Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Charlie Pierce announces his intention to run for Governor of Alaska. An email was sent to his staff members Thursday night by his Chief of Staff notifying them that he filed to run for Governor of the State of Alaska.
Pierce told KSRM:
“Like most Alaskans, I’ve waited a long time the last 20 years for something to happen in Alaska. We stand by and watch the federal government come in and lock us up and shut us down and then expect us to sustain ourselves. When you look at the individuals that are running, I just ask you a question, are you better off today than you were four years ago? Are you better off today than you were eight years ago? Eight years ago, Walker started and had the helm, and we find ourselves going right back in and considering four more years. The way I see it is if we don’t come up with some different ideas and different leadership, we’re faced with four more years of the same.”
As governor, Pierce says he’s not going to make promises:
“It’s really difficult to make a promise in government because there’s so many decisionmakers. You have to gain enough votes to get what you would like to get done. Certainly, it’s great to have goals and have desires to go in a certain direction and that’s what I would offer, but to offer a promise and a guarantee is probably not a good place to start. I think we have a governor that has offered some promises and he hasn’t been able to deliver on those promises. I did have a performance record that I think speaks for itself. I do what I say I’m going to do. I follow through. I hold people accountable.”
On covering issues, Pierce says:
“I, like many other Alaskans sat back and waited to be first in something. When you look at our awards at what we’re first in, we’re last in education and we’re first in per-capita spending and we spend more than we make. Our revenue streams are impacted, and we don’t seem to be concerned about bringing down the cost of delivering those government services. I think Alaska is faced with some pretty tough, tough, questions as to how we’re going to resolve these differences and this deadlock that we’re in. The PFD, there’s the issues with the PFD that I think are getting in the way of preventing us from focusing on things that we really should be focused on. The short of it is, there’s a lot of things involved in this decision for me to get involved in.”
Pierce joins several others interested in Alaska’s gubernatorial position, including incumbent Governor Mike Dunleavy, former Representative Les Gara, former Governor Bill Walker, Republican candidate Bruce Walden, Libertarian candidate William “Billy” Toien, and current Republican Representative Christopher Kurka.
