I had the opportunity to share some time with newly declared Democratic candidate for United States Senate, Scott McAdams. McAdams, the current mayor of Sitka, Alaska declared his candidacy on Tuesday, June 1 for the seat currently held by Republican Lisa Murkowski. Today, ex-governor Sarah Palin formally endorsed Murkowski’s opponent in the GOP primary, right wing conservative Joe Miller from Fairbanks. This endorsement, and McAdams recent entry mean that this is shaping up to be a far more interesting race than it was just a week ago.

This is the first installment of my conversation with McAdams. We talked about what it means to be a “small town Alaska mayor” these days, and about the ongoing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, what that had to do with his decision to run, and what it means for Alaska as an oil and gas producing state.  This is the first segment of several.

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Mudflats: OK, my first thought is that you’re a mayor of a small Alaska town, and I think at least half the population has a little PTSD about small town Alaska mayors. So, I wanted to hear from you your take on how that is an advantage to you in this campaign.

McAdams: Sure. I think that in small towns in Alaska and in small towns all over the country, I think there is a different way of doing business. In Washington D.C., the stock and trade of political leaders – is caucus, it’s partisan, it’s majority/minority. Oftentimes, a person in minority leadership, it’s their purpose is to play the shame/blame and grandstanding game to make enough of the majority members look bad so they can one day become the majority again. And while that is our federal legislative system, I think what’s different about the way we do business at the local level is that not only do we have to live and work and have friendships and relationships with people in the towns that we live in, but it relates to actually getting things done. As a local governance leader, instead of trying to put together a position to attract votes, or to put together a position to shame my political opponent, it’s my job to help craft a shared vision.

Mudflats: I would think that being mayor of an island, basically you’d have to all get along to a certain extent. There seems to be more accountability.

McAdams: That’s true, and you have to be able to disagree well. There definitely is an island culture and that’s true in all 165 Alaskan towns.

Mudflats: Well, Alaska is kind of an island culture itself.

McAdams: Alaska is definitely kind of an island culture and so I think it translates well regarding who we send to Washington DC to advocate for our issues. And so this campaign is really about putting Alaskan communities ahead of Washington politics. At the local level we establish a shared vision, we structure that vision through policy and budget, we go out and advocate for it in our community, and then we hold ourselves accountable to what we said we were going to do. And we deliver balanced budgets.

You know it’s funny – we’ve got a far right Republican running against Lisa Murkowski in the primary, I am the Democrat in the race entering, and I believe I’m the only one in this race who has ever actually had to cut a public budget. It’s not a necessity. It’s not something I relish doing, but I think as you look at the state of the nation and as you ask folks out on the street whether they be Libertarian, or Liberal Libertarian, “Would you be willing to finance your children’s future for the status quo?” I think most rational people would say no. But if you went out and asked people, “Are you willing to make an investment in a new vision, an alternative energy vision, a vision of how we relate to the world, a new vision as to how we pay down our national debt”, I think people are ready to hear those kinds of solutions.

Mudflats: You were talking about the left and the right, and as we know most people in Alaska are neither Democrats nor Republicans. They fall in the “NP” “U” “I” category – that alphabet soup that’s somewhere in the middle. And there’s two strategies – there’s one that says you need to move right to appeal to the right half of those undeclared people. And then the other school of thought says, no – what you should actually do is move much farther left and give people a clear choice. Where do you fall in that spectrum?

McAdams: Well, I think that no one party gets everything right all the time, and yet the way our federal system works – where is there room for accomodation for a minority member or a majority member when they actually do get it right? And as far as positioning myself through the political process as a candidate, my strategy is to the best of my ability to keep myself centered and real, as opposed to going to the left at first and then going to the right in the general. If I can run a campaign that is credible, if I can run a campaign that allows me to be myself, then I’ll consider whatever happens in November a success.

Mudflats: Alright. Let’s talk about oil. I look at Alaska and we are tied in so many ways to the oil and gas industry in what we use, and what we sell, extraction, state ownership of the resources, but ultimately oil is a finite resource. At some point we won’t have any. What do we need to do to get there in once piece? What does Alaska look like when BP and Conoco and Exxon and all those guys pack up their gear and head out?

McAdams: That’s an interesting question. We are an oil and gas state, there’s no question about it. You look at our state treasury and 89% of our revenue comes from oil and gas. It’s an interesting question… what does the state look like post Kuparuk oil? I think it’s a vision we have not yet framed. I think we are almost in a collective state of denial, yet when I go and talk to young leaders in this state… I mean, I’m 39. If I stay in public service at the state level – say I wasn’t a candidate – and stayed in public service to the state, my retirement date is December 2030, long after the projections of Kuparek oil, of Prudhoe Bay oil being gone. I don’t think we have an answer or a solution. I don’t think we have vision, and yet what we do have is a world class level of potential as it relates to renewable energy. We need vision and leadership.

Mudflats: There’s been a lot of renewed talk about oil and gas on a national level because of the terrible tragedy in the Gulf. What do you think about liability caps in terms of what oil companies are responsible for in the event of this kind of disaster.

McAdams: My first question is one of validity as it relates to monetary liability for environmental devastation of a region. How can you valuate and monetize a way of life or a culture.

Mudflats: And when BP says “we will pay all valid claims” what does that really mean?

McAdams: Yeah, valid claims. How do you validate and pay a claim as it relates to a dream of starting a business, starting an operation – a family business, and passing it on to your child? What’s the monetary value of that? What’s the value of being able to be part of a maritime culture – a culture that is deeply rooted in the sea? How do you put a monetary value on that?

I don’t think $75 million dollars as far as a liability cap even pays to commemorate a spill with a memorial, let alone mitigate a spill. So, obviously I think that a $10 billion cap, if there’s $20 billion in damage that is done, then the liability needs to be covered. You can’t go in and do a contracting job, you can’t go in and build a building without a certain amount of bonding ability to be able to cover the liability. This business of keeping the cap low so that smaller oil producers can go in and explore is a very dangerous way of looking at the world, because if we’re going to allow people to come in and wildcat in our back yard and they don’t have the means to even begin to pay for a mistake…. Would you allow a contractor into your house to retile your bathroom if you didn’t think if that person cracks six of the tiles that they couldn’t afford to replace them? Of course you wouldn’t.

So why would we open up our subsistence way of life to that? What’s the value of the Inupiat culture? What’s the value of the Chu’pik the Yup’ik, the Siberian Yup’ik cultures? What’s the monetary value of the Alutiiq and others who are still facing the devastation of the Exxon Valdez oil spill? Is there a liability cap? This is critically important. This is one of the reasons I’m in this race, because I am from coastal Alaska. I learned to read, write, reason and work in a town where 85 cents on the dollar comes from commercial fishing. So, when I see a billion dollar commercial fishery, and a $750 million charter industry in Louisiana, facing peril… When I see the city of New Orleans with one of the biggest sectors in their economy being tourism, and their tourism ties right back into their cuisine and their culture as a sea port, $10 billion can’t even begin to pay down the loss. $75 million is an insult.

Mudflats: I look at the Gulf, and I think to myself that we learned so many lessons here from the Exxon Valdez, and now we see this horrible tragedy in the Gulf… and I think to myslf what we learned, didn’t translate. For instance we are using dispersants that are arguably more toxic than the actual oil, and create a whole host of other problems. BP, like Exxon went through at first and were negotiating these payoffs with people, making them sign away further rights to sue. Now we’ve got Rick Steiner and Ricki Ott down there trying to bring Alaska’s message to the Gulf, and in some ways that’s been successful, but in some ways it hasn’t. And now I look at the prospective drilling up in the Beaufort and the Chuckchi Seas, and I think, “So, are we going to learn the lesson back?” That’s my perspective. What’s yours?

McAdams: Following on that comment… This nation was built on principles, on ideals and on great ideas – on a broad vision, not on bumper sticker talk or poll-approved positions, so let me step out a little bit and address this. There have been a lot of things that converged to this point of me deciding to step into this race as a small town mayor, looking at more than likely a breeze re-election in my home town, with a 5-2 progressive majority and a beautiful little island to live on. Why would I, a relative unknown get into this middle of this race? This explosion that happened on April 22, the move to increase the liability cap and our Senator’s response is part of it.

And the passing of Wally Hickel has given me pause to reflect on where Alaska is and where Alaska is going. Having his policy institute down in Sitka right after the Democratic Convention… there were a lot of different conversations that had gone on. One of the things that Governor Hickel talked about that I heard him say in one of his online speeches, was how money has never been the obstacle, it’s vision. Money follows a grand vision. He talks about his own childhood as a depression kid, where the country couldn’t see its way out of it and then a new vision was cast on the country at the beginning of World War II, and the country rallied behind a common point and America showed its greatness during times of trial.Talking to young Alaskans, whether they be young Democrats or emerging bipartisan Alaskans from all different sectors, and when you look at 2016, which is the end of this senatorial term, and beyond… I think we’re at a crossroads. We are at a critical point. We’re almost at a point of reckoning in our country as it relates to not just in our state and in what Alaska looks like post-Kuparuk oil, but what does America look like in the mid 21st Century? And I think the grand vision, the culminating event, the huge event that’s been dropped on our heads is this explosion in the Gulf. I think that this is, or could be, the Pearl Harbor of the American Energy Revolution.

Mudflats: I sort of alluded to this before, but what are we trying to get out of this? Are we tryng to improve the mechanics of how we do offshore drilling? Are we trying to increase regulation in terms of what we permit and what we don’t? Are we trying to say, “You know what? We really can do without offshore drilling because there is no way to guarantee that fisheries, for instance, in New Orleans werent’ going to be destroyed. Could they guarantee that? No, they couldn’t. And was it worth it? And I think of the Gulf oil disaster and I think of its equivalent in the Chukchi, underneath ice. So how do you feel about that drilling? Do you support it?

McAdams: Or does this event the beginning of a new way of thinking about energy?

Mudflats: Right.

McAdams: But as for the mechanics, and the oversight… you know we’ve lived through a period in this country of laissez faire deregulation policy, after laissez faire deregulation policy, and the thing about safety oversight and regulatory oversight, and the thing about regulatory enforcement – it’s like local law enforcement as a mayor. It always costs too much, it always is too much until the very moment that it’s not enough. Then you find yourself all of a sudden with Hurricane Katrina, and you find yourself all of a sudden with a catastrophe in the Gulf.

So to answer the second part of it, we absolutely need a new regulatory environment. I think having a clear, funded, enforceable set of policy and regulation actually can create surety in the market. When people come in and they know they can invest in something and they understand the regulatory environment, it actually can attract capital. As far as mechanics and the actual business of drilling offshore – could it be that new offshore drilling is part of a comprehensive 21st century energy policy? I think that it probably has its place. There are those who would make the case that this is a call for developing ANWR and other places like ANWR that are actually on land.

Back to this thing about whether we should drill in the OCS [Outer Continental Shelf], I think that a lot of different Alaskans have a lot of different levels of awareness about this particular issue. It is federal land, with a one year moratorium and if this is going to be done:

A) Our delegation needs to fight for better revenue sharing and

B) We already have mechanisms like the Denali Commission and their renewable energy fund.

I think that if we’re going to do any offshore drilling in Alaska that we need to have everything that every other state has as it relates to revenue sharing, but that some of that revenue sharing might be as a matter of policy, directed toward building capacity for renewable energy.

I think if we develop ANWR… if we develop any oil and gas in this state, that there ought to be a portion of that goes into a renewable energy permanent fund.

Mudflats: Something that bridges us over?

McAdams: Right.

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In the next installment we talk about Pebble Mine, the Tongass, and fish.

Part II of the interview is HERE
Part III of the interview is HERE