The sound of Alaska politics in 1974
Just before the 1974 primary election in Alaska, writer and historian Michael Carey sat down with a tape recorder to record ads by state and local candidates on KFAR and KFRB radio in Fairbanks.
Carey, along with Elstun Lauesen, Beth Kaplan, Ken Kaplan (no relative) and David Halrpin, worked much of that summer studying the rapid social and cultural changes hitting Alaska with the start of construction on the trans-Alaska pipeline. Carey went on to a long career as a newspaperman and researcher.
They had no big organization backing them. Fueled by the energy of youth and a realization that the change in Alaska needed examination, they found the field was wide open. They sought out people who had been in Fairbanks since about 1960 to get their views on how life had changed—for better or worse.
In the 33-minute recording of ads below, one of many in the archive, you can hear from lots of people who made their mark in Alaska politics—Jay Hammond, Terry Miller, Ted Stevens, Don Young, Steve Cowper, Brian Rogers and others. There are also some great broadcasters, Larry Holmstrom, Jay Lewis and Lowell Purcell.
Most of the voices on this compilation are gone and far too many have been forgotten.
I didn’t know Carey or Lauesen then, but we met later. I visited my brothers Pat and Terrence in Fairbanks in August in 1974 and became part of the—intended just to stick around for a year—class of Alaska residents.
I learned quickly about the capital move, which was on the ballot for the third time in 14 years, and a governor’s race in which everyone who had ever held the office was on the ballot—Bill Egan, Wally Hickel and Keith Miller. Jay Hammond was trying to enter the fold and succeeded.
My brothers and I considered ourselves fortunate to meet Gov. Bill Egan at the Tik-Tok on the Old Steese at a campaign event right before the election, motivated in large part, to be honest, by the prospect of free food. It made a big impression on us that Egan took the time to sit down and talk to three nobodies, but we noticed that he was comfortable with everyone in the room. He had a gift for talking to people and a legendary ability to remember people’s names.
As for the research project, Carey and the others spent the summer compiling a unique audio record of that moment in what they called the Alaska Research Group.
Carey said he was inspired by the French intellectual Edgar Morin who had developed the idea of studying social change on the run, while it is happening. Morin also emphasized the importance of rumor, fantasy, the improbable – what people believed as well as what they said and did.
Carey had the good fortune to meet Morin in Morin’s New York hotel suite while he was visiting the states. Morin was surprised to learn that a young man from Alaska had ever heard of him. His response to Carey’s research plan was “You must do it!” The Alaska Research Group did it.
Radio ads are not as important now as they were then. Radio ads could be produced quickly, unlike television ads and they were inexpensive. There were only a handful of radio stations at the time and they played a more prominent role in local affairs.
Recording them seemed like a natural thing to do, Carey said.
Some of the ads could almost be used today with a little touching up. The themes of making life less expensive and crime less prevalent are perennials. Others sound like relics of a forgotten age. Then there are those that are like Halley’s Comet, they come back around again and again but on a more frequent basis. I’m thinking here of the capital move and oil money.
Here are some of the things I noticed:
Wally Hickel’s 1974 slogan, “He can handle it.”
The loquacious Fred Brown, who always ended his ads with, “I’m Fred Brown. Please consider me for state House.”
Hearing that Willie Hensley, a land claims leader, had already made 70 trips to Washington, D.C. to talk to federal officials. He was one of the first of the legions who ran against Don Young for Congress over the decades.
John Holm saying, “I’ve long proposed that Alaska establish a large permanent investment fund from revenues received from our non-renewable resources such as oil. If we will put say only 20 percent of those receipts into such a fund we could ensure that our children and their children to follow will always have a share of the oil bonanza. If not, we’ll just squander it away. Let’s not blow it this time.”
Tim Wallis saying he was ready to work on a gas pipeline to benefit Fairbanks. “Alaska gas should be used to develop local industry in Fairbanks,” said Wallis.
Charlie Parr, one of the brightest scholars to ever serve Alaska, saying that working in the Legislature was a “job for a man who won’t sell our Alaskan birthright for a mess of pottage.”
Lowell Thomas Jr. saying he and Jay Hammond would make the perfect team as governor and lieutenant governor.
Andy Warwick saying his strength was that he could work with Hammond, Hickel or Keith Miller, which would make him an ideal lieutenant governor.
Bill Egan saying, “Four years ago we came into office finding a state without direction.”
Joanne Miller, “an acknowledged economist” running for lite gov.
I’ll have more on the Alaska Research Group and what it found in 1974 in a future column.