One of The Hot Screen’s hot topics has been exploring seismic shifts in U.S. politics beyond the glaringly obvious one of Donald Trump’s election. This has included keeping tabs both on the immediate backlash to the president and on longer-term progressive trends that run counter to the present right-wing lunge being executed by the GOP. A while ago, we talked about a growing progressive tide in the state of Texas, which saw heartening liberal victories even amidst the national carnage of Trump’s election (it’s worth noting that Trump’s margin of victory was smaller in Texas than in the more historically bellweather state of Iowa).
Now there are signs that another long-time bastion of conservatism is beginning to trend toward progressives. And so we cast our eyes to the far north, where a quiet revolution has been happening in icy Alaska. As this fascinating Politico article details, the progressivism practiced by a new wave of politicians there differs in significant ways from what you see in bluer states, but they’ve been able to move the state forward on issues like voter registration, marijuana legalization, and an increased minimum wage. The turnabout has been huge: in the last six years, they’ve captured the governorship, the Alaska House of Representatives, and control of city government in Anchorage, the state’s largest city (though the state's single U.S. congressman and two senators are Republican).
On some typically liberal issues, like weening our society off fossil fuels, the Alaska progressives aren't exactly in the forefront, given that the oil industry provides essentially all the funding for the state government and allows the government to provide each resident with a generous dividend (currently $1,100). (It also seems possible that this generous long-time subsidy, based on taxation of the oil industry, may have helped lay the groundwork for Alaskans’ now being open to more progressive governance). But one of these newcomers' key agendas has been to move Alaska away from budgetary over-reliance on this single industry, and so they’ve been fighting for a state income tax in order to keep vital public services from being hard hit by downturns in the price of oil.
What’s happening in Alaska is particularly exciting for me because it offers the possibility that matters are far from lost in the various rural, low-population states that are currently thought to be the irreversible domain of conservatives and the Republican Party. One of the lessons the Politico piece reminds us of is that even a small number of committed, public-minded individuals can create change — particularly when their state has a smaller population and they’re able to make more of an impact.
The article explicitly makes the case that their success has been at least in part by working around or cooperating with the traditional Democratic Party structure. For instance, the progressive coalition was able to elect an independent as governor because the Democratic candidate agreed to step aside in order not to siphon off progressive votes. The politicos interviewed also explicitly make clear their belief in recruiting the best possible candidates for political office, even when those people aren’t typical politicians; in this way, they brought in fresh faces who were embraced by voters. But new recruits aren’t left to flounder like complete neophytes; the politicians and strategists spearheading this Alaskan movement have offered newcomers some of the elements of a professional campaign apparatus, including an advertising guru, graphic designer, and treasurer. And in a state where only 15% of people are registered Democrats, they also made the decision to run many progressive candidates as independents.
The organizing work and initiative taken by these upstarts is impressive, but they were also canny enough to recognize, where others did not, that Alaska was fertile ground for a progressive breakout. Despite its reputation for conservatism and libertarianism, the ground had shifted without more traditional politicians having realized it — otherwise, you would have seen traditional Democratic pols creating this movement. I mean, for god’s sake — Alaska! The land of Sara Palin, the proto-Trump herself! The fact that these folks are winning on common-sense, grassroots appeals to the public good provides yet more evidence that the Trumpian white backlash and GOP effort to reward the richest among us is hardly the only game in town these days.
