The previous Alaska State Senate was infamous for disagreements among members of the Republican majority, but this time around, Senate President Peter Micciche of Soldotna believes things will be different.
He spoke to KSRM’s Sound Off on Thursday to discuss what he did differently in organizing a majority caucus that can effectively govern, unlike previous people in his position.
Senator Micciche: “The last couple of years, as you know, I was kind of on the outs with all of the conservatives. Shower, Reinbold, Hughes, Costello… A little bit David Wilson and myself. What I did was kind of jotted down what’s going wrong with that organization. That’s what we put into our ‘gentlemen’s agreement:’ how do we avoid these same things, how do we ensure someone sitting in this office doesn’t think they’re a dictator? How do we make it so all members participate in the decisions we make? That’s what’s in our caucus agreement. It’s non-binding, but it has all of those pieces – the tenants that avoid those issues from the past.”
He added: “I’m not here to tell you that we’re united on the issues. You know that we’re not! We WILL be because everyone is going to be not ruled by someone in this position. It’s going to be someone who reports to the caucus. The way that I look at it is that I’m responsible for reporting to 13 other members of this caucus; I’m not the boss of them, I simply am the person that’s going to gather all of those thoughts and make sure that people see their fingerprints on everything we do.”
Senator Micciche was elected Senate President when the session began earlier this month.