News-Miner Editorial
Where are you?
Filing deadline for state election nears, but candidates are few
Published Tuesday, May 20, 2008
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Stumble It!Less than two weeks remain before the deadline arrives for anyone wanting to run for state office or Congress, and the field so far looks pretty lean. The leanness is particularly acute for the Interior’s seats in the Alaska Legislature.
Let’s hope the candidate list fattens a bit in the coming days.
Much of the attention in recent weeks and months has focused on the two national seats that will appear on the August primary and November general election ballots. Republican Sen. Ted Stevens faces a strong challenge from the Democratic side, and Rep. Don Young faces perhaps his toughest challenge yet — from a fellow Republican. The potential ouster of these two longtime lawmakers would be nothing short of a political earthquake, so greater attention from the media is expected.
Less attention has been given to the seats in the Legislature, where all 40 House seats and 10 of 20 Senate seats are on the ballot. The lack of attention, however, comes from the simple fact that not many people have filed the paperwork to run for those seats.
Only one of nine of the Interior’s seats has two or more people from the same party seeking the seat; that’s District 7, covering the northern and eastern parts of the Fairbanks region and now represented by Republican Mike Kelly. Fellow Republican Schaeffer Cox is the only challenger in that district, which has yet to see anyone from the Democratic Party or another party file paperwork with the Division of Elections.
And five of the Interior’s nine seats only have one candidate listed so far.
None of this is good for the system. We need choices. Competition is healthy, even in districts where a majority might be happy with their representative or senator. Competition can enhance an incumbent. It can keep an incumbent on his or her toes, which makes for a better and more responsive legislator.
The filing deadline is 5 p.m. June 2. Information about running for office is available at the Division of Elections Web site (www.elections.state.ak.us).
Community Discussion
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And without competition for those seats there is less advertising dollars for the News-Miner.
And the News-Miner charges the highest possible ad rates for political candidates.
I have to address the above comment.
The second line is simply inaccurate. Political candidates have the same advertising options open to them as do commercial enterprises. They are treated no differently and the prices they pay are no different than local businesses. I'm sure people could quickly imagine what kind of issues might arise if a newspaper treated political candidates with special deals or, conversely, charged exorbitant rates as suggested above.
I also just have to wonder if the writer truly believes we desire a choice in the ballot box only because it might mean some extra advertising revenue. That would just be silly.
We want a strong democracy and few things strengthen our system more than a full vetting of issues between the campaigns of intelligent and motivated candidates for public office. It's absolutely appropriate for a newspaper opinion column to express wishes for more choices in the ballot box.
I hate it when I agree with the DMN but you are right.
Well, let me rephrase. The News-Miner has lower advertising rates than what are charged to candidates.
Is anyone paying higher rates that what the NM charges businesses?
I don't think so...
Of course competition is wonderful. Having two or three newspapers in Fairbanks would be a good start. Keep folks on their toes...
We agree a monopoly is never a good thing.
Right?
The only reason I didn't pull the first comment is because I'm sensitive to pulling comments about the News-Miner. But my first thought was that it was completely off topic.
The editorial begs a conversation about civic duty and/or people's hesitancy to engage in the public commitment that comes with running for office. Lack of qualified candidates running for local office is a serious problem. But this exchange is about the newspaper, advertising rates and now you incorrectly call the newspaper a monopoly.
And so we have this string. An example of why we pull off-topic comments.
Is anyone paying higher rates than what the NM charges businesses? No one is pays higher (or lower) rates for newspaper advertising in Fairbanks because this is the only newspaper in Fairbanks. But some may believe the rates they pay for direct mail advertising, internet, TV or radio advertising is, as gauged by results and audience reached, much more expensive. You'd have to poll area business managers and accountants on where they think they get the most bang for their bucks.
My bet would be that the best value is with the local newspaper, which is an excellent advertising vehicle — even though it is far from being a monopoly.
And your rephrasing doesn't work. No, the News-Miner doesn't have lower advertising rates than what are charged to candidates because candidates are charged the same as everyone else (with the possible exception of local non-profits or fundraising campaigns the News-Miner helps with donated advertising space).
Like Mike, I agree with this editorial. I've been waiting for an editorial for which I can really commend the dnm, and this is one qualifies! However, regardless of the dnm's actual intent, there's no debate whether the dnm would benefit from more, rather than fewer, candidates running and buying advertising space. Perhaps I should put life on hold and run, just for the fun of it!
What can the News-Miner do to help the stated goal of getting more, qualified, candidates to run for public office?
Well, how about addressing the enormous cost of running for office? The bill to win a local legislative seat often runs well over $100,000 dollars. An insane amount of money to spend. Do you realize that many of our founding fathers thought the entire idea of campaigning was abhorrent? They argued that if one had to campaign for office that there was something inherently wrong with that person.
A truly competent civic leader would not have to campaign as that person would already be well known and respected- was their argument.
Many qualified people refuse to run just because of the cost of a campaign. Who can blame them?
So the vested special interests- the VECO's and the special interest unions typically prevail. And this subordinates public interest to special interest.
So what could the News-miner do? Well, for starters, you could offer candidates for public office the same advertising rate as you do for non-profits.
What would be wrong with that? You might lose some advertising revenue, and your publisher might not agree that a reduction to the bottom line would be worth it.
You could also argue for term limits and campaign finance reform. But from a purely business perspective that could reduce your advertising revenue. Have you advocated for these things in your editorials? When you look at the special interest money that comes to Don Young and Ted Stevens from the lower 48 special interests it is truly astonishing. And when Young or Stevens buy those full page News-Miner ads then who benefits? The News-Miner does, and so do the special interests. BUt what about the people who actually live here? Maybe if you start arguing for these kinds of reforms you'll have more qualified applicants running for office.
The wildly inflated costs of running for office must be addressed.
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