There I was in a Fairbanks diner, lingering over a tuna melt and fries, a cup of coffee with a fountain Coke back. Circa 1998? I had an Elmore Leonard crime novel in my hand, but actually I was eavesdropping on a conversation the next table over, where a middle-aged Black guy was saying how Alaska was a good place to be Black.
Not because of the population’s traditional don’t-give-a-shit attitude, or the far northern remoteness from the Lower 48’s usual depravities. Nothing to do with the disproportionate work done by African-American soldiers in carving out the Alaska Highway. No, he said, it was because all the racism was reserved for the natives.
I thought of this in relation to the Senate run of Mary Peltola, the, as they say, “gun-owning, fish-catching” and now Sullivan-recruiting member of the Yup’ik tribe of the Kuskokwim River delta in western Alaska, the former commercial fisher, the former U.S. representative, former Alaska House member, onetime Miss National Congress of American Indians pageant winner. The anti-factory trawling advocate.
It was notable that David Remnick, during the most recent “New Yorker Radio Hour,” paused in his interview with another competitive Democratic candidate, Gina Hinojosa of the Texas House, running for Texas governor, to register brief astonishment that the Alaska senate race hinged on — “wait for it,” said he — vanishing king salmon.
Peltola has position papers on this stuff, not just on banning sea bottom scraping trawlers from out of state, but on bycatch, sustainability, stock assessments, fishery disaster relief. In her “Alaska first” ethic she echoes the late Repubs Ted Stevens and Don Young, who belong on the Mount Rushmore of upper and lower congressional chamber longevity.
Was my fellow diner patron right? In my five years’ experience in Fairbanks, yes, the native and non-native populations were largely segregated. But then, in tune with life in what is in effect a resource-rich colony, where there’s systemic poverty in the interior, when Peltola for example supports a job-producing liquid natural gas pipeline, she bridges the divide. She’s really more of an independent than a Democrat, which stands her in good stead with your average Alaskan.
“And I’ve got to tell you,” she writes in campaign material, “it’s not just that politicians in D.C. don’t care that we’re paying 17 bucks for a gallon of milk in rural Alaska, they don’t believe us.”
You could call that the benefits of a common enemy.