The list of Rep. Don Young’s politically incorrect utterances over his 47-year House career is too long to recount. Eyeing November, Democrats think the Alaska Republican’s off-the-cuff approach will catch up with him just as swing-state polls show voters getting weary of President Trump’s incendiary style.
The House Democrats’ campaign arm is once again arguing that Young is vulnerable. It’s something it’s been trying since Young, now 87, first won Alaska’s lone House seat in a March 1973 special election.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is talking up the chances of Alyse Galvin, who is running as an independent along Democratic lines, emphasizing the former, since Alaska remains a Republican-leaning state.
A Public Policy Polling survey released July 10 shows Galvin, a professional educator, leading Young, 43% to 41%.
Democrats point to the epic list of Young’s controversial statements. In 2010, Young described the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as “not an environmental disaster” but a “natural” phenomenon. And in 2014, the former tugboat captain told a group of high school students who were mourning the suicide of a classmate that suicides could be blamed on a “lack of support” from family and friends.
That’s just a sampling of old statements that Democrats are dredging up, implicitly linking the most senior House member, known as its dean, to Trump. This plays to the argument that Alaskans are tired of being embarrassed by their leaders in Washington.
There’s some reason to think this is having an effect. That same Public Policy Polling survey shows Trump leading Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in Alaska, 48% to 45%, which would make for the closest Republican win in the state since 1960.
But Young doesn’t seem to be sweating it and is confident of reelection. Young’s campaign website says he is “fortunate to have been named among the top 10 most effective lawmakers in Congress, crediting a laser-like focus on Alaska policy issues and the ability to move bills through the legislative process.”
