SITKA — It was a banner summer for us fishermen of the north, with long, sunlit days spent pulling coho and king salmon. Anchored up at night, hands hardly able to close around a can of beer, we nodded at the usual stories: the tourist couple who lost their pug when it tried to make friends with a brown bear; the local man who disappeared, his skiff found abandoned in the rocks of Auke Bay; the black bear that fell through a skylight onto a table of cupcakes at a kid's birthday in Juneau.
Now the boats are tied down against fall storms, and the streets of the island town where I live can smell of soy sauce and brown sugar as people brine sockeye, preparing it for the smoker. Talk is that it's going to be a rough, rainy winter — to say nothing of the gust of media attention that has been blowing up from the Lower 48, swirling around our United States Senate election in November, bringing with it more Outside money than has ever been spent on a political campaign in the state.
The last time the klieg lights pivoted our way was when she-who-must-not-be-named became an overnight sensation during the 2008 presidential election. We all know how that turned out. Now, six years later, the networks are back, with Alaska seen as a closely contested "key state" that could affect the "crucial balance" of Democrats and Republicans in the Senate.
Unpredictable state
Well, if you want to gauge the political mood around here, sit down at the Backdoor Cafe with a cup of coffee and a salmonberry scone, pick up The Daily Sitka Sentinel, have a chat with folks, and you'll learn that not much is predictable in the 49th state.
From all appearances, the Republican candidate, Dan Sullivan, a good-looking, amicable Marine officer and former commissioner of the state's Department of Natural Resources, should have little problem beating the Democratic incumbent, Mark Begich. A first-term senator, Begich slid into his seat in 2008 by less than 4,000 votes, ousting the late Ted Stevens, who had been convicted of felony corruption charges (though the indictment was later dismissed). The governor, Sean Parnell, is a Republican; Republicans control the state legislature and have the state's only seat in the House of Representatives, along with the other Senate seat. President Obama is unpopular; he lost the state by a large margin in 2008, and again, by a smaller margin, in 2012.
But it's a mistake to check Alaska off as bright red. Large numbers of voters here register as nonpartisan. We abolished the death penalty in 1957, two years before we were even a state. In 1959, we were the first state to adopt a minimum wage higher than the federal level, and we maintained the highest minimum wage in the country for more than 30 years. We were one of four states to legalize abortion prior to the decision in Roe v. Wade in 1973.
Outsiders point to she-who-must-not-be-named as proof of Tea Party tendencies, not understanding that we gave her high marks because she aggressively taxed oil companies and fought hard to fund state programs. Even Gov. Parnell is thought to be at risk in November's elections, threatened by an independent ticket endorsed by the Alaska Democratic Party.
In the Senate race, Begich, the Democrat, appears to have the upper hand in field operations. He's built a reputation for stopping by bingo halls to call numbers and has opened a number of rural offices. He even set up a campaign office in the Dillingham laundromat, on the logic that all fishermen need to do laundry (logic that I would, ahem, question).
At the same time, super PACs have backed a torrent of anti-Begich political ads. It seems you can't open a YouTube video without encountering a spot connecting Obama to the incumbent. (Begich protests to all who will listen that he's been a "thorn in Obama's side.")
Politics or reality TV?
For his part, Begich knocked it out of the park with an ad showing him crossing the tundra on a snowmachine, touting his pro-oil stance. Sullivan, however, accused Begich of "pretending" to operate the vehicle. Begich responded that he'd traveled with a crew armed with an AR-15 rifle (for protection against polar bears) and pointed to his "helmet hair" as proof he'd made the ride. He also said he had a "frostbit" ear. Then he argued that he represents "true Alaska" and labeled Mr. Sullivan "Ohio Dan," because that's where Sullivan comes from.
And so it goes. A voter would not be faulted for confusing the race with yet another overheated episode from one of the many reality TV shows filming in the state.
All this serves as a reminder that we're part of the United States, revolving around the political sun of Washington. Fair enough. But here in town, as voices lower, the days grow shorter, wood stoves are lit and the adrenaline rush from a hard-working summer thins out of the bloodstream, there's a feeling that we've slipped our ellipse and are floating around some gentler, more mysterious star, hidden somewhere up in those ice fields.
So when these Outside lights do turn north, and we're called upon to make a decision we're repeatedly told is crucial, there's a moment of confusion. Blink, blink. What?
Then we take a deep breath, finish the coffee, fold the paper, trudge through the snow, rain and darkness and vote.
Brendan Jones of Sitka is currently a Wallace Stegner fellow at Stanford University. He is the author of the novel "The Alaskan Laundry," forthcoming with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the fall of 2015. This piece first appeared in The New York Times.