Alaska Public Media

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor spoke in Anchorage on Wednesday to a crowd of 1,200 people. While answering preset questions, she spoke about how being nominated to the high court transformed her life, and how different experiences can affect a ruling.

“You have to understand,” she told the crowd. “You get nominated to the Supreme Court, and it’s a like a rocket ship that takes you to the moon. And it doesn’t take you back.”

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was nominated to the Supreme Court in 2009. She said the process was painful because people publicly called her harsh and questioned her intelligence.

“There’s a point where you can take a certain amount of it and others where you say, ‘Is it really worth destroying a lifetime of what I had thought was a great reputation? And so yes, I had a lot of second thoughts.”

She strongly considered backing out until her friends helped her realize she couldn’t act of out of fear and hurt. “Because I think those feelings, both fear and hurt, drive all of us to bad decisions.”

Among the downsides of being on the court are she misses her privacy and her ability to get together with family on a whim. Even at the grocery store, she said she is never out of the public eye, and though she’s an extrovert, that’s hard.

“I went from being a person that could choose when I wanted to be in the front of the classroom or the back of the classroom. That could walk the streets and observe people and their lives and look at them and learn, just from observing. To a person who is always at the front of the room. And I’m no longer given a choice.”

For Sotomayor, learning from a diversity of life experiences is what makes a strong court. It helps the judges see cases from different perspectives and base their decisions on all of the facts, not just ones they are predisposed to see, she said.

“By my druthers I think the variety of both professional and life experiences helps to ensure that when we’re talking and conferencing cases, that we’re not missing anything.”

She said for her, diversity means more than just differences in gender and ethnic identity, and in some ways, the current members of the Court are all very similar. All of the current justices have ivy league educations, are Catholic or Jewish, and most are from the East Coast.

“But is it enough [difference], for a court that’s being asked to judge everything that comes through the legal system throughout the United States?” she said, pausing. “I don’t think so.”

For Sotomayor, it was hard on both a personal and a professional level to cope with the loss of Justice Antonin Scalia’s perspective when he died earlier this year.

She described him as a fun, witty older brother who would say the most annoying things. He was also an active participant in oral arguments. After he passed, she said she would fill the new silences with questions.

“I had to start containing myself and start living with the slightly longer silences,” she recalled.

A lot of people wouldn’t be all that excited about hopping in a wooden plane and flying thousands of miles.

An Eagle River couple will do just that in November.

They will make up one of two American teams on a historic air rally in November that will see two dozen vintage aircraft fly nearly 7,000 miles across the African continent.

The story of Lita and Nick Oppegard’s relationship starts in the air.

Lita was born and raised in Alaska, the daughter of a bush pilot. She grew up flying everywhere with her dad.

“In fact growing up the first family vehicle that I have a memory of was our Stinson Station Wagon, a four-place single- engine aircraft,” she said.

Nick came to Alaska in 1973 as a young pilot just looking to get some multi-engine turbine time, so he could — as he would have said then — go back to America and “fly for a real airline.” But flying for Wein Air turned out to be a life-changing job, and he stayed.

“I could spend three lifetimes here and not see it all,” he said.

And one day, he got up the courage to ask out a beautiful young flight attendant named Lita.

“I was never going to date flight attendants,” said Nick. “And I can tell you this, I’ve dated one now and I’ll never date another one.”

They got married a little over a year later, nearly 40 years ago. They’ve been flying together ever since.

They’re telling this story, appropriately, in seats pulled from a retired commercial jet in the corner of an old airplane hangar at the Alaska Air Museum in Anchorage, surrounded by beautiful old planes that tell the story of flight on the last frontier.

The couple is about to embark on their own journey into aviation’s past.

They’ll be part of a vintage air rally, flying an antique plane from the island of Crete to Cape Town, South Africa, on a journey that will take more than a month.

When Nick first read about the Crete2Cape Vintage Air Rally, he was entranced.

He said to relive those glory days of early flight is something aviators dream about.

“We all have a romantic side of us when it comes to flying,” he said, “the days of barnstorming and flying in open cockpit airplanes over fields and pastures and waving at children whose eyes are as big as saucers looking up at these grand machines. So I went home and ran this one up the flagpole with she who must be obeyed.”

Lita thought it sounded like their kind of adventure.

“Of course then we got on the mission of finding just the right airplane for us to do this in,” she said.

That plane is a 1928 Travel Air 4000, a radial-engine biplane born during the golden age of aviation. It was built by a company whose three founders — Clyde Cessna, Walter Beech, and Lloyd Stearman — all went on to give their names to other companies and other planes.

The plane was owned and flown by a couple of aviation greats: The famed racer Matty Laird, and aerobatic pioneer Frank Price. But Nick’s favorite story from its illustrious history comes from its days with the Newark Flying Service.

“It was rented out to pilots and the airplane was confiscated and sold at public auction because one of the pilots was using it to smuggle booze during Prohibition,” he said. “Now that’s character and I think a lot of Alaskans can relate to that.”

Nick said 1,400 of these Travel Air Four Thousands were built, and only 40 are still flying. Three will join the rally, and, as it happens, two will hold Oppegards. Nick and Lita’s son, Colin, is joining the only other American team on the historic flight.

Getting the biplane across the Atlantic is itself a logistical feat. It will be broken down in Florida and packed into a shipping container with special padding and cradles. Then it will be shipped by sea to England’s southern shore.

Not far from Southampton, a fleet of vintage planes will take off at the end of October.

They’ll fly across France, over the Alps, Italy, and the Balkans to Greece.

Nick will make the 300-mile flight across the Mediterranean alone, swaddled in a survival suit.

Lita will join him when he lands in Egypt.

“Imagine flying in an open cockpit biplane down the Nile River,” Nick Oppegard said, “by the pyramids over the antiquities of Khartoum, by Kilimanjaro, over Victoria Falls and flying out to the fascinating spice island of Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean right on the coast, and then landing in the Great Serengeti Plain, ending the trip at Table Mountain in Capetown South Africa.”

Along the way, they’ll sleep in safari camps and attend Roaring Twenties-themed galas. Their packing list includes a sleeping bag and black-tie attire. But what they’re looking forward to the most is meeting locals and their fellow adventurers.

“As we get to know the other people in the rally and the people that we meet on the ground and in the various place we stop it will be with great pride that we tell them that we are from Alaska,” Lita Oppegard said.

The trip will take five weeks from the time they leave Crete on November 11, and it is not without risks. But they’re OK with that. They’re pilots, after all. And Alaskans.

“Well hey, it’s part of being alive,” Nick Oppegard said. “Mitigate the risks as best you can, enjoy life, enjoy the beauty of this magnificent planet, its people, and these wonderful flying machines.”

You can follow their progress come November on the Crete2Cape Facebook page.

The year 2016 has been the fourth deadliest year in two decades, according to data provided by the Anchorage Police Department.

Twenty-four people have been killed so far in the municipality this year.

In July alone there were nine homicides within the city. The figures come on the heels of 2015, which saw the highest number of murders since 1995.

The persistent news of violent incidents has many residents asking whether something has changed and made the city more dangerous.

“There’s no doubt about it,” Anchorage Police Chief Chris Tolley said during a recent interview. “Right now we’re having a lot of crimes. And I’m concerned, and I know the community is concerned.”

The police department tracks a lot of data related to crime and is seeing a 15 percent increase in calls for service, according to Tolley. That uptick in the overall volume includes everything from assaults to property theft to reports of suspicious activity.

But what has most people’s attention is what seems like a lot more violent crime –shootings, stabbings, and a rash of murders, 12 of them clustered around just six weeks this summer between June 27 and August 5.

Two of the deaths this year were officer-involved, including one in July, which some feel should not be counted alongside other homicide or non-negligent manslaughter cases.

Tolley is most concerned about the how persistently it’s young people being killed in incidents this year.

“We’re seeing a trend here where half the victims are under the age of 21,” he said.

There is no one cause that explains all of this year’s homicides, Tolley is quick to point out.

Investigators have found no compelling evidence the murders are linked to gang activity.

Mental health problems have played a prominent role in some of the events, but the most consistent factor is the presence of drugs and alcohol.

“Most of these incidents are things that went too far,” Tolley said. “Disputes over different things, over drugs or things like that.”

Thirty percent of the cases are connected to domestic violence, which is up from an average closer to 20 percent, Tolley said.

Across the municipality, neighborhood crime watch groups post information to Facebook pages, much of it unconfirmed, according to APD spokesperson Jennifer Castro. A growing number citizens are signed up to get crime alerts sent straight to their phones. It can be easy to feel like chaos is descending, simply because a torrent of ominous information is constantly pouring in. Tolley and other city officials are urging a bit more hesitation and consideration, based on the actual number.

The homicide rate in Anchorage has fluctuated between 3.7 and 7.7 deaths per 100,000 residents during the last decade. If 2016 ends with no more murders — which would be unlikely — it would equate to a rate of close to eight.

By contrast, the murder rate in St. Louis last year was 59.

Tolley called a violent year like this in Anchorage a “fluke,” but does not consider it either unprecedented or an anomaly.

“Over eight and 10 year trends you do see spikes like this,” he said. “Is this one of those spikes? Probably.”

The year is far from over, he adds.

In response to violence, particularly among young people, the department plans on relying more heavily on School Resource Officers — the police who are permanently stationed within schools — once classes resume. As staffing levels within APD rise, the department is re-evaluating its policies and procedures to find updates and efficiency. They’re also trying to develop better lines of communication with communities.

Tolley cautions that police are only one part of a comprehensive solution, and one that’s often called upon only in the aftermath of violence.

“This isn’t about the police department solely. It’s about our community,” Tolley said. “I can’t fix this by myself, the administration can’t fix it by itself — it takes the community to take ownership over this. Police are not a substitution for health services. Police are not a solution for school teachers.”

It’s a view shared by Mayor Ethan Berkowitz’s administration, which is committed to restoring police staffing levels that saw a dramatic reduction under the previous administration.

“The police force has grown substantially over the last year. We’re almost at 400 officers now, which was the goal,” Berkowitz said.

More police officers is the starting point for improved public safety, in Berkowitz’s view, because the extra capacity means officers can be more proactive, instead of constantly responding to incidents once they’ve already occurred.

Like Tolley, the mayor sees the recent violence as beyond any single, easy explanation. However, he believes problems are being exacerbated by shrinking state support in areas that overlap with violent crime, like reduced drug and alcohol treatment options, and the release of prisoners from correctional facilities.

Berkowitz is adamant that even amid recent upticks, Anchorage is still a relatively safe city.

“The idea that you can have a totally safe community is something we aspire to, but it’s not gonna happen,” he said of the notion that crime could be fully eradicated.

Berkowitz and Tolley also share the view that the recent violence is overwhelmingly connected to the drug trade and what the mayor calls “bad lifestyle choices.”

The other substantial piece in the administration’s approach to community policing has been trying to foster and rebuild community partnerships.

“The community also has a responsibility to help the police do their job,” Berkowitz said.

Some see the administration’s manner so far as more dictatorial than an equal partnership.

“If our community is not involved in providing the solutions, then we’re already missing the peace,” said Mao Tosi, a community advocate who’s been deeply involved with the city’s anti-gang efforts and supporting at-risk youth.

His diagnosis traces the escalation in violent crime to cuts in social services and opportunities for low income communities started in 2009 under the administration of Mayor Dan Sullivan. Those reductions to services and staff haven’t yet been recouped, according to Tosi.

“So we have less police officers,” he said, counting off lessened support in the last few years. “In our school district they’re cutting funds in our education, so we have less teachers, less programming.”

“All these things are almost the perfect storm of issues coming together,” Tosi added.

He supports the administration’s efforts to pursue a better community policing model, but thinks that after several years of worsening relations between APD and communities experiencing the heaviest toll from violent crime the gap is dauntingly wide. Efforts at improved communication are great, but he says that so far policy has come from the top floor of city hall, without enough input from those closest to what’s happening on the street.

A petition signed by 150 Alaskans sent to Gov. Bill Walker, asks for changes to state predator control programs.

The letter sent Monday asked the governor to replace lethal predator control methods with non-lethal techniques, to terminate use of radio collars to locate and kill wolves, and to prohibit intensive management programs within 5 miles of federal conservation lands, like national parks.

According to petitioner, wildlife advocate and biologist Rick Steiner of Anchorage, signers hail from 28 Alaska communities and include former Alaska Board of Game members, and a former Fish & Game Commissioner.

With the vast majority of precincts statewide now counted, a clear picture emerged in Tuesday’s election returns — and the short version is, a lot of incumbents will be unseated.

The state’s Republican makeup saw a re-arrangment: three incumbents lost their seats, while two more failed to move from the House into the Senate.

“What we have, I believe, is a slightly more conservative body coming into the Legislature this next session, said Suzanne Downing, Alaska Republican Party communications director. “ So we’ve turned a little more conservative, I’m pretty happy about that.”

Downing especially is happy about George Rauscher’s victory over incumbent Jim Culver in the Republican race for House District 9 in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley.

Rauscher beat Culver by less than a hundred votes.

Rauscher plans on making his case on the economy and Permanent Fund as he’s going door to door in the months before the November elections.

“That’s the next step: listening harder and taking a lot of notes, and it’s gonna be important in January,” he said.

David Wilson unexpectedly beat Lynn Gattis, a GOP favorite many expected to win in Mat-Su’s Senate D race, for the seat vacated by Charlie Huggins.

Wilson received 52 percent of the vote to Gattis’s 47 percent.

Former Anchorage Assembly member Chris Birch has defeated incumbent Bob Lynn by a large margin in the Republican primary for house district 26.

In the Yukon-Kuskokwim region’s House District 38, Democratic challenger Zach Fansler has upset incumbent Bob Herron. With a few precincts still left to be tallied as of early Wednesday morning, District 38 appears to have the highest turnout of registered primary voters of any race in the state, at 21 percent.

In some of the open races, Natasha Von Imhof has won the three-way highly contested Republican race for Senate Seat L in South Anchorage. The former School Board member thinks her yearlong campaign strategy paid off.

“I think that the voters like to have a very well-balanced approach, I think I have common sense, and I think I’m willing to listen to people, willing to listen to different viewpoints, and try to craft a compromise that encompasses as many viewpoints as possible,” she said.

Von Imhof beat Rep. Craig Johnson, who had hoped to move up to the senate seat being vacated by Lesil McGuire

Further south in Anchorage, Jennifer Johnston won the Republican spot for House District 29 against Ross Beiling.

Tom Begich says he saw the prelim results & he’s won; Call him Senator. Dist. J. #akelect pic.twitter.com/QdbKwE30Te

— Liz Ruskin (@lruskin) August 17, 2016

Tom Begich beat Ed Wesley in the Democratic primary for the Senate district covering much of downtown Anchorage, where turnout among registered voters was less than 11 percent. Begich said he and Wesley will have to come together to get more people out to the polls in November.

“It’s really gonna be up to Ed and myself to get out there and get our core groups out there to vote, because the turnout was very, very low today,” Begich said.

Some incumbents in the state are safe, however, at least this time around. Eagle River Republican representatives Dan Saddler and Lora Reinbold have both solidly secured their spots on the Republican ticket come November.

Though Reinbold’s lead was just 10 percentage points more than challenger Crystal Kennedy, the incumbent says she feels optimistic about the campaign she ran.

“It was a short season, as you know, but very intense, very good for our team. We did very well, we kept a positive campaign energetic,” Reinbold said. “We stuck to our message, and we did well in the community.”

Republican incumbent Liz Vaazquez beat primary challenger David Neese for her District 22 spot in West Anchorage.

In the south Kenai Peninsula, Paul Seaton has won the District 31 seat. He took 48 percent of the vote, with his two challengers splitting the rest almost evenly. Seaton believes part of why he won is because of his challengers’ negative campaign tactics.

It was the most negative campaign I’ve ever seen on the lower Peninsula, and I think a lot of people were disturbed by some of the very unfounded charges that were made,” Seaton said.

And far to the north, in District 40, Democrat Ben Nageak had a slight lead over challenger Dean Westlake as of 1:20 p.m. Wednesday, but with three precincts yet to be counted.

In the national races, sitting Sen. Lisa Murkowski secured the Republican spot on the ballot, and Ray Metcalf has more than 50 percent of the votes among Democrats for his bid at the Senate.

In the congressional race, Don Young got more than 71 percent of the vote among Republicans, and for the Democrats Steve Lindbeck will be the party’s nominee on the November ticket.

None of the results are official until certified by the Division of Elections.

Correction: A previous version of this story misidentified the House District Zach Fansler and Bob Herron contested in the Democratic primary, and understated how many precincts were outstanding in the Ben Nageak-Dean Westlake race. This story has been corrected.)

When it came to the federal races, Tuesday’s election held no surprises. As expected, Sen. Lisa Murkowski easily beat three lesser known Republican candidates.

“I think we have the reality of a very, very strong campaign that worked from the very beginning to make sure nothing was taken for granted,” Murkowski said.

She was waving signs in Anchorage just before the polls closed.

Murkowski lost her primary six years ago and held her seat with a write-in campaign in the general election. So far this time, she has raised about $7 million.

On the Democratic side of the U.S. Senate race, candidate Ray Metcalfe was well ahead of the Edgar Blatchford, with most of the votes counted.

Murkowski’s more formidable challenge may come from independent candidate Margaret Stock. Stock has raised half a million dollars for her campaign and is seeking to get on the November ballot by petition.

Congressman Don Young had no trouble in his race Tuesday. Per personal tradition, Young voted in Fort Yukon and was unavailable for interviews.

None of Young’s three Republican challengers raised enough money to file campaign finance reports. Democrat Steve Lindbeck, though, has raised serious money to challenge Young.

“It’s going great. Lots of enthusiasm today. We’re hearing all kinds of reports,  people voting for me. It’s exciting,” Lindbeck said.

Lindbeck, a former general manager of Alaska Public Media, spoke a few hours before polls closed. He easily won his primary challenge Tuesday.