Hollis French kicks off campaign
from the Ketchikan Daily News:Alaska Senator and gubernatorial candidate Hollis French visited Ketchikan on Friday as he hit the campaign trail toward the Democratic primary election next August.
French’s day was low-key – conversations with local officials and visits to the Ketchikan Shipyard and the Alaska Marine Highway System headquarters.
The Ketchikan stop was part of a four-day tour that the West Anchorage legislator hoped would help him learn more about Southeast Alaska beyond the capital city of Juneau.
“During this trip I’m looking forward to listening and learning more about the challenges faced by other parts of the region,” French said prior to the campaign swing, which included stops in Haines and Sitka.
French, 50, faces some strong competition in the Democratic primary race for governor.
In the running are former Alaska House Speaker Ethan Berkowitz and former Alaska Commissioner of Administration Bob Poe, as well as Homer-based international policy and development advisor Rob Rosenfeld.
To many in Southeast Alaska, French might be most familiar as the state senator who lead the politically sensitive “Troopergate” investigation of then-Governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin in 2008.
But his resume, while light on experience in Southeast Alaska, is singularly Alaskan.
French’s first job upon arriving in Alaska in 1978 was as a bull cook on a oil rig in Cook Inlet. He stayed in the oil industry for about 12 years, working his way up to roustabout and then production operator in Cook Inlet and later on the North Slope.
It was during that time that he met his wife-to-be, Peggy.
“We climbed (Mt.) McKinley together, and had a baby the next year,” French said.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Alaska Anchorage while continuing to work in the oil industry.
“I’d work 84 hours on the slope, come to town, take a full load of classes, go back to the Slope to work,” French said in an interview with the Daily News. “I’ve been very thankful to the university for their willingness to work with me during that process, because it really provided a springboard for me to get out of the oil industry and ultimately into the state Senate.”
French didn’t go into politics straight away. He earned a law degree from Cornell University, and, from 1996 to 2002, worked as an assistant district attorney prosecuting a wide range of cases in Anchorage, Bethel, Dillingham and St. Paul.
“Really, as difficult as that work is, I got a taste for public service and helping people, and found that I was really attracted to the work,” he said.
French made an unsuccessful run for the state Senate in 2000. He tried again in 2002, when he beat 16-year incumbent Dave Donley for the Senate District M seat.
Given his biography, it’s not surprising that French is focusing his early campaign on the themes of energy, education and safe communities.
On energy, French said Alaska should be selling its oil and gas and investing the proceeds in “long-term solutions” to the state’s energy problems.
In addition to solid primary and secondary education, French said he supports a strong post-secondary vocational education program and the University of Alaska system.
These, said French, will “produce the cadre of citizens we need to take the green jobs and new jobs that the economy will produce and steer the ship after we hand it off to them.”
French’s prescription for safe communities involves effective prosecution of criminals in addition to using proven methods for combating the spectrum of social ills, from drug abuse and suicide to sexual abuse and domestic violence.
The themes of energy, education and safe communities occupied much of French’s discussion with the Daily News on Friday.
He said Alaska’s overall economy has been fortunate thus far in that Alaska avoided the “reckless real estate practices” that sparked the economic crises in the Lower 48.
Also, “our unemployment rate has not taken off,” French said. “It’s not good, but it’s not taken of the way it has in the Lower 48.”
French said investment in low-cost energy is the “single-best thing” that Alaska can do for its economy.
“The (state’s economic development investments) that have worked out the best have been hydro,” French said. “You put the money into that and you get a long term, stable, low-cost energy supply.”
The other key to economic development is education, he said.
“It’s just a backbone of any strong economy,” French said. “It so often boils down to human capital – who you have to invent new things, implement new things, and to take the jobs that the economy produces and keep the money at home.”
Asked about the state’s efforts toward building a pipeline to carry Alaska natural gas to market, French credited the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act legislation approved in 2007 for the two potential gasline projects now being considered.
“I think the AGIA process brought that to fruition,” he said. “If you look back just 18 months ago, there were no projects, and suddenly we have two very serious ones.”
The upcoming “open season,” during which gas leaseholders propose terms for contractual agreements to supply gas to a pipeline builder upon the pipeline’s completion, remains a major hurdle in the short-term, said French, who believes the long-term outlook for a gasline is positive.
“We’ve still got to consummate an economic deal… with the oil industry, and I’m optimistic about that,” he said.
But the AGIA approach isn’t the only potential solution.
“If we can’t come to terms at open season, then we’ll have to look for another way forward, whether it’s a state sponsored line, or its an all-Alaska line to Valdez,” he said. “Those will be all items on the table for consideration.”
French said he supports current efforts to persuade the federal government to include hydropower in its definition of renewable energy sources, a change that would make Alaska hydropower projects eligible for certain types of federal funding.
He also noted the completion of the Swan Lake-Tyee Lake electrical intertie, which he said will prove to be a “great boon” to economic development in Southeast Alaska.
But after the proposed power intertie between Petersburg and Kake is completed, other potential intertie projects in Southeast Alaska face some expensive, wide-channel crossings.
“You look around the whole of Southeast and there’s all sorts of brilliant ideas for hydro, but the real trick is to connect them all,” French said, adding that people are looking to connect to the British Columbia power grid.
“It’s a tantalizing leap right over the mountains to that grid, and yet the price tag, I think, is going to be shocking,” French said. “It’s got to pencil out; it’s got to make economic sense.”
The competition for scarce highway and power infrastructure dollars is likely to affect larger-scale projects like the Gravina Access project in Ketchikan, according to French.
He spoke of the need for an estimated $600 million project to improve safety on the Seward Highway, and likened the Gravina Access project with the proposed Knik Arm crossing near Anchorage.
“It’s much like our Knik Arm bridge where people see it as a vital part of what’s need to stimulate the local economy to provide for growth and prepare for the future,” he said. “But a lot of air has been let out of that balloon.
“You have to put every major project like that into a box and say, ‘OK, how much is it going to cost; who’s going to pay for it; and where does it fall on the priority list of competing projects,’” French said. “As I drive into Ketchikan today, you can look around and see a lot of work that needs to be done on the basic infrastructure right now, and the same is true in Southcentral Alaska.”
From his background as a prosecutor, French spoke at length about his interest in fighting sexual abuse in Alaska, which he said has the worst rates of sexual assault and sexual abuse of minors in the United States.
“It’s a shame on the state, and it is something I would begin to work on the very first day,” French said.
One effort that he supports is to improve the “basic building blocks” of investigating and prosecuting sexual abuse crimes, with additional training and field gear for law enforcement officers.
He said there’s only about 200 convictions per 1,000 reported rapes in the state.
“What that suggests is there are about 800 cases where, for some reason or another, you just don’t have enough evidence to go forward,” French said. “You can’t create evidence. But you can capture it, you can find it and you can record it. What we’ve learned was that we can probably make a lot of headway just through a fairly simple sort of education process and delivery of some resources to the field.”
On other subjects, French hadn’t visited the Alaska Marine Highway System headquarters in Ketchikan before talking with the Daily News.
However, he noted that he has used AMHS transportation and enjoyed the trips. During his recent visit to Sitka, he’d heard from citizens unhappy with the AMHS service to that community.
“You really see the need for a reliable, fairly inexpensive transportation system,” he said.
Asked about commercial fishing in Southeast Alaska, French didn’t hesitate to say he doesn’t know much about it.
“I’m a West Anchorage legislator, with probably only a glancing knowledge of that issue,” he said. “Unlike many politicians, I’m not afraid to say so. And so, I’m going to use the next 12 months to get myself more up to speed on those issues.”
French noted that a need for a predictable timber supply was expressed at a recent hearing in Ketchikan. He’s interested in learning what the U.S. Forest Service means when it touts a “forest restoration economy” in Southeast Alaska.
“I think it’s a big question mark about as to what the Obama administration and what the new Forest Service means when they say … ‘forest restoration economy,’” he said.
French also addressed the “Troopergate” situation that propelled him into the national political spotlight late in the 2008 presidential election.
Asked about the view that the Alaska Legislative Council’s investigation into Gov. Palin’s July 2008 firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan was politically motivated, French said: “That’s a tough charge to make stick.”
French said he wasn’t a member of the council of eight Republicans and four Democrats who voted unanimously to start the investigation.
“I was asked to do a very, very difficult job (in overseeing the investigation),” French said. “I did it. We delivered a product that was balanced. It found in favor of the governor on one count and against her on another. We were attacked relentlessly by paid political operatives. And we were sued, and yet the courts that looked at our work said nobody’s rights were violated. … I think we did a good job under intense pressure.”
French declined to comment much regarding his opponents in the Democratic primary election.
“You’re not going to hear me say bad things about (Ethan Berkowitz) or Bob Poe,” French said. “At this point, I think it’s less about our differences; it’s more about what I have to offer to the voting public.”
French wasn’t certain whether Gov. Sean Parnell would be running in a crowded race on the Republican side.
Gerald Heikes, an Alaska Air National Guard veteran who resides in Palmer, is Parnell’s sole challenger in the Republican primary at present
“I think there’s going to be more entrants in that race, as well,” French said. “I just think there’s a lot of interest in the governor’s seat. While (Parnell) is the incumbent and he gets a certain amount of respect for that, I wouldn’t be surprised to see others jump in.”
The filing deadline for the 2010 primary election is June 1. The primary election will be Aug. 24.
