Casey Kelly

Juneau voters went against the national and statewide Republican trend Tuesday, backing Democratic candidates for Alaska’s Congressional seats. They also supported the three initiatives on the general election ballot by wide margins.

While it appears Democrat Mark Begich will lose his U.S. Senate seat to Republican challenger Dan Sullivan, Begich beat Sullivan in both state House districts that include Juneau. The one-term incumbent got more than 51 percent of the vote in House District 34, which encompasses the Mendenhall Valley and north end of Juneau’s road system. Begich got more than 66 percent of the vote in House District 33, which includes downtown Juneau, Douglas Island, Haines, Skagway, Klukwan and Gustavus.

Democratic candidate for U.S. House Forrest Dunbar also won both Juneau districts, despite losing statewide to Republican Congressman Don Young.

Juneau voters backed the independent ticket for governor. Bill Walker and former capital city Mayor Byron Mallott beat Republican incumbent Sean Parnell and his running mate, Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan, in both Juneau districts.

Juneau is down with legal marijuana. More than 67 percent of voters in District 33 and more than 57 percent in District 34 said yes to Ballot Measure 2, which makes the drug legal for people 21 and older and calls for a system to tax and regulate its use.

Ballot Measure 3 to raise the minimum wage and Measure 4 to require legislative approval of large-scale mining in the Bristol Bay region also passed by wide margins in both Juneau districts. All three initiatives were approved statewide as well.

Voter turnout statewide was 44.8 percent on Tuesday. It was almost 10 points higher in District 34. But only 43.8 percent of registered voters cast ballots in District 33.

The downtown Juneau No. 1 precinct had the lowest turnout in House District 33 at 31.9 percent. The highest turnout was in Klukwan, near Haines, at 53.1 percent.

The Lynn Canal precinct had the highest turnout in District 34, with 46.8 percent of registered voters casting ballots. The lowest turnout was at the Mendenhall Valley No. 1 precinct at 32.9 percent.

All results from Tuesday’s election are unofficial until certified. As of Wednesday, the Division of Elections had yet to count more than 23,000 absentee ballots received by Tuesday. Thousands more absentee ballots were still outstanding, but many of those may not be returned.

Alaska appears to have followed the national trend and elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate. But Democratic Sen. Mark Begich isn’t conceding and it’s likely the race won’t be decided until next week.

Republican Dan Sullivan was ahead by almost 4 percentage points at the end of election night. He thanked his volunteers and told them he wasn’t making a victory speech.

“Door Knocking! Phone Calls! You guys made it happen!” Sullivan said, to loud cheers.

Begich went home before midnight, saying he’s hopeful his massive outreach in rural Alaska will pay off. Jim Lottsfeldt ran a $10 million superPAC supporting Begich. He maintains the uncounted early and absentee votes will break their way.

“Oh it’s not over,” Lottsfeldt said, echoing the senator’s words to supporters from a few minutes before. “Begich has never had a result that was good for him on election night. It always goes down to the wire. I think in about 10 days when all the votes are counted, we’ll see. “

All precincts had reported by early this morning. More than 22,000 ballots remain uncounted, and more are arriving in the mail. But with Sullivan ahead by more than 8,000 votes, the uncounted ballots would have to favor Begich by a huge margin if he’s to stay in office.

In a written statement before all the precincts reported, the Begich campaign said the Democrat would make a statement about the race after all the villages had reported “and when the number of outstanding absentee and questioned ballots is clear.”

All three of the capital city’s state lawmakers handily won re-election Tuesday. Sen. Dennis Egan and Reps. Cathy Muñoz and Sam Kito III all got at least 60 percent of the votes counted in their respective races on Election Day.

Egan, the Democratic incumbent in Senate District Q, won 71 percent of the vote to 28 percent for Republican challenger Tom Williams.

It’s the first time Egan has faced an election challenge since being appointed to the Senate in 2009 by then-Gov. Sarah Palin. He says having an opponent makes it easier to talk issues.

“I’m very proud of my campaign, because we didn’t do anything that was negative. We were all positive,” Egan said.

For the past two legislative sessions Egan has caucused with the Republican-led Senate Majority. While the makeup of the new Senate is still unknown, he says he hopes the body will return to the bipartisan majority that existed prior to 2013.

“I would love to return to a bipartisan coalition,” he said. “I think (Kodiak Republican Senator) Gary Stevens did a great job. I’m not knocking what (Senate) President Charlie Huggins did. But (the bipartisan majority) just seemed to work smoother.”

Williams went to Africa for the last two weeks of the campaign, and was unavailable to comment.

Supporters of Republican Rep. Muñoz cheered at Coho’s Bar and Grill in downtown Juneau after results showed her winning House District 34.

Muñoz beat Democratic challenger George McGuan, 62 percent to 38 percent. She heads to Anchorage today to attend organizational meetings for the 2015 legislative session.

“The first caucus meeting is of the coastal and bush caucus,” Muñoz said. “There are 10 members from around coastal Alaska that meet on a regular basis that have common interests and we want to first understand the positions that each of us want in the new organization.”

For the past two sessions, Muñoz was the only member from Southeast Alaska on the House Finance Committee. While that’s an important role, she says she may explore taking a position of leadership in the House majority.

“I’ve been asked to consider co-chairman of Finance or Speaker of the House of Representatives. But those are big positions and I’m more than happy to serve in my current position as finance committee member,” Muñoz said.

No matter what role she plays, Muñoz says declining oil prices will be a major focus for the upcoming legislature.

Across town, McGuan spent most of his election night at Mi Casa in the Mendenhall Valley, which served as his campaign headquarters.

McGuan says he got a lot of raised eyebrows campaigning for Muñoz’s seat, but he also got support.

“More of the people who I interact with on a regular basis, the typical working type people were really happy to see at least a choice and then also a lot of people identified with me,” McGuan said. “If I could’ve done anything better I think it would’ve been spend more time out door-knocking. But I just couldn’t take time off of work because we’re raising a family and I gave it my all.”

Kito won the seat he was appointed to in January after longtime Juneau Rep. Beth Kerttula resigned to accept a fellowship at Stanford. The Democrat took 75 percent of the vote. His challenger, Republican Peter Dukowitz, took nearly 24 percent.

Kito said his priorities in the next legislative session will be to fully fund education and universal pre-kindergarten. During the upcoming session, he thinks major issues will be the Alaska National Guard scandal, dealing with declining oil revenues and the budget, and marijuana legalization.

“There will be a necessary response to the marijuana initiative, trying to put statutes together to initiate the legalization of marijuana and I suspect that will take a fair amount of work,” Kito says.

Dukowitz said he’s looking forward to finishing some projects he’s put off during the campaign. He’s not sure he’ll run for public office again, but he’s not ruling it out.

“I would like to say, ‘Yes, I’ll start running tomorrow,’ but I think with the demographics here it’s going to be tough,” Dukowitz says.

Results of the election are unofficial until certified later this month. On Tuesday, Division of Elections Director Gail Fenumiai said the agency received nearly 5,000 absentee and early ballots from Juneau’s two House Districts prior to Election Day. Most of the early ballots were counted on Tuesday, but the division will still accept absentee ballots by mail for two more weeks.

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 1:15 p.m. with responses from Kito and Dukowitz.

Despite beefed up patrols, the Juneau Police Department did not make any arrests for driving under the influence on Halloween.

JPD credits the local chapter of Alaska CHARR, the Cabaret Hotel Restaurant and Retailers Association, which offers bar patrons free cab rides home on certain holidays. The nonprofit provided more than 400 free cab rides on Halloween, according to a JPD news release.

The department had seven extra officers on the street that night. They made 21 traffic stops, and responded to more than 60 emergency and non-emergency calls from the public.

An alleged arsonist caused “thousands of dollars” in damage to the main floor lobby as well as the emergency room waiting area and patient triage room at Juneau’s Bartlett Regional Hospital early Sunday morning.

Juneau police say 26-year-old Robert Edward Johnson set fire to a locked bathroom near the hospital’s 2nd floor lobby. The fire was put out by a sprinkler, which caused one to two inches of standing water to flood the lobby and seep through the floor into the emergency room.

Johnson was located inside the bathroom by hospital security guards and employees shortly before police and Capital City Fire/Rescue arrived. He was arrested and charged with felony arson in the 2nd degree. He was being held Sunday at Lemon Creek Correctional Center on no bail.

The incident is still under investigation.

For the first time since she was elected to the state House in 2008, Juneau Republican Rep. Cathy Muñoz faces a general election challenge.

Democratic candidate George McGuan is a union electrician, who portrays himself as more working man than politician.

They’re vying to represent House District 34, which encompasses Juneau’s Mendenhall Valley and out the road.

Cathy Muñoz is the third generation of her family to be involved in Alaska politics. Her grandparents, Thelma and Elton Engstrom Sr., were members of the territorial legislature in the 1940s and ‘50s. Her grandfather went on to serve in the state Senate, and her father, Elton Jr., was a legislator from 1965 to 1970.

Muñoz served on the Juneau Assembly from 1995 to 2001, and has been a member of the Alaska House of Representatives since 2009. For the past two years she’s been the only Southeast Alaska representative on the House Finance Committee, which plays an important role in crafting state budgets.

“I think that experience is very important,” Muñoz says. “And if given the opportunity, if I am re-elected, I’ll continue to build on that experience.”

But Muñoz says she’s proud of more than just her political experience. She and her mother opened an art gallery in downtown Juneau that’s been in business for more than 20 years. Her husband, Juan, also manages a gallery, featuring works by her mother-in-law Rie Muñoz.

“I grew up alongside my dad and mom,” she says. “Working in small fish plants on the slime line, buying fish when I got a little older on the scow, eventually worked my way up to writing fish tickets in the office. So, I come from a long line of people that are hard workers and have been very much engaged in this economy for a long time.”

While Muñoz comes from an old Juneau family, her opponent first arrived less than 10 years ago. George McGuan came to visit his brother, who was stationed in Juneau with the Coast Guard at time and still lives here today. McGuan says he fell in love with the town and decided to make it his home.

“I grew up in Gary, Indiana,” he says. “I worked initially here as an AmeriCorps volunteer building affordable housing, was working as a laborer building the Kensington Mine and a few other projects, and got into the electrician apprenticeship after Peace Corps, which I did in 2007, 2008 in Bolivia.”

This is McGuan’s first run for elected office and he’s still a bit reluctant to call himself a politician. He and his wife Alex – a teacher at Mendenhall River Community School – had their first child in September – a boy named Orion. It’s the first thing he talks about when you ask him why he’s running.

“Knowing that my son’s going to be growing up here,” McGuan says. “And knowing that there were certain votes that were not going the way that I wanted to see the votes go.”

He points to votes Muñoz cast in 2013 on bills to change the state’s oil tax system and roll back wastewater discharge rules for cruise ships. He also wasn’t happy with the amount of school funding lawmakers approved last legislative session. McGuan says he’d like to see the state’s school funding formula tied to inflation.

“That would be ideal, and if possible we should do it, because it’s just getting it out there and making sure our school districts can start planning and they can be more efficient that way,” McGuan says.

Muñoz defends the amount of school funding. She says, sure, it would be great to have more, but at some point lawmakers have to compromise.

“I think we can do more,” she says. “I think one idea that we’ve talked about is possibly an education endowment.”

Muñoz also defends her oil tax vote. She originally voted against the new tax system, before voting yes on reconsideration when it was clear the measure would pass.

McGuan is against the Juneau Access Project to extend the capital city’s main road north to a new ferry terminal at the Katzehin River. He says the project is too expensive and long-term maintenance costs are not included. Muñoz is pro-road, which she says will improve access to the capital city and provide economic and social benefits to all of northern Southeast.

McGuan says he’s voting for independent candidate Bill Walker for governor. Muñoz is supporting the re-election of Gov. Sean Parnell.

The general election is Nov. 4.