because I was actually at our cabin on the Kenai Peninsula, and for about 5 years I ran a trapline, and that happened on the opening of the season. And, um, big into hunting and fishing.

Yes, very, very much into hunting and fishing and, and trapping for a while.

Sometimes bad things happen and you can't control it, and that was one of those things. Fish and Game actually contacted me to see if we had a bad bear, and I said no, the bear was fine. It was just, just sometimes things happen. I actually saw the bear the following year, and then I didn't see it again after that. So we spent a lot of time on the Kenai fishing primarily, a little bit of hunting down there.

And then my wife and I, we hunt in the Glenallen area a fair amount and also spend time on the Denali Highway ice fishing in the wintertime. So I outdoors is a big part. Also enjoy gardening. We have a greenhouse and try to— we try to eat very healthy, so we eat wild fish and wild game, and in the summertime our own produce. So that's, that's something we're into, which is a good connection for us because I've been very pro-food security, better food security in this state.

And also we've talked about, just like the PFD is important important to Alaskans. Fish and Game, it's one of the reasons people live here and stay is because hunting and fishing. And we're going to be working, um, our goal is to have a Commissioner of Fish and Game who will concentrate on growing our herds, growing the game populations, ensuring we have the fish, and really focusing on abundance. Yes. And, um, part when we were talking earlier about the role of governor One of the things that we find sometimes our commissioners spend so much time dealing with litigation and pushback from federal overreach that it distracts them from the mission of their department.

For instance, managing for abundance, managing for the benefit of all Alaskans. And so one of the roles of Lieutenant Governor that we've been talking about is the possibility of you helping with that federal pushback to free up the Commissioner of Fish and Game to really focus on managing for abundance. So your knowledge of those issues is actually something I think is important to Alaskans. When you asked me to consider joining your team, if it would have been the way that it's been done in the past, where the Lieutenant Governor just kind of sits on the bench and gets called in occasionally, it wouldn't have interested me much. But with your idea of actually using me as a teammate to make sure your initiatives are followed through and take something off your plate, that interests me quite a bit.

So Fish and Game is something that I'm definitely interested in. And I agree with your philosophy because the Constitution calls for managing all those resources for maximum sustained yield. So all Alaskans can partake. You cannot just partially manage pieces of an ecosystem. You have to manage it all or none at all.

So I very much so agree with your philosophy. It's all connected.

Another thing you talked about, not just sitting on the bench and being what I've been calling a ceremonial seat warmer. When Alaskans think of the lieutenant governor, the first thing that comes to their head is elections. So I know you'll be talking about that a lot over time, but you're studied up on it. And so can you just maybe just do a teaser on election integrity, given Give the people an idea that you take it very seriously and you see some flaws that you believe you can address. There's, there's over a half dozen things that we need to focus on.

So my plan would be to prioritize what we focus on and maybe get some wins on the low-hanging fruit, which would probably be cleaning up the voter rolls.

I'll give you rough numbers because I don't have them in front of me right now, but we have over 100,000 people on our voter rolls more than we have people that are eligible to vote. So that's a problem. Mm-hmm.

Other, other things that I'm concerned about is with all the mail-in ballots, especially coming from the Bush, if there's any discrepancy then there's no way of curing those ballots to ensure that every vote gets counted. Because they're in the bush and how do we get back and forth? We don't have a plan for that right now. So I think more in-person voting is definitely an advantage for the Bush community because the community comes together, it's a big deal, they want to vote, they can see each other and talk to each other, together, have a potlatch or whatever they want to do, but it's, it's a big deal. It brings people together.

And we even had instances where we actually didn't even have voting set up in some of the communities, which isn't right. They can't in-person vote at all. It's just mail-in ballots. I want to go back to when you talked about the voter roll, when you said 100 more than that were eligible, meaning that based on the population, the number of people that would be in the voting age and that actually live here. That's where you're coming from, 100,000.

Yes, 18 years old and live here in the state. So having 100,000 more than that is a problem. One of the problems with that is that when the legislature passed a law that when you apply for the PFD, you're automatically registered to vote. Sounds great, but the PFD is forwarding that information to elections before it has been verified. Mm-hmm.

And the PFD is money that other people outside the state want to get their hands on. So there's nefarious actors from all over the globe that are probing that and trying to get a PFD check. So We end up sending an absentee ballot to somebody who lives in China or Singapore that have never been a resident. Mm-hmm. So that's not right either.

So we need to clean that up. So we need to make sure that the people that are on the rolls are actually supposed to be on the rolls, not somebody who's not been verified and they get an automatic ballot because the absentee absentee ballot program that we have. My preference, and I think the preference of a lot of Alaskans, is to make sure that the people that are supposed to vote do get to vote. And I think it's— I'd like to go back to the way it was where people have to show up to vote. But if you have a reason that you can't show up, then you can request an absentee ballot versus everyone gets an absentee ballot and no one shows up to vote anymore, or very few people.

It just— there's so many opportunities for that to go the wrong direction. The statistics are, if you show up to vote and let's say something's wrong with your ballot and they scan it right there, they can cure that ballot on the spot. Mm-hmm. But when you mail in the ballot, it might not be cured in time. Right.

If Alaskans want their votes to count, the best way to do that is to show up at a polling place. So I think what people are hearing as they're watching this video, they're hearing a man who is determined to try to do everything he can to fix it. And one of the things when you said you didn't want to be a ceremonial seat warmer, you actually wanted— you didn't want to just— you weren't even interested in this position. Unless it meant you were going to help the state. And I'm seeing that through and through.

Another thing that I've heard about you I think Alaskans would want to know is, of course, your continued good relationship with military and veterans, and that people have really looked up to you as a leader and a man of character. And even in In the past, when you maybe had to address something, even those people that you maybe had to correct in the past, they are some of your good friends and still, you know, some people can turn away from people when that happens. And you've been able to maintain that. So that tells me you're a man of character and a man of integrity. And bringing that into our office, you know, we get so disappointed by politicians.

We hear stories of corruption. We hear stories of shenanigans being pulled. And so that was something when I was looking for a lieutenant governor, I wanted someone who was solid, that has a proven history of integrity, and you have it. And as Alaskans learn more about you, I think they're gonna agree this is a ticket. And even how we're coming together and you're gonna help carry the water, right?

And I did a radio interview earlier and I said something about, I want my lieutenant governor to be in the headlines. And I didn't mean in a negative way because sometimes when the headlines, it's a negative thing.

I want the limelight to be on the good work that you're doing because there is so much work to be done in this state. And so when voters look at our ticket, I believe it's the best bang for the buck because you're gonna get a team ticket where you're not just getting one person doing the work with somebody in the back seat waiting if the person in the front seat keels over, but you're getting two people that are going to work together to move the state forward. So I'm really thrilled having you, and I thank you for considering. I know it was a big decision. You know, you've been enjoying retirement the last few years, and this is changing things up, but I'm very grateful and I'm excited for our state.

And before we close out, is there anything else that you would like to share with Alaskans about the time going ahead? Yes, uh, when you asked me to be on the ticket, I, I understand chain of command very well. So you're the governor, you can give me tasks to do and I'll do them the best of my ability. I'll make sure I will keep you in the loop, but You can trust me to give me some autonomy so I can follow the initiatives that you want me to do to make sure that I'm enforcing your vision.

And if we can do that together, you can be more effective in the things that only you can do. Mm-hmm. So, as we— and that's actually very humbling for me because here you are, a general, It's like, oh my, but I'm so grateful that you're willing to step up. We kind of started out with you growing up, so let's kind of close, let's bring it back to family, and people probably eager to know, you know, what your family situation is. You have 3 dogs.

Yes, sweet dogs laying in front of you. So you want to just talk a little bit about family so they know that aspect of who you are? Yes, I'm married to April. We've been married for 11 years now. I didn't have any children before I met April, and we have 5 sons.

A few of them are up here, one in Maine and one in Mississippi. We have grandkids in Maine, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and we also have a— one of the 5 is essentially an adopted son, and his family is currently in Cameroon. Okay, wonderful. And, um, just tell us a touch about April. She'll— people get to meet her.

She is a very genuine, lovely person, but a heart of gold, heart of service, very similar to, to your heart of gold and service. So I believe you're very well matched. But just give us a hint of what she's done with dogs. She started a nonprofit that went for about 10 years that was training veterans to train service animals for themselves. And she placed over 850 dogs in that time frame.

At one point, we had 17 puppies that we were raising here to place with veterans. And her philosophy was, if you give a veteran a trained dog, then they have a dog for 10 or 12 years. Years. But if you train a veteran to train their dog, then they will have a service animal for the rest of their need for a service animal. That's wonderful.

Yeah, so you all— 17 puppies at once. That must have been lots of fun. Yes, lots of fun. A lot of work too. A lot of work.

And April also, in her previous life before we met, she also was a small business owner, so she So she understands that aspect. And currently she is a personal trainer and she keeps me in shape. Yeah, and she needs to get me in shape. So yeah. Well, I'm excited to have you on board.

We're going to be traveling around the state together. At some point you may be in one community, I may be in another. But initially we'll be out and about together. So Alaskans, you're going to have a chance meet Blake in person, and I think you will be not disappointed. So with that, Alaskans, thank you for joining us.

We look forward to coming to your community, for you showing up, meeting us in person, asking questions, giving input, sharing your concerns, giving us your solutions. We are ready to get to work, and you've got the team ready to do it. We will be effective for Alaskans. And so we look forward to meeting you. Thank you.

Paid for by Alaskans for Hughes. PO Box 1496, Palmer, Alaska 99645.