FAIRBANKS — Tammie Wilson arrived in Alaska far later than the other candidates running for mayor of the Fairbanks North Star Borough in the election’s first round last month.

If elected, she also would have fewer years in Alaska than any Fairbanks borough mayor in history.

But exactly how new is she to the state?

Wilson said on Thursday that she moved to Fairbanks seven and one-half years ago.

She was responding to questions from the News-Miner about previous statements that she’s lived in Alaska for eight years and about public records that indicate her Alaska residency began six and one-half years ago.

Wilson, an incumbent assemblywoman who faces colleague Luke Hopkins in a Nov. 3 runoff, said her family of six came to Fairbanks in April 2002.

They waited until mid-2003, after having returned to Illinois to help care for an ill family member and sell property, before getting their driver’s licenses or registering to vote in Alaska, she said.

A review of documents, including Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend applications, fishing licenses and voter registration records, indicates Wilson cites the official start to her Alaska residency as May 2003 — six and a half years ago. She said on Thursday she considers the prior spring her true move to Alaska.

Wilson worked for two to three weeks at the Tanana Valley State Fair in

mid-2002. She said the family then stayed in Alaska until year’s end before temporarily returning to Illinois. Internal Revenue Service W-2 earnings forms for 2002 for the work Wilson and her husband did in Alaska that year both list addresses in their hometown of Godfrey, Ill.

Wilson said the family was back in Fairbanks by May 2003.

Wilson, in another interview with the News-Miner this week, attributed previous statements that she’d lived here slightly longer than eight years to simple miscalculation.

“To be honest, I stopped counting (years) ... when we stopped having children,” she said. She has four children.

Hopkins said his campaign has fielded questions related to the length of Wilson’s stay in Alaska. He said he’s told people he didn’t know how long she’s lived here.

Wilson wrote, when applying for sport fishing licenses in 2004 and 2007 from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, that she has lived in Alaska since May 2003. State records also show the Wilsons applied unsuccessfully for Permanent Fund dividends in 2004. Dividend rules require a recipient to have lived in Alaska for the previous calendar year — in Wilson’s case for 2003.

The state does not release information related to justifications for dividend denials, but Wilson said the denial stemmed from the family’s temporary return to Illinois, which covered most of the first half of 2003.

Wilson’s family bought property east of Fairbanks in August 2003, online documents from the state Recorder’s Office show.

Wilson also told a reporter three years ago that she and her family drove to Fairbanks “four years ago,” or in 2002. That roughly coincides with the last time she voted in Madison County, Ill. — in March 2002, according to the Madison County clerk’s office. Her hometown of Godfrey is in Madison County.

Records from the Alaska Division of Elections show Wilson first registered to vote in Alaska on

July 22, 2003, but that she didn’t vote in that year’s local elections. Her first vote came in the August 2004 state primary election.

Rick VanderKolk, Wilson’s campaign manager, cited a benefit of her relative inexperience in Fairbanks, comparing it to corporations’ consideration of company outsiders when seeking executives.

“Being a little bit newer in an area can be beneficial in an environment where special interests have deep roots,” VanderKolk wrote in an e-mail Friday to the Daily News-Miner. “A mayor needs to know the people and issues while not (being) beholden to any particular group.”

Contact staff writer Christopher Eshleman at 459-7582.