Meet Alaska’s Yamacaucus

By Sabrina Jaszi

Governor Sarah Palin’s fervent Christian minions may be the public face of Alaska, but in the state’s House of Representatives, a group of Jewish politicians are increasingly casting long shadows over Alaska’s desolate landscape. Home to the grizzliest bears, the wintriest vistas and the saltiest salmon in these United States, Alaska has formed its identity as a resting place for wanderers, wayfarers and refugees. So, it should come as no surprise that that a group of Jewish legislators in a state with only 6,000 Jews refer to themselves as the “Yamacaucus,” despite their divergant political philosophies.

“Jews have a history of wandering around in the wilderness, I guess,” says Les Gara an outspoken supporter of the rights of rural Alaskans and the Yamacaucus member positioned farthest to the Left. Its other members include centrist Democrats Max Gruenberg and David Guttenberg, known for taking strong positions on labor and conservative Jay Ramras, who stands to the Right even of Governor Palin. Former-legislator Ethan Berkowitz is now a Democratic nominee for U.S. Congress. Of the group, only Ramras was born in Alaska. Wanderers no more, they’re committed to helping the energy-stricken Alaskans who aren’t getting the necessary attention from the remainder of the State Legislature.

“We’re not the Masons or anything, we don’t have rituals or make sacrifices, but we like each other,” says Gara.

“It’s definitely a tongue-in-cheek designation. They vote on political lines, not religious ones,” says Phillip Munger of the Progressive Alaska blog.

On offshore drilling, currently the hot-button issue in Alaska, an overwhelming majority of Alaskans (approximately 75 percent) support drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Of the Yamacaucus, Gara approaches the plan with the most trepidation, seeing it as only one part of a larger answer to Alaksa’s energy problems. “That solution is more sound byte than fact,” he says. “It’s about 10 years off and would be unlikely to have more than a [$.02-.03] impact on global prices.” The other four members take a middle-of-the-road stance on Palin’s “drill, drill, drill” strategy, which many believe will mean more jobs for Alaskans and independence from foreign oil.

The energy crisis is hitting Alaska harder than anywhere else in the nation, especially in the territory’s rural areas, where gas costs upwards to $10 per gallon. Palin’s recently-passed AGIA plan—a state-subsidized gasline through Alaskan soil, which could give Alaska an upper hand in gas and oil dealings—also looms large on the horizon. Gruenberg wants AGIA to become a reality, but also wants to see a local “spur” gasline branch from the mainline to provide rural regions with the energy they need. “I would hope that any pipeline built would include a local spur,” says the Democrat.

His fellow Democratic Yamacaucus members support AGIA, while Ramras, who wants to keep oil running through Alaska by playing to the interests of large oil companies, upon whom Alaska’s economy is reliant, has gone so far as to call himself one of the “twelve apostles” opposing the pipeline.

Like the rest of America, very few Alaskans have come to terms with the fact that the state needs to find other energy resources apart from those beneath the soil. “With the billions of dollars of surplus money we could have transformed how we deal with energy in the state this year,” Berkowitz says. “The question I constantly ask is, ‘Why, in this energy producing state, do we have the highest cost of anyone in the Union?'” Berkowitz’s pleas have largely been met with derision by conservative bloggers who refer to the Democrat as “Spendowitz.”

Guttenberg recently wrote to Gov. Palin urging her to reverse a veto on funding an energy research department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “Clearly, in a state as wealthy in alternative energy sources as ours,” his letter states, “we should be doing everything we can to ensure that these sources are available for the next generation.” Nuclear energy in rural Alaskan villages, wind farms like the one planned for Fire Island near Anchorage, water turbines, tidal energy gleaned from Alaska’s shores, geothermal energy from volcanoes, biomass and hydroelectric energy are all possible. Instead, the state government issued every Alaskan a flat-rate subsidy check for an additional $1200 this year.

Rather than working to increase alternative energy sources Ramras advocates the interests of The Big Three (ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, BP), opposing the oil tax reform policies of Governor Palin, that his fellow Yamacaucus members support. In an op-ed in the Anchorage Daily News, Ramras wrote that “getting our ‘fair share’ (as Palin put it) is perfectly acceptable in a zero sum game. But managing a declining oil province for the maximum benefit of all Alaskans is a more complex undertaking.” Ramras has generally voted against Palin on every economic issue because, as he puts it, she “doesn’t understand basic economics.”

Democratic Yamacaucus members admit that they share little in common with their conservative cohort. For the moment, one of the few examples of universal agreement among the Yamacaucus was a joint resolution in the Alaskan legislature honoring the 60th anniversary of Israel.

“Of course we disagree. We’re Jews!” exclaims Guttenberg, “Take your family, sit them around a Passover dinner and throw an issue on the table. You’re going to get lots of different answers. Legislature is a process that’s designed to be lively.”

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