Why is Alaska so pro-Bush?

[LiberteToujours]

I'm just curious. I would appreciate responses besides "they're knuckle-dragging rednecks". I would just think that with the concern over Alaskan wildlife refuge drilling they would be solidly Democrat. It seems that the environment would be an important issue to Alaskans. Apparently not?

[steve2470]

1. lots of gun owners and lots of "rural" voters

AK is mostly rural, except for Fairbanks, Anchorage, and a few other small cities.

[loveable liberal]

2. they probably want the oil money too.

come drill....we like drill.

[Liberal_Minded]

3. Why you ask?

Alaska's unimployment rate is very high. They feel that drilling there would both increase jobs and a better economy. Just my thought.

[jdj]

21. depends on which tribe you ask.

some tribes that have a traditional hunting "economy" have alot of fear that the caribou that will be wiped out by a pipeline are the caribou they hunt seasonally for food.

[donheld]

31. Welcome Liberal_Minded

:hi:

[fishface]

4. Alaskans get a tax free check every year from the oil companies

for the oil there. I've heard it as high as $1500 per person one year and a lot of Alaskans depend on the check in the rural areas.
Plus they are very independant anti-gooberment types too.

[DBoon]

14. Antigovernment types who live on a state handout?

Don't it figure

[jdj]

23. wow, I didn't even catch that the first time.

you're so right.

My dad is one of these, hardcore repuke, lives off disability.

[fairfaxvadem]

5. Alaskan residents have an "Oil Trust Fund"

One of the deals from earlier days is that residents of Alaska would benefit from the oil, every man, woman and child who is a bona fide state resident. It started in the 80s I believe. In its heyday, the checks were cut, per person, in excess of $2k, every year. Someone who has gotten that check since its inception and put it in the bank should have a nice nestegg by now.

But, due to less drilling, less oil being pumped, prices, etc., the size of the checks has decreased in recent years.

The citizens have a financial interest in the oil flowing out of Alaska.

I'm not passing judgment here, just offering another reason why they may be supporting Republicans.

**On Edit, the other poster may be right that the highest checks were %1500, I knew the exact # a year or 2 ago and haven't looked it back up, so my $2K may be off, but the checks have been substantial some years regardless of whether it was $1500 or $2000+

[LiberteToujours]

9. Good to know, thank you!

Thanks to everyone who replied.

[jdj]

22. Damn, will they ever be pissed if ANWR

gets drilled and tanks after 6 months or a year.

they will have fucked themselves.

no oil, no caribou, no fishing, no tourism, in the drilled areas.
ouch.

[Gyre]

6. The majority of people there are employed by

outfits that aren't particularly environment-friendly. Plus they like their guns alot. Pretty simple equation.

Gyre

[dave502d]

7. I don't know for sure.Could it be the oil pipe line.

I think they get money back in taxes.

[Ruffhowse]

8. They want to be free to exploit the natural resources of their state.

There is a large environmental presence up there, but most folks are of the libertarian persuasion. They see so much empty land up there, and it's the one thing they can make money off. Tourism to Alaska is just not that big yet.

[leftofthedial]

10. lots of wannabe environmental rapists

and rural good-ol-boy rednecks

[TahitiNut]

11. The pipeline.

The North Slope oil fields, almost exhausted, are soon going to produce too little to make it cost-effective to continue operating the pipeline. Thus, it's about to be shut down. When it's shut down, the 'royalty' Alaskans get will stop. Jobs gone. That the real reason for wanting to drill ANWR. It has to do with milking cash cows.

[jkb1970]

12. Alaska is anti-feds

I lived in Fairbanks, Alaska for three years. The people in the state are overwhelmingly anti-federal government. They actually have an Alaska Independence political party that elected the governor in the 80's. The state Constitution, like that of Texas, has a clause that allows the state to become sovereign. And the fact that a lot of people remember how much money was made in the early 70's during the time the pipeline was built and the oil industry up there was booming.

The big difference between the AK republicans the the lower 48 republicans is the influence of religion. Socially, AK is very libertarian. Individualism rules.

[69KV]

15. Hmm, yeah, that pipeline would be the reason

...built in the early 1970s, Alaska turned solid red in the early 1970s. Dependence on the oil industry will do that. Probably explains Texas and Oklahoma too.

[69KV]

13. AK went Repug in the 1970s

Here are Alaska voting results since statehood:

1960 - Nixon (R) 51%, Kennedy (D) 49%
1964 - LBJ (D) 66%, Goldwater (R) 34%
1968 - Nixon (R) 45%, Humphrey (D) 43%, Wallace (AIP) 12%
1972 - Nixon (R) 58%, McGovern (D) 35%, Schmitz (AIP) 7%
1976 - Ford (R) 58%, Carter (D) 36%, MacBride (L) 5%
1980 - Reagan (R) 54%, Carter (D) 26%, Clark (L) 12%, Anderson (I) 7%
1984 - Reagan (R) 67%, Mondale (D) 30%, Bergland (L) 3%
1988 - Bush (R) 60%, Dukakis (D) 36%, Paul (L) 3%
1992 - Bush (R) 39%, Clinton (D) 30%, Perot (I) 28%
1996 - Dole (R) 51%, Clinton (D) 33%, Perot (REF) 11%, Nader (G) 3%
2000 - Bush (R) 59%, Gore (D) 28%, Nader (G) 10%, Buchanan (REF) 2%

1964 they went strongly Democratic, and in 1960 and 1968 the state was so close it was practically a toss-up. But every year since 1972, Alaska's Democratic vote has hovered in the 26%-36% range. Also the state has a record of unusually large voting for third party candidates.

I don't know what happened to turn the state so strongly Repug but I've heard it had to do with opposition to the Alaska wilderness act. Alaska joined the intermountain west and great plains states like ID, WY, ND, SD, OK, NE, and UT, which all turned solidly red in the 1970s. Part of it I think also had to do with the Repugs remaking their image from an east coast preppy image into a cowboy/rugged individualist one. It's part of their big lie - pretending to be the party of the working class. Nixon and Reagan brought us their southern strategy to turn the formerly Democratic south into solid Repuke territory, but they also used a western strategy to do the same thing out west.

[mmonk]

16. Brain freeze?

Actually I love the state (my family visited this year in fact). Too bad they don't stay informed.

[rsmith6621]

17. There Further North and Closer to

God In Heaven

[roguevalley]

18. how many of you replying have ever been here or lived here? There is

some truth to some of this, as there is in every state but it pisses me off to hear such a blanket generalization about us.

1. Lots of people come here because we're separate from the 48 and it gives you an independence that you don't get in the lower 48.

2. You make due without a lot and pay through the nose so you have your own opinions and ideas, some of which are square head.

3. The dividend is a pay out to the people who live here. Its our money. This year it was $919 due to the stock market being such crap. Given that in some places milk is $5 a gallon, it shouldn't be grudged that the state shares the revenue from oil with its people. A dividend is nice but its nothing in the long run, just more taxes to pay.

4. We get a lot of jug heads from other states who want to 'go it alone and make their own life' up here, a lot of failures from other places, nut cases and dimwits. We accept them. They can live here and make their lives and some of them are as dumb here as they were in Kansas, Wyoming, New Jersey and Florida.

5. There are also tons of good people who will stop in a blizzard to help you. If they vote repug, its because they voted repug in the last three places they lived.

We are more than a red state, more than a nut state and frankly, its okay. Lisa Murkowski is getting her butt kicked and if we get back the senate, you can thank Alaska for their innate sense of fairness in rejecting Governor Frank's daughter.

[Catherine Vincent]

20. Good post! Thanks for the information.

[lady raven]

19. ha ha!

I was thinking it while you were saying it! LOL

[War Pigs]

24. Alaska receives more fed. $$$ per $1 paid than any state in the union>

Plus oil royalty checks. In other words: typical hypocritical, rugged indiviualist blowhard asshole Retardicans. Reality means NOTHING to these shitheads.:wtf:

[serryjw]

26. Senator Stevens chairs Appropriation

He has the checkbook...one of the most powerful senators...Thy whom has the money.........
Remember the little darling whom thought that our first responders should work without overtime pay as their contribution to Homeland Security.
quote........
GOP Senator Slams ‘Everyday Heroes’
A powerful Senate Republican slammed firefighters and police officers for seeking overtime pay for exhausting homeland security duties. Senator Ted Stevens, R-AK, who heads the Senate’s influential Appropriations Committee, suggested that such “first responders” should bear the cost of homeland security by working overtime without pay.

“I feel strongly that we ought to find some way to convince the people that there ought to be some voluntarism at home,” Steven said. “I don’t know why the people working for cities and counties ought to be paid overtime when they’re responding to matters of national security.”

Others voices offered a different view: “Sixty of the 343 firefighters who died on 9/11 were off-duty, volunteering to put their lives on the line,” noted Steve Cassidy, president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association.

“New York City police officers are among the hardest-working and lowest-paid in the nation,” declared Al O’Leary, an official with the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association. “We are on-duty 24-hours a day, but we’re not compensated for 24 hours. In some respects, we’re already volunteering our time,” he added.

Stevens’s acerbic assault on these everyday heroes came in the wake of a Democratic effort that torpedoed GOP efforts to open the Arctic Wildlife Refuge to oil companies. “You are voting against me,” Stevens said after that vote, “and I will not forget.”

Senate Minority Tom Daschle, D-SD, took the opposite tact: “After seeing the commitment they made on 9/11, and many, many times afterward, giving up their lives, giving up their families, so many sacrifices, I think standing up for them is the least we can do.”

-----end quote.....
http://www.iamaw.org/publications/imail/imail_04_08_2003.htm

[d_b]

27. From an Alaskan

Propaganda. ANWR -somehow the republicans are going to open it up and our dividend checks are going to hit $5000, quite sick really. I wouldn't trade the refuge for a check.

Gun Issues

Ignorance. Why are any of the states red, ya know? But ANWR is the main issue. I'm sure it was 'commies' before that.


On the other hand we're sposed to have the most Greens per capita and was the first state to gain ballot access for the party in 1990. Ironical, eh?

[leftyandproud]

25. They want drilling in ANWAR

It means jobs and $$ for their statel...simple as that.

[jdj]

29. some do, some don't

it's not that simple.

PBS did a documentary on this, where they interviewed various Alaskan tribes about it, and went to Prince William Sound, where the fishing economy has yet to recover.

This doc leans right but I thought it was a decent overview of the fact that there is alot of diversity of opinion on this topic. I took notes, but I don't have them in front of me.

[lakemonster11]

28. The gender gap could also have something to do with it,

considering Alaska's overabundance of men compared to women.

[d_b]

30. You aint lying Jack

[lakemonster11]

33. Welcome to DU!

:)

[Steelangel]

32. Well, if you ever read the book, 'Alaska' by James Michener

you will understand why. It is highly recommend to read.. tons and tons of information (over 1,000 pages)

Here's book: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0449217264/qid=1098686228/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/104-3646737-6400729

According to one of my friends, Alaskan that 80% of Alaska is repugs.. so I wouldn't surprise if environment is not biggest issue for these Alaskans, that is kind of sad to me.

[sr_pacifica]

34. Lots of alcoholism. n/t