Inauguration Day

Alaska swore in a new governor today. I remember the last inauguration day, four years ago. Alder and I returned from our Thanksgiving travels that morning after overnighting in Seattle and catching an early flight to Juneau. It was Monday and I made a half-hearted attempt to tell Alder he had to go to school. He was not having it. 

“If you don’t go to school, you have to come with me to the inauguration,” I said, deciding on the spot to go to Centennial Hall for the ceremony. A foot of new snow lay on the ground. “And you have to wear your boots,” I added. Alder was six. He hated boots then and hates them still. 

“Fine,” he said. 

We unpacked, scrounged among the fridge rot for something to eat, and walked three-quarters of a mile through glittering snow to Centennial Hall, arriving about two minutes early. I scrambled around searching for an empty seat, found one on the center aisle and dove in, pulling Alder onto my lap just as the event began. I later realized I’d jumped into the VIP section. 

Tlingit drummers danced by us down the aisle, celebrating the swearing-in of the first Alaska Native leader as Lt. Governor. Everywhere was regalia and a palpable sense of excitement. I listened intently to the new governor’s words. I had covered Alaska state government for 13 years, but Bill Walker had not held state office and I had never met him. 

The new governor told stories of his childhood in Alaska – statehood, earthquakes, hard work. He talked about the need for health care. He said his wife is the smartest person he knows. The pastor who gave an invocation quoted a verse about our obligation to the poor and needy. Hope began to bud in my heart.   

After the ceremony we milled around chatting and eating electric-blue-frosted cake. I saw Rick Halford, a former state senator and Walker’s transition co-chair. Rick was senate president when I first started working for the Alaska Budget Report as a reporter. He’s the first person I profiled in an extended interview. I remember his office and our easy conversation, interrupted once or twice when he reached over to click off my tape recorder (yes, tape recorder) to share some conspiratorial tidbit before clicking the recorder back on. When I returned to the mother ship and told my new boss and mentor, Gregg Erickson, about the interview, instead of being impressed I’d earned Halford’s trust, he slapped his forehead in disgust. “Never let them go off the record!” he groaned. 

I remember Rick in that era as a ruthless partisan. He relished the game, keeping his strategy close before putting the beleaguered Democratic minority in check mate. After he retired, he mellowed. We’d talk when he visited the Capitol – about politics, our kids, intergenerational equity and resource allocation. In 2011, I saw him in the back row of the Senate Finance Committee room and he motioned me to sit down. Whispering through the hearing, he told me he was so sorry about my husband’s death, and asked how the kids were doing. I said we were ok, but that I was considering selling the Budget Report, which by now I owned and published. I think my kids need my time more than my money right now, I confided. 

“You’re wise to have figured that out so young,” he said. 

The next year, I sold the Budget Report. Six months after that, a lump in my armpit sent me packing to Seattle for a year of cancer treatment. I’d been back in Juneau a few months when I ran into Rick that December day at Governor Walker’s inauguration. 

“Your name came up,” he said. He asked if I’d be interested in doing policy work for the governor.

It sounded intriguing, and I needed a new gig. I figured I would give it a try and if nothing else, I'd gain a unique experience. Governor Walker was the only independent governor in the nation. In my first conversation with him a few days later, he said no one has a lock on good ideas, and if someone "Outside" is doing something that works, he wants to know about it. I was sold. 

I’m deeply grateful to the governor for trusting me, and for all I learned over the next three years.[1] It was an incredible honor and privilege to work for Governor Walker and to serve Alaskans. I had moments of self-doubt and frustration, and sometimes wondered if I had more influence as a journalist than as an insider. In such moments, I reminded myself that all we can do is try, and to hold on above all else to our humanity.  

In this the governor was my model. Through all the cross-winds and crises, he never lost his heart. When a legislative budget stalemate brought the government to the brink of shutdown, the governor had to make a series of decisions about how far to push his constitutional authority to spend money without an appropriation. As cabinet members outlined the impacts of each decision in a series of internal meetings, he issued quiet but firm instructions not to compromise Alaskans’ life or safety. If that meant pushing his authority to the limits, he said, he would take the legal risk. He knew this approach would fail to impress upon the public the full consequences of legislative inaction, but he could not stomach putting Alaskans at risk for PR purposes.  

When I once pointed out that a closed-door community meeting was comprised of 17 men who looked to be over the age of 50 and uniformly white, he stopped in his tracks. Rather than take offense at my observation, he became pensive. I watched him listen with genuine openness and humility to Alaska Native leaders in the administration and outside it. He listened to learn and understand. He listened with compassion. He took steps to try to undo some of the real and symbolic harms to Alaska’s first peoples. And in October he stood on a stage before the Alaska Federation of Natives and issued a historic apology to Alaska Natives “for wrongs that you have endured for generations.” 

Ours was a politically diverse team. This, I believe, is the great underappreciated gift of the Walker administration. The current hyper-polarized political environment is terrible for us – we put ourselves in ideological boxes and stunt our own growth along with the growth and health of our communities. As journalist Bill Bishop wrote in The Big Sort: "Mixed company moderates; like-minded company polarizes. Heterogeneous communities restrain group excesses; homogeneous community march toward the extremes."

We were nothing if not mixed company in the governor’s office. We were greenies and gun-store owners and everything in between. No one asked how anyone voted. Because I could not assume my colleagues saw the world through my conceptual goggles, I had to find compelling evidence, question my assumptions and biases, and work to articulate a case for common ground. We all did. I believe this process led to better – if more painstaking – decisions. A recent piece in the New York Times on decision science notes that more diverse teams tend to make better decisions, as judged by the decision-makers after the fact, because they consider a wider array of possible solutions. This mirrors my experience in the governor’s office. A year into the job, I dropped my party affiliation. 

This is not to say the governor didn't make mistakes. It's a hard job and there's nowhere to hide, especially when oil prices crash your party like an unwanted meteor. I wish I could have done more to save the ferries, to boost alternative energy, and to improve our education system, among many other things. I’m sure every Alaskan reading this has a critique to add. Some decisions are just hard, and as I’ve written before on this blog, some problems have no clear fix.  

On this inauguration day, I wish the new governor, Mike Dunleavy, the best. I hope he loves Alaska as much as Bill Walker does. I hope he cares about Alaskans more than any party or ideology. I hope he surrounds himself with people who are uncertain, who question and debate each other, who challenge him, and who maintain their compassion, sense of humor, and humility. None of us is that important, none of us is irreplaceable, and none of us is always right. Onward, Alaska, and thank you, Governor Walker, for all you have given.

Governor Walker greeting President Obama's chief science advisor in Anchorage, September 2015.

That time we ran into Lance Mackey and his family in Skagway, and almost knocked a photo off the wall, 2016.

Showing my mom around the Governor's House, summer 2017.

In recent news, we celebrated 17 years of my lovely Rosebud at the Rosebud Diner, Somerville MA, November 2018.

It's a family photo! By the mighty Mississippi, Minneapolis MN, November 2018. 

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[1]I resigned after three years to join Rosie in Boston for her last years in high school.