Contributed by Bruce Walden
On August 21st, the state will decide on the different candidates we will send to the general election in November. And the following day, the borough election will kick into overdrive. As I have promised from the beginning, I will not go negative in any way. I do not see my opponent as some bad person. It is simply a matter of our having different visions for the future of our borough. So, I will address the record of the offices of manager, assembly and mayor over these past fifty-four years in general. You may draw your own conclusions.
When I first arrived at Fort Richardson, the borough was only 15 years old. But Valley politics were not a concern to this young paratrooper. I retired from the Army and moved back here in 2001, and that is when I began watching what was going on in that Mat-Su. And now the time has come to stop worrying about former borough personnels’ legacies and begin concerning ourselves with what we want for the future of this borough.
Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am, as our regimental song says, one of those men “who mean just what they say”. If I say it, you better believe I mean it. If I say I am going to do a thing, know that I will do it or die in the attempt. So far, I’m still vertical; so, there you go. We send first one, then the other, to the borough and to Juneau. They all come around promising that they’ll do wonderful things if you’ll just vote them in. Far too often, it is nothing more than lip service and once elected, they immediately forget their promise. I will not. If I fail, it will not be from lack of trying.
In the president’s book “The Art of the Deal”, the first lesson I learned is when Mr. Trump said, “Look, if you’re going to bother thinking at all, you may as well think big.” I have a whole lot of ideas of things I hope to do for the Mat-Su. You may like my ideas, and you may hate them. You may say that I am thinking too big. But the thing truly is this: If you shoot at the fence and miss, you’ll hit the mud; but if you shoot at a star and miss, at least you might hit that fence.
We have so many resources here in our borough and in our state, enough to make many folks wealthy and give jobs to those who need jobs. But the one commodity that we seem to lack and have lacked since about 1978 is “will” - the will to do something great and new.
If you sit down and converse with me, and put your emotions on hold, and really listen, you will see that nothing I am proposing is impossible. But you have been told that it is until you refuse to believe. It amazes me how that when I was a kid, we walked on the moon, but then we forgot how! Now when we talk about it, such a thing seems ridiculous. So, when I say things like, “We need to move the capital,” there are those who think that’s some nutso idea - it is not affordable. But I can show you exactly how we can do it, building a capital city right from the ground up, and doing so without sending you the bill. Doubt me? Let’s sit down over coffee.
If you elect me, one thing I intend to actively pursue is organizing “get-togethers” in which people with investment capital, people with business acumen and people with good ideas for new products or services, partner up. If you elect me and give me an assembly with whom I can work, you watch how quickly we can begin cutting five, ten, twenty and forty-acre hunks of port authority land to you for small factories, so we can get people working and watch us get our economy moving. Again, doubt me? Let’s have a cuppa. Remember, the rising tide lifts all boats.
We’ve those in the borough who are scared to death to have anyone around them succeed, and this puzzles me. If I have a widget factory, and you have a doodad factory, and your people are successful, they can buy more of my stuff and vise-versa. Win, win!
Friends, we really can do this. Are you ready for this borough to take its place and lead? The Mat-Su is about to send a delegation to the House and Senate that will lead this state. It’s time for our borough to step up to the plate and lead. Are you with me?