YOUNG'S RECORD CONSISTENT
CONSERVATION BILL ASSISTS NATIVE ALLIES
June 09, 2000 - Fairbanks (Alaska) Daily News-Miner
By Fred Pratt

An old joke about Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, is that he never threw a touchdown pass, but he never dropped a handoff either.

The joke refers to his success carrying getting legislation vital to Alaska through the House, yet seldom introducing major bills that became law. This month the U.S. Senate will take up what is probably the closest Young has come to breaking that long tradition.

That bill is HR. 701, a measure offending many of Young's long-time allies and hailed as an "epic" conservation bill by his traditional critics.

The bill would dedicate $3 billion a year in outer continental shelf revenue annually to the federal government's Land and Water Conservation Fund. This money goes to state and federal agencies to be used for wildlife conservation and purchasing private land for park additions.

Under HR. 701, the current flow of money to the fund would be tripled, states would have greater say in how that money is spent and the program would expand to cover things like developing urban parks.

Alaska's take would be $165.5 million a year.

Many people are calling Young a turncoat for embracing a conservation measure, but the bill is actually right in line with his record. The confusion demonstrates Young's record is a lot different than his image.

In 1972 Young was a Republican state senator from Fort Yukon. He wasn't up for re-election, so he agreed to carry the party banner against incumbent Rep. Nick Begich, a popular Democrat who had a lock on an easy re-election.

But Begich disappeared on a flight from Anchorage to Juneau. The Democrats kept him on the ballot and he won, forcing a special election early in 1973.

The Democrats selected Begich's replacement candidate in a special election in Anchorage. The candidates were Begich's widow, Peggy, Anchorage State Sen. Chancy Croft and Bethel Native leader Emil Notti.

Croft would have been the logical choice. He had the qualifications. He had a broad political base in the state's largest city.

Delegates to the state Democratic convention grew restive after a couple days of back room wheeling and dealing, and they moved to set a deadline for action. Peggy Begich misinterpreted this as treachery by Croft, so she threw her support to Notti.

Now Emil Notti is an intelligent man and a very capable administrator, but he's not a person with a natural talent for campaigning. What little chance he might have had against Young evaporated when Notti stood in front of a Fairbanks campaign rally two days before the election and told them he was in favor of gun control.

It didn't help that Notti denied it, in face of a tape recording of his exact words stating the contrary.

Young won the election. The next year he took his first handoff, the bill authorizing construction of the trans-Alaska pipeline, and he scored.

Having essentially put Young in office, the Democrats have kept him there by picking opponents he can easily beat. In 1974 it was a man from Barrow who was dying of cancer during the election.

But Young has also served two big national Democratic constituencies quite well. A former teacher, he votes generally in line with the teachers unions. He is similarly friendly with public employee unions, and he's tight enough with other labor unions that he opposed NAFTA, voted against renewing the "fast-track" trade agreements under GATT, and he opposed the China trade bill in the recent House vote.

Young possesses uncommon zeal for seeking re-election every two years, and a satisfaction with staying in Congress rather than using it as a stepping-stone to the Senate or the governor's mansion.

Even as he turns 67 years old today and despite bypass surgery three years ago, he never coasts on a lead. He always campaigns like he's facing a major opponent.

In Alaska, he also pulls from a third large Democratic constituency. As a former senator for a large rural district and husband of a Native from a prominent family, Young has long championed Native corporation interests in Washington, D.C.

HR 701 is right in line with this record, because it dedicates tens of millions of dollars a year to purchasing private inholdings in Alaskan parks and wildlife refuges. Native corporations are by far the largest owners of these lands.

So that's just our same old Don.

© 2000 MediaNews Group, Inc. and Fairbanks Publishing Company, Inc

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