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Don Young challengers take questions in Kenai

 

Six candidates are lined up to challenge Congressman Don Young this fall. Two of them were in Kenai for a Chamber of Commerce-sponsored candidate forum Wednesday.

The general election to select Alaska’s lone representative in Congress will feature two candidates, but first, they must win in a primary. Four are running in the Democratic primary, while Young will have two challengers in the Republican primary. Two of those hopefuls took questions for nearly an hour at the Kenai Visitor’s and Cultural Center Wednesday. Republican John Nelson is a financial advisor and lifelong Alaskan. He casts his candidacy as a kind of passing of the torch.

“After I met up with Congressman Don Young in the spring, I got concerned. Because if Alaska was my client, I would be deeply concerned about a transition strategy like we’re on the road for now. We have one living congressman, who is aging. We cannot (miss) the opportunity to transfer his knowledge and and expertise and wisdom before he is unable to.”

The 53-year old Nelson says he wrote to the 85-year old Young, asking for him to voluntarily step down and endorse Nelson, who seems eager to carry that torch to Washington, promising to stick with the largely conservative principles that Young has based his career on. Succession planning isn’t at the heart of Dimitri Shein’s campaign. As a Democrat, he’s looking to bring more progressive ideas to issues such as health care. As an accountant, he sees rising health care costs as prohibitive to business growth in the state and around the country.

“Unless we get this fixed, we’re on track not to be just ranked last for business, we’re on track to be the poorest state in the nation. Health care costs are bankrupting our nation, bankrupting our state and bankrupting our families. I’m a business person, I pay taxes. And what I demand in exchange for my taxes is health care, plain and simple.”

Shein supports a Medicare-for-all kind of system. And while Nelson doesn’t go that far, he does say that one way to lower overall medical costs is to streamline how its delivered.

“We don’t have health care insurance. We have catastrophic care insurance. We’ve got to bring down the cost. We can look at cutting out the middlemen. Because insurance companies are in business to make a profit, not provide healthcare.”

The two candidates fell basically along party lines when it came to topics like gun reform and immigration. Shein emmigrated from Russia at the age of 12 in 1993, but he tried to make the business case. He says it all starts with a more liberal guest worker program.

“We live here in Alaska and a pack of tomatoes at Costco costs $15.  If we don’t fix our immigration system, our pack of tomatoes is going to cost $50. I don’t think any of us are going to like that. The reality is, we need immigration. We need legal immigration and we need an efficient guest worker program and migrant worker program.”

The Republican primary will see Nelson versus Young and Jed Whittaker for the nod toward the general election. Shein is in a field with three other candidates, Christopher Cummings, Alyse Galvin and Carol Hafner. The last day to register to vote in Alaska’s primary elections in July 22nd.

 

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