Imagine sitting down in a quiet room, right?
The year is 1950. Okay, setting the scene. You
pick up this brand new science fiction novel
by James Blish. It's titled They Shall Have Stars.
Oh, classic mid -century sci -fi. Exactly. So
you open the cover, start reading, and the story
throws you into the far -off futuristic year
of 2013. Which I guess was very far off back
then. Right. And the plot centers around this
powerful United States senator from Alaska named
Bliss Wagoner. He's busy steering the future
of human space exploration. So it's like standard
genre fare on the surface. It does, except for
one mind -bending detail. In 1950, Alaska wasn't
even a state. It was still a territory. Exactly.
It was a territory. The very concept of a U .S.
senator from Alaska was completely fictional.
It would be another nine years before that star
was even added to the American flag. Wow. You
know, that specific creative choice by Blish
perfectly sets the thematic stage for what we
are looking at today. Yeah. Yeah, because it
suggests that even before Alaska had a seat at
the federal table, it occupied a very specific
place in the American cultural imagination. The
ultimate frontier. Precisely. The ultimate frontier.
And as we'll see by looking at the actual data
of who has held those Senate seats, that frontier
mentality didn't just apply to geography or space
exploration. It applied heavily to their political
mechanics as well. Man, that is the perfect framing
for our mission today. Glad you think so. We
are going to explore this surprisingly wild,
dramatic, and honestly incredibly brief history
of Alaska's representation in the Senate. And
we're using the Wikipedia article detailing the
list of United States senators from Alaska as
our foundational map for this deep dive. Yep.
We are going to track the political trailblazing
of the exact individuals who have held these
two seats since 1959. It's a fascinating roster.
Okay, let's unpack this. Alaska officially joined
the union on January 3, 1959. Right. From that
day all the way to the present, only eight individuals
have ever represented the state in the United
States Senate. Just eight. Only eight. When you
consider the sheer volume of history that has
occurred since 1959, eight people feels like
an impossibly small roster for you to wrap your
head around. What's fascinating here is just
how small that number is when you give it proper
political context. How so? Well, we're looking
at a state that has been in the Union for well
over 60 years. That timeline spans the height
of the Cold War. Oh, true. Multiple massive economic
shifts, the dawn of the digital age, profound
cultural transformations. And through all of
that turbulence, having only eight individuals
hold these incredibly powerful federal roles
indicates a staggering level of political longevity.
And stability, really. And stability. When a
state experiences that exceptionally low turnover,
every single shift in power ceases to be just...
you know, a routine election. Right. It's bigger
than that. It becomes a monumental generational
event that completely redefines the state's relationship
with the federal government. So let's look at
the mechanics of how that stability actually
played out. We should examine the Senate structure
outlined in the source. Right. The seats are
divided into classes to stagger the elections.
Exactly. Our source tracks Alaska's class two
and class three seats. And the class two seat
really exemplifies that generational stability
you just mentioned. It really does. The first
person to hold this seat was a Democrat from
Fairbanks named Bob Bartlett. A founding figure
for the state. He was. He took office on day
one of statehood in 1959 and served until he
tragically died in office in December 1968. Which
makes you wonder, when a towering founding figure
like Bartlett dies right at the dawn of statehood,
how does a brand new state handle that sudden
power vacuum? Well, the immediate mechanism is
an executive appointment. You have to ensure
the state maintains its voting power in Washington.
Right. So the governor steps in. Exactly. The
governor must select someone to fill the gap.
In this case, the vacancy lasted just under two
weeks. Wow, that's fast. It had to be. On Christmas
Eve, December 24th, 1968, a Republican from Anchorage
named Ted Stevens was appointed to continue Bartlett's
term. At the time, it was mostly seen as a necessary
administrative move to fill a void. But it ended
up being one of the most consequential appointments
in the history of the Senate. And here's where
it gets really interesting. Oh, yeah. Ted Stevens
doesn't just act as a temporary placeholder.
He gets officially elected in 1970 to finish
the term. And then he simply never leaves. Never
leaves. He stays in that exact same Senate seat
until January 3, 2009. It's incredible. He becomes
Alaska's longest serving U .S. senator, holding
the position for 40 years. 40 years. If we connect
this to the bigger picture, a 40 -year incumbency
fundamentally alters the political DNA of a state.
How does that actually look on the ground? It
isn't just about winning elections. It's about
the complete monopolization of a state's federal
identity. When a single individual holds a Senate
seat for four decades, they accumulate an almost
insurmountable level of seniority. And seniority
is everything in the Senate. It dictates committee
chairmanships, which in turn dictates how massive
federal infrastructure projects are allocated.
Oh, and Alaska has a lot of natural resources
to manage. Exactly. It shapes the legislative
framework around oil, around timber. An entire
generation of Alaskans grew up, entered the workforce,
had children of their own, all under the shadow
of a single senator directing their federal funds
and legislative identity. That's wild to think
about. It builds an institutional inertia that
is incredibly difficult for any challenger to
overcome. It basically turns the representative
into a permanent fixture of the state's architecture.
Precisely. But even a 40 year tenure eventually
meets the realities of modern electoral cycles.
The source details that the modern era finally
brought turnover to the class two seat. Right.
The end of an era. Democrat Mark Begich from
Anchorage won the seat in 2008. He took office
in 2009, officially bringing the Stevens era
to a close. Right. Begich served one term before
losing his reelection bid. Then in 2014, Republican
Dan Sullivan won the seat. A return to a more
standard turnover. Yeah, he took office in 2015
and has held it through the 2016 and 2020 elections,
with his next race slated for 2026. So after
40 years of an unmovable institution, the class
two seat returned to a much more standard rhythm
of political competition. And the normalization
of that seat provides a vital baseline for understanding
the state's political dynamics. Because of what
was happening with the other seat. Yes, because
as entrenched and predictable as the class two
seat became under Ted Stevens, the other half
of Alaska's delegation took the exact opposite
path. The class three seat has operated entirely
outside the traditional political playbook. It
is the political frontier we were talking about
earlier. The history of the class three seat
is an absolute wild ride of electoral anomalies.
A total roller coaster. It starts in 1959 with
Democrat Ernest Gruening from Juneau. He serves
his first term, gets reelected in 1962, but then
hits a wall in 1968. A major wall. He actually
loses his party's renomination, but Gruening
refuses to step aside. He launches a write -in
campaign for the general election, which ultimately
fails. While Gruning lost, his decision to bypass
the formal party apparatus through a writing
campaign established a critical behavioral precedent
for this specific seat. Just showing that it
was possible to go rogue. Exactly. It signaled
that the formal party nomination was not necessarily
the final word in Alaska's political culture.
And we see that turbulence immediately repeat
itself. Democrat Mike Gravel takes over the seat
in 1969. He serves through the 70s, gets reelected.
And then in 1980, the exact same thing happens
to him. He loses his renomination. Having two
consecutive senators in the same seat lose the
support of their own party for renomination highlights
a profound disconnect. Between who? Between the
internal party machinery and the broader electorate
during that era. The party delegates and primary
voters were clearly demanding different ideological
representation than the general voting public.
And that internal friction paves the way for
a Republican from Ketchikan named Frank Murkowski
to win the class three seat in 1980. Frank Murkowski
manages to halt the chaos for a while. He holds
the seat through the 80s and 90s, winning reelection
in 1986, 1992 and 1998. Good long run. Yeah,
he serves all the way until December 2002. So
what does this all mean? Why did he suddenly
leave a secure Senate seat right at the start
of the new millennium? Because of the governor's
race. Right. He resigned because he was elected
governor of Alaska. Now, moving from the federal
legislative branch to the top executive role
of the state is a significant pivot. Huge. But
crucially, as we discussed with Bob Bartlett
earlier, a vacant Senate seat triggers the governor's
appointment power. Oh, man, this part is crazy.
Right. Because this time, the governor making
the appointment is the very person who just vacated
the seat. And the person Governor Frank Murkowski
chooses to fill his own vacant Senate seat is
his daughter, Lisa Murkowski. A family succession.
She officially takes office on December 20, 2002.
On paper, to anyone looking, it looks like a
staggering display of pure political nepotism.
It certainly invites that immediate criticism.
I mean, it's his daughter. But we have to look
past the surface -level optics and consider the
strategic institutional logic behind the move.
Okay, lay it out. Frank Murkowski had spent 22
years building a highly sophisticated, deeply
entrenched political apparatus in the Senate.
By appointing his daughter, he wasn't just handing
over a title. What was he doing? He was transferring
a fully operational political machine to someone
who would seamlessly maintain his faction's influence
and ideological trajectory. In the ruthless calculus
of maintaining party and factional control, ensuring
the immediate continuity of that apparatus is
a highly strategic, if controversial, maneuver.
That makes a lot of sense mechanically. But that
strategic continuity is immediately put to the
test. Very quickly. Lisa Murkowski secures a
full term in 2004. But then we hit the 2010 election
cycle and the script completely flips. In a massive
political upset, she loses her renomination.
It's that class three curse again. Yes. Just
like Ernest Gruening did decades earlier in the
very same seat, the party goes in a different
direction. And just like Gruening, Lisa Murkowski
mounts a write -in campaign for the general election.
History repeating itself. But unlike Grooning,
she actually pulls it off and wins. Which is
astounding. Walk us through the mechanics of
why a write -in victory at the senatorial level
is considered such a massive anomaly. It is nearly
impossible because it requires entirely subverting
the automated mechanics of an election. Because
normally you just check a box. Right. In a standard
race, a candidate relies on the party infrastructure
to secure their name on the printed ballot. Voters
simply walk into the booth, look for the R or
D next to a familiar name and fill in a bubble.
A write -in campaign strips all of that away.
You actually have to know who you're voting for.
You are asking hundreds of thousands of voters
to physically write a candidate's name on a blank
line. If the name is misspelled, the vote is
often invalidated. Oh, I didn't even think about
spelling errors. It's a huge hurdle. Furthermore,
you have to build a shadow campaign infrastructure
entirely from scratch to educate the voter base
on this manual process. While fighting your own
party. All while fighting against the massive
financial and organizational weight of your own
party's official nominee. The level of independent
voter mobilization and sheer name recognition
required to overcome those logistical hurdles
makes her 2010 victory a masterclass in grassroots
mechanics. It completely breaks the traditional
mold of how a federal election is supposed to
operate. Completely. But her divergence from
the traditional political playbook doesn't stop
with the write -in victory. The source material.
highlights that in 2022, Lisa Murkowski was reelected
again, but this time under completely new system.
Right. An instant runoff election. How does that
mechanism fundamentally alter the way a candidate
secures a Senate seat? Well, this is perhaps
the most significant structural shift in the
state's modern history. We really need to look
at this neutrally, just looking at the machinery
of it. Definitely. Just the mechanics. Traditionally,
elections rely on closed partisan primaries.
Those tend to suffer from low turnout and are
often dominated by the most ideologically extreme
flanks of a party. The candidate has to cater
to the fringes just to survive the primary, which
often leaves the general electorate choosing
between two highly polarized options. Alaska
dismantled that bottleneck by adopting a top
four instant runoff system. Also known as rank
choice voting, right? Exactly. Rank choice voting.
So they completely removed the partisan primary
phase. Precisely. All candidates, regardless
of party, run on a single open primary ballot.
Okay. The top four vote -getters advance to the
general election. In the general, voters don't
just pick one person. They rank those four candidates
in order of preference. First choice, second
choice, and so on. Right. If no one secures an
outright majority of first choice votes, an instant
runoff is triggered. The candidate in fourth
place is eliminated, and the votes of the people
who chose that eliminated candidate are immediately
redistributed to their second choice candidate.
Oh, I see. This process repeats until someone
crosses the 50 % threshold. Which fundamentally
changes who a candidate has to appeal to in order
to win. Exactly. It completely neutralizes the
power of the ideological fringes. To survive
an instant runoff, a candidate cannot rely solely
on a passionate extreme base. They need broader
appeal. They must actively court the political
center. They have to appeal to the median voter
to ensure they are listed as a second or third
choice on their opponent's ballots. Interesting.
In the context of the class three seat, this
system allowed Lisa Murkowski to bypass the very
party primary mechanism that rejected her back
in 2010 and instead build a broad, moderate coalition
across the general electorate. It acts as a mechanical
safeguard against extreme polarization. It's
essentially a laboratory for democratic innovation.
It really is. I mean, over the history of just
this one class three Senate seat, we have witnessed
traditional primary defeats, the sheer logistical
impossibility of a successful write -in campaign,
a familial appointment designed to preserve a
political apparatus, and the implementation of
instant runoffs to bypass partisan gridlock.
Very busy seat. It is a continuous narrative
of breaking the established rules to find new
ways forward, which brings us perfectly back
to where we started. The realm of science fiction.
Yes. James Blish's 1950 novel. The connection
there is much more profound than simple trivia.
We have just spent several minutes detailing
how Alaska's political culture has consistently
acted as a frontier for electoral mechanics.
Exactly. Blish introduces Blisswagoner. a United
States senator from Alaska in the year 2013,
heading the Joint Congressional Committee on
Spaceflight. And he wrote this nine years before
Alaska was even granted statehood. This raises
an important question. What was the cultural
intuition that led an author to place a non -existent
senator at the forefront of humanity's expansion
into the cosmos? That's the million -dollar question.
Blitch recognized that the idea of Alaska...
The vastness, the isolation, the harshness was
synonymous with the American concept of the future.
It was the physical embodiment of the final frontier.
Therefore, if humanity was going to push into
the ultimate frontier of space, it made perfect
thematic sense that the political leadership
for that endeavor would hail from the frontier
of Alaska. Blish accurately assumed that by 2013,
Alaska would not only be fully integrated into
the highest levels of federal policy, but that
it would retain its identity as a trailblazer.
Art anticipating the trajectory of life. And
the irony is, Blish's fictional senator steering
space policy almost feels less dramatic than
the actual electoral reality we've uncovered.
It's true. Fact is stranger than fiction. Just
to summarize the incredible density of history
packed into this deep dive, we tracked a state
represented by only eight individuals since 1959.
Just eight. Within that tiny cohort, we found
a 40 -year incumbency that entirely monopolized
a state's federal identity, a governor strategically
appointing his own daughter to preserve factional
control, the logistical miracle of a senatorship,
the deliberate dismantling of partisan primaries
in favor of instant runoffs, and a 1950s sci
-fi prophecy mapping out the state's forward
-looking destiny. And for you, the listener,
navigating a modern world saturated with information
overload, this is why examining the underlying
data is so vital. Absolutely. It is incredibly
easy to glance at a simple list of names and
dates on Wikipedia and dismiss it as a dry historical
record. But tracking the actual mechanics of
these elections reveals the true levers of power.
It shows you how the machine works. It exposes
how incumbency builds impenetrable walls, how
party machinery can disconnect from the electorate,
and how altering the physical structure of a
ballot can completely redefine who holds power.
True political literacy requires looking past
the outcomes and understanding the systemic machinery
that produced them. I couldn't agree more. Understanding
the machinery changes how you view every headline.
And as we wrap up today's deep dive, I want to
leave you with one final lingering question to
ponder on your own, specifically building on
those ballot mechanics we just analyzed. Good
thought experiment. Given the incredible shifts
in power we've seen in Alaska, where a candidate
can lose a party primary but still fight back
and win a general election through the mechanism
of an instant runoff, it makes you wonder. If
states across the entire country adopted nontraditional
voting methods like instant runoffs and abolished
partisan primaries, how many seemingly entrenched,
highly polarized political landscapes would be
completely rewritten overnight? Something to
really think about. How much hidden, moderate
political diversity is currently trapped behind
an outdated ballot structure, just waiting for
the rules to change? Think about that the next
time you cast your own vote. Well, that is all
the time we have for today. Thank you so much
for joining us on this exploration of Alaska's
Senate history. Thanks for listening. Keep questioning
the mechanics behind the data, and most importantly,
keep diving deep into your curiosity. We will
talk to you next time.