Tanana Chiefs Conference: Rural Alaska Candidate Forum - Federal Candidates

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining our Tanana Chiefs Conference Rural Alaska Federal Candidate Forum. This is a virtual event, and we have sent out the links on our social media. I've seen it shared across the state, and so regardless of where you're calling in from, we're really happy that you're here. We're excited to have a good conversation and have have one of our U.S. House candidates answer some questions with us. I'll go through some housekeeping items with you, but first I just wanted to invite our Chief Chairman Sharon Hildebrand here at Tanana Chiefs Conference to introduce herself and also to just welcome everyone to our event and also to welcome our candidate that's joining us today, and we will get his camera on here in just a second as well.

Very good. Can you hear me?

Yes, we hear you very well. Okay.

I'm Sharon Hildebrand from Nulato. I live here in Fairbanks and I'm the Chief Chair of Tanana Chiefs Conference. And first of all, I just want to thank you for attending our virtual event. Which was spurred by an idea by one of our chiefs, Karma Alvey. We appreciate all our leadership in coming forward because this is a very important election coming up.

We heard from the tribes that they wanted to be able to hear from the candidates in this year's races, and TCC does not endorse any candidate, but we are open to talking to all of them And we opened the door and we had one candidate respond back, and we're really glad that we are able to provide this opportunity to our region. Our door is always open. We've received several invites to participate in different meetings so we can present high-level, uh, what our priorities are here at Tanana Chiefs Conference. We also recognize that we're a consortium made up of 42 members, including 39 villages and 37 federally recognized tribes. Our region covers an area of 235,000 square miles in interior Alaska, which is equal to about 37% of the entire state and just slightly smaller than the state of Texas.

We are organized as an Alaska Native nonprofit corporation charged with advancing tribal self-determination and enhancing regional Native unity. We work toward meeting the health and social service needs of tribal members and our beneficiaries throughout our region. Our programs and services range from direct healthcare services or tribal development services, the management or natural resources, public safety, community planning, and transportation. Our goal is to give the candidates an opportunity to introduce themselves and to answer questions that have been prioritized by tribal leaders through a survey. They will also be invited to give closing comments, and we'll also share information on TCC's position on Ballot Measure 2.

The meaning of Tsawitsen, which is shared throughout Tanana Chiefs Conference, is to hear me, to listen to me, and that's our goal for each person that's online. Today we are gathering in the spirit of inclusion and to each other with patience and respect. We have invited candidates to join us in our house virtually. Let's honor them and thank them for their willingness to put their name out there and on the ballot this year. Most importantly, we ask every single tribal member over 18 years of age to please vote.

We will not tell you how to vote. We will only ask you to show up to the polls and to vote your values into what you want to see in the years coming forward. Masi, and back to you, Joy. Thank you so much, Chief, for your warm words of welcome, and we really appreciate you helping to set the tone for today. This is something that is being recorded and also shared with our tribes and with others via our social media network.

And so really glad that you could be here to kind of get us, get us kicked off. And I'm going to go through some of our housekeeping items as we get started before we dive in and welcome Bill Hill today to speak with us as one of the candidates running for the US House this year. First, I just wanted to say that all candidates receive received invites multiple times. I, I've been pretty diligent about making sure that the candidates all received the emails at the same time and then periodically checked back in with everybody just to make sure that everyone was aware and that they had the opportunity to join us. Jim McDermott had also, had also confirmed for today, but unfortunately he is not feeling well and so he is unavailable to attend.

So he sends his apologies to everyone. And so we have Bill Hill today, and we're also going to spend some time sharing information with a few special guests, hopefully, after we're finished with some questions for Bill. And that will be towards the end of our candidate forum today. And we're also having one on Thursday at the same time from 12 to 2 for the gubernatorial candidates. And for House District 36.

So today is a federal candidate forum for our federal, federal races, and then Thursday is for our state races that are either statewide or really will impact our villages here in Interior Alaska. So a couple of other— I guess one important thing I wanted to do is just introduce myself for those of you that don't know me, my name is Joy Huntington. I'm a tribal member of Manly Hot Springs, and I also lived in Stevens Village growing up, and my grandparents are from Tanana and Rampart. And I started as TCC's Government Affairs Director in June, so I've been here for a few months, and it's a huge honor for me to work with our Chief Chair Sharon and also with our tribes. This is kind of a new event that we're doing today, and hopefully we do more events like this to really engage our tribal members and tribal leaders that live in our villages and may not be able to participate in events that happen here in Fairbanks.

So we really appreciate everyone for joining us today. There is a helpline if anyone is experiencing technical issues today. I want to share that with you verbally, and so if you write it down or share it with any friends that may be having, having trouble logging in today, that phone number is 907-328-7878. So 907-328-7878. So please let people know if they are having any trouble logging in or you get kicked out and can't get back on.

Um, and for today we have selected 5 questions to ask Bill, and the way that we came up with those questions was, uh, we work with a group in DC to help us with our federal advocacy, and they're very familiar with the issues that we normally bring to our federal delegation and other administration offices and departments. In DC, and so they helped us come up with questions related to, you know, what our most critical issues are. And from that, we had 11 questions that they helped us, helped us with. We sent out a survey to our tribal leaders to ask them to help us prioritize those questions, and so we got responses back, and that's how we selected which questions would be the best to ask. So that's the tribal input that we had today.

Because of the time constraints, we are not going to have any live questions. So the questions have been vetted through our tribal leadership. And if we had unlimited time, we could have people turn on their mics write questions in the chat box, but because we, we have limited time and the candidates of course are very busy, I just heard it's maybe 27 days until the election, so we wanted to just have, have questions preset and kind of know what our timeline was going to be with them. And so participation from our attendees will be very limited today. We will not have cameras on or audio on, and we do not have the features for a chat box or a Q&A box, again, mostly because of just time constraints today.

But if you go to our social media where you saw the link for today and you go to your email, if you're one of our tribal leaders, there is a link there for you to give us feedback. If you'd like to give us suggestions for next time, any— we'd love to hear from you on any, any feedback you have or suggestions. And also the event calendar on the— on our TCC website also has that link. So we want to hear from you, but live questions during the event was, was not really possible today. I've already shared that we are going to be recording and sharing this event.

At the end, I'll also share some of our resources that we have on our TCC website. It's really helpful for the upcoming election. There's some, some dates, of course. I guess first I'll share that November 3rd is the general election date, of course, which is the first Tuesday of November. Another deadline that is really important for our rural residents across Alaska is the deadline for absentee by mail ballots, which is October 24th, which is not too far away, a couple weeks away.

And you can apply online, and the website, if you go, if you open up a browser and you just type absentee ballot application, so you write that all out as one word, .alaska.gov, you will immediately pop up a page that has an online version of that and also a paper application version. So absentee ballot application, all one word, .alaska.gov. And again, those need to be submitted by October 24th. If you're going to be traveling or would prefer to just mail in a ballot, that's a really good way of course, participating, even if there's potentially issues of getting to the polls on Election Day. So that is just a couple of items I wanted to share before we go ahead and get started, and we will be again talking about Ballot Measure 2 at the end of our event here.

And at this time, I wanted to have— we have really great IT support today, so wanted to just thank everyone that's helping to put this event together. And at this time, I would like for Bill Hill's camera to be turned on, please, so we can give him— hello, Bill!

Hey, good afternoon, everybody. I hope you're all doing well. Thanks for the invite. You're very welcome, and we're glad that you could be here. At this time, so we are going to have a timed introduction, and we're putting 2 minutes on the clock just for, you know, we wanted it to be equal time.

You're the only one that's here though, Bill, but if it's okay, we'll just keep on, on the time for things, if that's, if that's okay with you. I'll do my best. Okay, okay, so we're gonna get 2 minutes going and Your audio sounds great, and we can go ahead and start that timer now.

Hey, good afternoon, everybody. I really appreciate the invite to your event here. Thank you so much. It means a lot. My name's Bill Hill.

I'm a lifelong Alaskan. I'm a Dena'ina Athabascan out of Bristol Bay. My hometown is Naknek, the home of the greatest sockeye salmon run in the world. I grew up in a little village called Kaukenok, just over 100 people, true bush frontier upbringing. Raising sled dog teams, chopping wood, packing water, taking mukkays, using nugrik, hunting, fishing, trapping, picking berries to put food on the table.

So it was a great part of my life, a real bush country upbringing without TV, telephone, radio, or any of those things. Ended up making Naknek my hometown, but I have lived in Fairbanks, Anchorage, and Juneau over the course of my life. I started commercial fishing at the age of 8. I've been a construction worker, everything from laying sewer lines to building houses. I was a teacher, principal, and superintendent in our state for 25 years.

And most recently, I'm the co-owner of a small business in Bristol Bay making textile products for the fishing industry with my wife, Diane. Most importantly, I am the chutuk, grandpa of 7, going on 8. We'll get our 8th grandchild in January. And I look at a state that's becoming so expensive and so hard for young people to build good lives, to raise families, to work hard and benefit from that hard work, that I'm worried. I look at a nation where there are attacks on the rule of law and there are— there is corruption on a daily basis.

And that's not the United States that I grew up in. We need somebody in Congress who really understands life in Alaska, who understands our challenges and who understands our joys. Somebody who's going to be there to fight to lower costs here in Alaska, fight corruption in Washington, D.C., and protect the Alaska way of life. My name is Bill Hill. I'm a lifelong Alaskan.

I'm a Dena'ina Athabascan. I hope I can earn your support today. Thank you.

Great job, Bill. Thank you for being right in the time window, and you kind of got to see what our timing signs look like. So this is our 30-second warning, and then we have— this means 10 seconds, so you did perfectly. That just means 10. I figured it'd be better just to kind of see the, see the symbol, and then this is pretty self-explanatory.

And good. So we want to be mindful of your time, Bill, and we're going to go ahead and dive right into the questions. And for the top 3 questions that came back in our survey, we're going to give you a minute and a half to answer those, and we're going to get our timer set here. And the first question is, what specific actions will you take to reduce the cost of living in rural Alaska?

Well, I'll start with, you know, when the spring fuel barge showed up in my hometown in Naknek this summer, we went from paying $6.70 a gallon for gasoline to almost $9 a gallon for gasoline. We were paying $4.25 a gallon for heating fuel this spring, and we're now paying over double that.

At over $8.50 a gallon for heating fuel. Those things impact Alaskans directly, and those are direct outcomes of haphazard tariffs. I mean, those tariffs that have been rolled out— tariffs should be a targeted tool, and they should be used to improve living here in the United States. But what's happened is those tariffs that have been rolled out in such a willy-nilly manner have just become a tax on the American people. Second, so I would work against those.

Second, this another never-ending war in the Middle East, in Iran, has just driven up the cost of living here in this state, especially around fuel, because everything costs more when fuel goes up. So I will work against, I will work against the war in Iran. We truly need to end that. But more, but more specifically, there's a lot that needs to be done. We need to have a gas pipeline in our state.

We need to work towards that, and I want to do that work. We need to invest invest in programs like LIHEAP that help offset energy costs, and we need to invest in renewable energies. We lost some great renewable energy projects with the, with the OPBA. I would work to implement more renewable energy here in the state to stabilize our costs.

Man, it's so hard to answer these questions that are so massive, and you know, there's so many parts to it, but Thank you for the warning. I know, I know, I feel really bad, just so you know.

No, we're gonna have candidates on Thursday as well answering the same questions with the same time limit, and so we appreciate you understanding that, so thank you. So the second question is, what actions will you take to protect subsistence ways of life in Alaska? And that's a minute and a half.

Great. Well, first let me just say that subsistence is a very important part of many of our lives, including mine. When I grew up in Kaukonak, we'd set the net out early in the spring, catch our first couple of salmon coming up the river, share that with the community. We'd go down to Naknek and we'd commercial fish all summer for a little bit of money for the winter. We'd go back home, we'd subsistence fish for our winter fish and for our dog food fish.

Then we'd go up and we'd redfish for noodlewai and whitefish, and then in the winter we were fishing for trout all winter long with gobs of eggs from the salmon we'd caught that summer. Subsistence is such an important part of life. It's not just about the protein, it's about culture, it's about community, it's about the lessons you teach the young people, it's part of our spirituality, it's our connection to our lands, waters, fish, and game. So I will be a huge protector of the subsistence lifestyle. I believe, truly believe, we need to maintain a rural subsistence priority.

And whenever those are infringed on, whether it's, whether it's through federal action or state action, we need to work against that. I believe we need the state constitution to come in line with what ANILCA has asked or what ANILCA represents, which is there needs to be a rural subsistence priority. And in instances where those rights are being infringed upon by outside hunters, we need to take action against that. So I'm firm user of subsistence. It's a lifelong part of my practice.

I will support it every single day in my role in Congress.

Great, thank you, Bill. And the third question for the minute and a half time frame is, how will you ensure rural Alaska Native voices are included in Fish and Wildlife management decisions? A minute and a half.

Thank you. Well, first, you know, I've served 15 years on my village corporation board, Pawvik Village Incorporated and Naknek, 13 of them as president. And I know that we have very important things that we do as corporations, as villages and tribes to support the people of our communities. And I just look at a seat in Congress as just another way of doing this. There are some things that I really want to implement.

We talk about things like the North Pacific Marine Fisheries Council. You know, I had the opportunity to go to the Dootoot Dinakanaga in Fort Yukon this year. That was an amazing event, but it also highlighted to me the loss of fish in the region. And I think a big part of what the problem is, is that there is not true representation on that board. And as your federal representative, I'd work to make— ensure that there is tribal representatives, on that board, a tribally designated seat.

I think we need to be protective of our rural advisory committees. I know some— there's some work to reduce the boards and reduce tribal representation on those. I think that I'll be protective of those, and I'll continue working to ensure that we have tribal representation, because at the end of the day, if the government, whether it's state or federal, is not talking to the people who are affected on the ground, in an area, then they're not making decisions in the best interest of the people who live there. I'm all about co-management, tribal representation, and I'll do the work to start getting some of those things working for Alaskans.

Thank you. Okay, take a breath, Bill. I know you've been, been rushing and on the clock, so I'll slowly pull up these next questions.

And thank you for just the thought that you've put into these answers. This next round is just 1 minute each. And again, you know, we understand that, you know, these are, these are really complex issues. So, you know, we know we're asking for a lot in being able to answer this in a minute. And we do appreciate you being willing to do that.

So the first question in this next round is, how will you address Alaska's suicide crisis, especially among young people?

Yeah, that's such a, such a heavy topic, and it's so hard for all of us to address. You know, I've traveled across the state. I spent 25 years as an educator. It is an issue that affects every single community, even my own family. And, you know, we really need the resources to deal with this.

We need to make sure that Medicaid is protected. It's some very important programs, including ones that your organization runs, are important to reducing the impact of suicide in our communities. We need to work on culture. Chamay in Bethel, Celebration in Juneau, you know, those are really important because we know we build Language, culture, dance, songs, it really gives people a grounding base and we need to provide opportunities for young people and especially young Native men because those are the ones that are hit the most. We need to work on that.

I'll be an advocate for making sure that we have Medicaid protected, that we have funding to protect these important programs.

I know that one was especially tough as a one-minute answer.

Thank you.

The last question is— this is another 1-minute question or 1-minute answer— is what actions will you take to reduce salmon bycatch and its impact on Alaska's fisheries?

Well, first off, it's ridiculous that one user group The most important user group, the subsistence user group, is going without fish. That's important. Every, every part of our mechanisms around fisheries needs to be responsive to that. I will push for very strict low bycatch limits and real accountability, and if operations cannot meet those limits, then they shouldn't be fishing in our waters. We need stronger monitoring, We need stronger enforcement, and we need a tribal seat on the North Pacific Management Council, because without a voice in the— without a voice in the decision-making process, we're not going to be able to make substantive changes.

We have a right to subsistence. It needs to be protected. We need to use the tools at our hands to solve this problem, and I'll do that work. Thank you. Substantive.

I could have given you extra time for that.

I don't know why I got hung up on that word. Well, I was accidentally muted earlier, Bill, so it's okay. All right. Well, that concludes the questions. And again, we wanted to ask questions that our tribes had weighed in on, our tribal leaders.

They're really our primary audience today, even though we've opened the doors for anyone and everyone to join us and also to watch the recording. We do want to give you 1 minute to do your closing statements. And I had an idea that I wanted to ask you in the spirit of Chewitson, and what our Chief Chair talked about when she gave her opening remarks. I'm springing this on you, I know, but I wanted to have, you know, TCC really set a very positive example for how we conduct ourselves and communicate with each other during elections and during campaigns, and that's really important to us and personally important to me as well. So after you're done with your 1-minute closing on anything you'd like to share, I was going to ask if you could say something nice about one of the other candidates.

So if we had multiple here, everyone would have to do it, Bill. And I know I'm just springing this on you, but I think this is a good practice and something that we will also have the candidates on Thursday do as well. And so you can, you can take a minute to think on that one if you need to, but it can be anything really. But I just wanted to bring more positivity to this conversation. And, you know, we're all Alaskans, and that's something that I feel is important.

And especially, I had a conversation with my daughter this morning, and she said that campaigns— she's 15— campaigns are so negative, it's a big turnoff to even participate.

And so I feel that too. I think we all feel that. And so I think here within our region, we'd like to just, you know, bring some fun back into it, bring some positivity back into the conversation. And I appreciate you, if you're up for that. So we'll get the timer on for a minute closing comments.

That nice thing won't be in your timed part either. Okay. All right. I can find something nice about just about anybody. Good.

Okay. So we're going to go ahead and get the timer set for a 1-minute closing comment.

And you may begin. Well, once again, thank you so much for inviting me here. I hope you can see that by showing up, I am interested in what— in your voice and what you have to say. One of the things I've heard across the course of this campaign is the current representative is not responsive to emails, phone calls, or even visits in Washington, D.C. I will assure you I'm going to hire as many Alaskans as possible to staff my office and that we will be educated and responsive to your issues.

I truly believe that we're the campaign that can represent the Alaskan people the best, and I need your help. We know that when Alaskans learn about what my campaign stands for, that we win this race. Alaska is a two-degree-of-separation state. If you and I sit down for 20 seconds or a minute, we can all find something in common, someone in common in the village, in another place in the state. I need your help with that work, and if you would help me with it, I would appreciate it.

Thank you again for being here. Thank you for the invite, and I hope to be your next congressman.

Awesome, thank you, Bill. Do you need some time, or do you have one ready to go? Oh yeah, no, I am appreciative that he has done the work to make sure that there is an Office of Fisheries in the United States Department of Agriculture. It's something that Alaskan fishermen have asked for, for many years, and it's a good start. We need to make sure that it's codified, but I am appreciative of that.

Wonderful. Thank you so much for, for doing that. And I didn't give you much, much of a heads up on it. So really appreciate your time. End of the day, if we all sit down and talk, we're going to agree on 80% or more, maybe 90% of all the things that affect our lives.

I truly believe Alaskans don't fit into a neat little political box. And that we have much more in common than we don't have in common. And we need to start working towards those ideas, not towards the separation we've seen for the past couple of decades. Thanks. It was great being here.

I really appreciate the invite. Great. Thank you too, Bill. And yeah, and I agree, tearing each other down doesn't really move the needle for our villages, for our tribes, for our people. It may just keep them— take away some of the motivation to vote and participate.

And so thank you again for your time, and you are free to go if you like. We're going to pivot our conversation to talking about Ballot Measure 2. And so at this time, I just want to say thank you again, and if our Chief Chair would like to say any remarks as well just to kind of close out this portion, we can have time for her to do that.

Yeah, thank you, Joy. Thank you, Bill, for you prioritizing the different issues that are important to our tribes, and it was framed in a way that you understand what those issues are from the questioning that was brought forward, and I appreciate our leadership who have brought forward the important questions, and also to Chief Alvey, who I believe is also online. I wonder if they could highlight her as a speaker or presenter.

We have some excellent IT people online who's been helping to facilitate and help us move along in a good way. So, Bill, I just want to thank you for your time and coming forward and also being here and being here with us in this space. Chief Alvey, is she able to come off as attendee? Can our IT— Kevin, can you highlight Chief Alvey and make her a presenter?

I think Kevin is gonna speak to that, but I believe she is— okay, I've heard in the chat that she's having technical issues. Oh, okay, darn. Yeah, but we will have her on on Thursday.

And yeah, we, and we also encourage people to reach out directly to the campaigns and to the candidates. I think it's important that, you know, we all view this as we're— oh, thank you so much, Steve.

So we can have direct communication as well. But at this time, I will let you go, Bill, and thank you again for joining us and good luck out in the communities and safe travels. Travels to you. And definitely, you know, appreciate all the candidates that have taken this step and put themselves on the ballot. And yeah, we wish you safe travels and best of luck to you.

Thank you so much. It was a pleasure being here. BillHillForAlaskans.com if you want to learn more about my campaign. I look forward to learning from you and serving you in Congress. Have a great day.

Thank you.

Okay, so at this time we are going to pivot over to, uh, talking about Ballot Measure 2. And something I want to clarify, I know we're going to have a few special guests joining us, and we are going to get them online here. But in the meantime, I just want to distinguish something really important. Tanana Chiefs Conference does not endorse any candidates for local, statewide, or federal elections. It's something that we are not allowed to do.

And so any of our Get Out the Native Vote programs, events in conjunction with our Interior Native Vote sister organizations, who I want to give a shout out to as well. I believe some of them are joining us today. Any of our events are open to everyone, and we do not, we do not endorse. However, and as I mentioned before, we sent out invites to all the candidates for our candidate forums. Some had scheduling issues and, and And that basically whoever was able to join is, is who we had join us.

But there is a very different distinction when it comes to ballot measures. TCC is very much able to endorse ballot measures and take a formal position. And so I want to first, while I believe we have some guests joining, maybe, maybe an update would be helpful on that. But I just wanted to share that with Ballot Measure 2, which I will read what Ballot Measure 2 is on. I'm sure many of you have seen the campaign information out and have sort of seen the signs and things like that.

But I will just share and read what Ballot Measure 2, what it is proposing to do, and then we will get one of my friends, and a special guest to speak directly to Ballot Measure 2. And yeah, so, so we'll introduce our special guest in a moment, but Ballot Measure 2 is an initiative to repeal a nonpartisan and open top-4 primary election system and ranked-choice general election system and to reestablish a partisan political primary and change necessary and related appointment procedures, reestablish special runoff elections, and repeal and amend independent expenditure group requirements. And so that is what the proponents of Ballot Measure 2— that's, that's the official description that you'll see on the ballot. And TCC, at our executive board meeting in August, we formally signed and voted on a resolution opposing Ballot Measure 2. So our position is, is in opposition to Ballot Measure 2 as an organization.

Our leaders have, have put forward the position of no on 2. And with that, I would like to now invite my friend Scott Kendall to join us as a Presenter, and we'll get to hear from Scott. And Scott was actually one of the people that actually wrote the first ballot measure in 2020 that I actually worked on as well when we first implemented open primaries, ranked choice voting, and the campaign disclosures. So at this time, if we can please turn on Scott's camera, and I believe we have some slides to share with you as well.

Yeah, Joy, unfortunately my computer will not allow the Teams link, so I'm on via phone, so no camera, but I see you've got my slides up, which I appreciate. Yeah, so I'm here with No On 2. Again, this is something I worked on with Joy and many other leaders since 2020 when we first enacted our system. If you go to the next slide, I will talk about what Ballot Measure 2 does. What Ballot Measure 2 does, you'll see their ads, they will say, "Get rid of ranked choice voting and that's it." But it's very, very, very important to know everything it does.

Not only does it repeal ranked choice voting, it also gets rid of open primary elections. So if you are a person, whether you're an undeclared or nonpartisan or not, but if you're a person who enjoys being able to vote for a Democrat or a Republican or an independent in the primary election, if Ballot Measure 2 passes, that goes away and you'd only be able to vote in party primaries. And actually, one of the, the more severe parts of Ballot Measure 2 is that it actually empowers the political parties to make it illegal for undeclared and nonpartisan voters to vote in primary elections at all. Um, so you would be basically having a public election at which two-thirds of Alaskans, the 64% of us that aren't in either party, would be banned from participating in. And then finally, of course, it also gets rid of Alaska's enhanced campaign disclosure regime, which includes a ban on dark money.

What dark money is, is money that folks transfer through intermediaries so that you don't know who the money really came from, and we'll get to that a little later here in my presentation. On the next slide, if you could flip, if Ballot Measure 2 passes, everything goes away. You can't just get rid of the ranked choice voting, you can't just get rid of the open primary, All 3 pieces go away, and because of Alaska's Constitution, they go away for at least 2 years. You can't, you can't get rid of ranked choice voting and bring back nonpartisan primaries or bring back the dark money ban. It just all goes away for 2 years.

Next slide, please.

So again, this is the, this is the 3rd time we'll be voting on this and hopefully the last. We passed this system in 2020. They tried to repeal it 2 years ago and they are trying to repeal it again.

An interesting thing to know that surprised me is because of, you know, young people who are growing and aging into our voting system and because of kind of the turnover of military and some other workers, this year 25% of Alaska's voters will never have voted in Alaska under any other system than the current one. So it really is becoming what's normal to us. Next slide, please.

So here's the part that is really disturbing. This is the part that you will not hear the people from Yes On 2 ever talk about. This is the language that makes it, that specifically gives each political party the power to make it illegal for nonpartisan or undeclared voters to vote in primary elections. And that should terrify everyone a little bit because we think about out. Primary elections are already pretty low turnout, usually between 20% and 24%.

Imagine cutting that by two-thirds because the two-thirds of the other voters will not be allowed to vote, and they typically do vote in representative numbers. So not only will we be locked out, but we will have the most partisan and extreme one-third of Alaskans making the decision for everyone else about who shows up on the November ballot. Next slide, please.

And here's the part about lifting the ban on dark money, and I like to include this slide because people think, hey, maybe I'm just saying that because I don't want Ballot Measure 2 to pass. Well, this is from a memo drafted by Governor Dunleavy's own Attorney General, which concedes this ballot measure will get rid of our ban on dark money and allow anonymous money into our elections. Next slide, please.

And then here you just see there are a number of other changes. They will get rid of on-ad paid-for disclaimers. It will again lift the ban on dark money. There's a disclaimer right now required under Alaska law that if your entity is funded mostly by money from out of state, you have to, you have to admit that in your ads. That goes away.

And so it's really, really making our election the financing of our elections a lot more opaque. It's gonna allow for a lot of hidden money. And if this were to pass, it would be, you know, the next election cycle, you'd be seeing attack ads coming and the donors would be listed as something like Alaskans for Puppies or Americans for Apple Pie, because everyone is going to hide their money as they do in other states behind these intermediaries. Next slide, please.

Now, a final thing, um, that Ballot Measure 2 would do that I don't think the organizers even realized— we just passed Ballot Measure 1 in the primary election that restored campaign finance limits in our state elections. Ballot Measure 2, if it passes, will actually repeal that for governor and lieutenant governor races. So I guess if you love seeing candidates for governor and lieutenant governor getting $300,000 and $400,000 and $500,000 donations great, go ahead and vote for Ballot Measure 2. But if you think that's troubling, I would encourage you strongly, of course, to vote no on 2, because this is something else they've done which it doesn't even appear they meant to do. And when you let incompetent people, you know, draft legislation, this is the kind of thing you get.

Next slide, please.

And who is funding yes on 2? Here's what's interesting. On the right there, you'll see Jeff Yass.

He is a political donor and one of the 20 wealthiest people on Earth. On the left there, you will see Elon Musk. He is the wealthiest man on Earth. Both of them have donated millions to Yes on 2, but the only reason we know they did that is because of the very law that they're trying to repeal, which is the ban on dark money. Both of them gave through an intermediary group called the Aurora Action Network.

And if we didn't have our laws the way they are now, that is all that would show up in the campaign finance reports. But because we have a ban on dark money, we actually know they donated. The other one, one of their other top 2 donors is actually an Alaskan, but it's an Alaskan who was indicted just a few months ago for Medicaid fraud, for doing something like $600,000 or $700,000 in Medicaid fraud. So this is, if you're known by the company you keep, this is who's trying to influence you to vote yes. I think yet another reason to vote no.

Next slide, please.

So speaking of reasons to vote no, here are some great local interior type folks who are in our coalition. Joy, of course, who you all know and love. Mayor O'Neill, Mayor Hopkins, my brother-in-law, he better be on our team. Pat Pitney, the outgoing president of the university system. And Rhonda Pitka.

So you see the really, you know, not only the broad statewide support for us but also these local interior voices. And then if you go to the next slide, you'll see that we have a huge diverse group. It's 150 people and growing. We've got Joelle Hall, we've got Nicole Borromeo, Lao Gunai Liz Medicine Crow, Val Davidson, Admiral Tom Barrett, gosh, John Cook, Fran Ulmer, Heidi Dreyfus. I mean, there's just a ton of people on board our team and really something the other side cannot match because they truly do not have broad swaths of support like we do.

They've got highly, highly partisan people and that's all they've got. And if you switch to the next slide, please.

And here you can see the many organizations that are with us, and as you can see, much like with our individual endorsements, and it's, it's nice to see TCC there in that left column, but you'll see most every labor organization, the ANCSA CEOs, Sea Alaska, the League of Women Voters, Institute of the North. So we, again, we continue to have broad and deep support across Alaska. Next slide, please.

And so, you know, that's just a collage showing some of our events around the state. And then the next slide, which you can leave it on, is just a— that's a QR code. If you screenshot that and tap on it, you can get involved. You can sign up to be part of the coalition and have your picture alongside people like Joy. You could sign wave, you could donate, you could just get more information if you're still not sure after this presentation.

But with that, I would just say thank you to everyone, and I'd be happy to take any questions that Joy or anyone else has. Thank you so much, Scott. I appreciate you on very short notice agreeing to be a part of our event today. And just so people know, I was texting Scott this morning, so this was a really short turnaround, and we had of course, been holding some space in case any of our U.S. Senate candidates were able to confirm, and once we saw that that definitely was not going to happen, we had some time here to talk about Ballot Measure 2, and I figured there'd be really strong people to speak on, you know, No On 2, from the No On 2 perspective, which is, of course, here at TCC, what we are urging our tribal members and people to vote no on November 3rd. Of course, we still respect people's right to choose, and certainly that's an important part of the process, but we just have a position on this.

And TCC has historically supported open primaries, ranked choice voting, campaigns Maintain Finance Transparency. We supported in 2020 and in 2024, as Scott mentioned, when it came up to be repealed, or it was attempted to be repealed, TCC's Executive Board also passed a resolution to, to oppose that, that ballot measure that would repeal it. So we have consistently supported everything that, that Ballot Measure 2 is aiming to reverse. And we, I guess, you know, kind of going back, Scott, to when you and I were working together in 2020 when the first ballot measure was initiated, something that was very striking to me was the statistics from the cities that had implemented ranked choice voting just to to pull that out for a second and open primaries. I believe San Francisco and the Twin Cities in Minnesota had implemented this.

And basically the statistics showed that overnight more women were running for office and winning their elections and more people of color were running for office and winning their elections. And so I don't know if you wanna speak to that at all, but that really jumped out at me this is moving in the right direction because more people are, are participating and it's less focused on the party system, which you kind of missed some of our introduction. We had Bill Hill on for our U.S. House, House race, and we talked a little bit about just the negative politics and, you know, how, how much like just with the party focus, that a lot of Alaskans, the majority of Alaskans, are not affiliated with either of the two major parties, correct? Yeah, that's exactly right. So 64% of Alaskans are not with either major party.

And the terrible thing about the system we might go to is not only the closed primaries, not only that U's and N's could be blocked from voting in it, candidate, but a U or an N candidate actually cannot run in the primary election. Essentially, they have to travel the state, get a bunch of petition signatures, but they actually aren't allowed under the law as Ballot Measure 2 proposes it. They're not even allowed to run. So you wouldn't even have a Dale Hill who could run in the primary, which is a shame. And going back to your initial point, I think, you know, you and I shared that that under this system Alaska would become more representative.

And, you know, we have seen that. We currently have the most racially diverse legislature we've ever had and the most women elected we've ever had. And for the first time ever, one of our bodies, the House, is actually majority women. So that's pretty quick. You know, we've only had 2 election cycles under this system and already it's changing because kind of the old way of doing things where the party leadership would tell you, you wait in line, you wait your turn, that's kind of fallen aside and people are just, what do you know, they're just running and they're winning, you know.

So candidates like Genevieve Meena here in Anchorage, like Maxine Dibert, they just get the chance to just go ahead and run and they have good success when they do run. So I think it's just more choices for voters and quite honestly we're getting better representation as well. Awesome, thank you so much, Scott, for sharing more on that. Um, and yeah, I think, you know, you covered so many of the the great points and hearing from you is awesome. And I just wanted to show people we do have our TCC resolution here that basically goes through, you know, our executive board's reasoning for supporting the No Onto campaign.

And I'll just read a few of these and then I'll direct people to our website as well where we have a lot of resources for the election in general. And also, again, I'll remind people of where they can go to apply for a mail— an absentee by mail ballot. And so I'll share a few things. Scott, you are welcome to stay. I know you fit this into a pretty busy schedule today.

You are— if you need to jump off, totally understand, and I'll just be sharing a little bit more from our perspective, and then wrapping up our first virtual candidate forum. Any closing comments? Not at all. I just really appreciate the time. I think I really, really get excited when people take the time to educate themselves about this, and if there's any questions that come up, feel free to text me.

I will be in touch, but really just grateful for the time and really appreciate you all. All. Take care. Thank you, Scott. We appreciate you too, and, uh, thank you for getting the word out for people to vote no on 2.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

And we can probably— okay, awesome. So I wanted to read a little bit from our— just the, the last few statements on our executive board's resolution and then we will wrap up a little bit early today. And thank you for the people that have stayed on and, and, you know, allowed us to go through a little bit more of our position on, on Ballot Measure 2. So the end of this is—. Okay.

So whereas the current system has broadened the opportunity for Alaska Native people to run for and be elected to public office, and has rewarded candidates who work across party lines on the issues that matter most to rural Alaska. And whereas disclosure of the true source of election spending protects tribes and rural communities from undisclosed outside money seeking to shape state decisions about our lands, waters, and way of life. And whereas the current system gives Alaska voters more freedom more choice, and a stronger voice in their government, and TCC has no interest in returning to a system in which a small, closed electorate selects the leaders who govern all Alaskans. Now therefore be it resolved that the Tanana Chiefs Conference Executive Board opposes Ballot Measure 2 and urges all Alaskans to vote no on Ballot Measure 2 and the November 3rd, 2026 general election. So you heard that in the words of our executive board of Tanana Chiefs Conference, and we have pretty good company, as you can tell, with all the members of the coalition and the people that have endorsed the No On 2 campaign.

And I just wanted to offer a very quick note on Ballot Measure 3, So on this ballot in November, there will be two ballot measures. Ballot Measure 2, which is the one we're asking people to vote no on, and Ballot Measure 3, which I would say that we are neutral on. It's a very minor change which just further defines the fact that you have to be a U.S. citizen to vote in Alaska. That's already enforced, but this is a minor word change that would just make the wording a little bit more clear. This is already enforced, and we— you have to be a US citizen to vote.

So that's really up to how people feel. We do not have an official position on that one because it seems like a pretty, a pretty kind of minor outcome from that, at least from, from our perspective. And the last thing I wanted to share with you before we sign off is that, um, please visit our website. We have a special page for information on the upcoming election. Um, and so the way that you get there, you either just go to our website, tannenachiefs.org, and there'll be a banner at the top that's our elections 2026.

Or if you would like to go directly to our election site, you can go to tananachiefs.org/elections-2026.

And so if you go there, you'll find information about who's on the ballot, candidates' answers to questions, specifically questions that we feel are very important for our tribes and communities in rural Alaska. And you'll find information on ranked choice voting, how to find your polling location, and a lot more. So please go to our website for more information. Again, I wanted to share that the deadline for requesting an absentee by mail ballot is October 24th, and you can also apply for that online And the way that you go online, so that the site that you go to to either get your paper application or to apply online is all spelled out, all lowercase, absentee ballot application, all together, .alaska.gov. So absentee ballot application, .alaska.gov, and That is how you request an application, or sorry, a ballot that you can actually fill out and mail in.

And again, that, uh, those applications need to be received by the Division of Elections by October 24th. So you still have time to do that if you would like to. And the last plug that I will give is just that we will have another virtual candidate forum on Thursday, from 12 to 2 PM, and we will have House District 36 candidates answering the questions that Bill Hill asked— answered today. And we will also have at least 2 gubernatorial candidates, so 2 of our governor candidates will also be on answering those same questions. Again, we will be recording that and sharing it on our social media and also emailing a link out to our tribes.

And we really appreciate you all for joining us today. Thank you for all the people that helped to make this happen and for people sharing the link and sharing things on Facebook. We are really glad to have this conversation and look forward to having more of these in the future. And we're ending a little bit early today, so have a great rest of your day. It's municipal elections today in Fairbanks, so don't forget to make it to the polls for that.

We hope everyone votes this year, and let's continue to show our strength at the polls across our whole region and across our state for rural Alaska. Thank you so much, and I think we'll sign off at this point.