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Photo by Johnny Wagner

Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich said at a stop in South Fairbanks on Monday that his run to unseat U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens is largely a response to public demand for change in Congress.

Begich, a Democrat popular in Anchorage, said he’d work across party lines without backing down from disagreements with other Democrats — over issues like oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which he supports, and gun rights — or Republicans over the size of the national debt.

“We need creative solutions rather than the same stuff for six more years,” Begich told a crowd of around 100 at the J.P. Jones Community Development Center.

Begich indicated Sunday that he would challenge Stevens. On Monday, billing himself as an “independent” “Alaskan Democrat,” he used stops in Fairbanks and Anchorage to highlight his accomplishments as mayor and to outline issues facing average residents.

He said he sensed, upon being elected mayor in 2003, that steps were needed to reverse Anchorage’s distrust in its government — it was distrust, he suggested, that was leading voters there to routinely reject bond measures at the polls.

“Government’s got to get the basics right,” he said. “That’s a lesson, truly, that Washington needs.”

Begich is a businessman, a former Anchorage Assembly member and the son of the late U.S. Rep. Nick Begich.

Stevens, a Republican, has held his Senate seat since 1968. He filed in February to run for re-election, months after word spread of a federal investigation liked to his relationship with a corrupt oil industry contractor.

Stevens responded late Sunday to Begich’s plans by suggesting experience will hold a key role in the coming fight for his seat. He said he has fought for “Alaska’s fair share” of the federal budget and called on campaign opponents to avoid “the politics of personal attacks.”

“Seniority and experience have never meant more than they do today,” Stevens said in a news release. “I believe that I am best able to provide (that) leadership, and I believe that Alaskans know that.”

Begich said he respects Stevens’ contributions to the state and, prior to that, his service in World War II. He also said times have changed since the senator was first elected in 1968.

Begich outlined early stances on topics including energy policy, veteran care and the No Child Left Behind Act and discussed statewide issues including rising energy costs in Fairbanks, Juneau and the Bush.

Begich said he would propose a national “transparency act”: Meetings between elected officials and lobbyists would be matters of public record accessible on the Web, and detailed financial disclosure forms for senators and their spouses would be publicly available in perpetuity.

“In the mayor’s office, we don’t have secret meetings,” he said. “My personal finances in good times and bad times have been an open book all my life. It’s not that way in Washington.”

Monday’s speeches made no mention of the Iraq War, the most controversial national issue of the decade. Begich said following Monday’s address that he favors withdrawing troops to avoid getting stuck in a civil war. He stopped short of offering a withdrawal timetable — he said the details of his platform will emerge during the campaign — but said troops should leave Iraq in relatively “short order” with many redeployed to Afghanistan.

Begich said he’ll make veterans issues a major point of his campaign. He praised a veterans’ bill from a Virginia senator aimed at boosting education benefits to veterans who have served since 9/11.

Carolyn Gray, a retired teacher who attended Monday’s event, said she liked Begich’s pledge to work as an “independent” leader who would, for example, push for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Gray said her father died in a plane crash when she was 12, as Begich’s father had when he was 10, and she sensed in him a resolve to face challenges head-on.

“He really just throws himself in every important issue in Anchorage, and I think he’d do the same on national issues,” she said.

Contact staff writer Christopher Eshleman at 459-7582.