In Fairbanks, Republican Rep. Bart LeBon faces challenges from the right and left

Four years ago, Fairbanks Republican Rep. Bart LeBon won a seat in the Alaska House of Representatives by a single vote. 

As he runs for a third term in office, he’s again in a close contest, this time with opponents on his left and his right and a brand-new ranked choice election system. 

While the conditions are different, the stakes are similar to what they were four years ago: The person who wins the election for the downtown Fairbanks state House seat could help determine control of the Alaska House.

“I think conservative and Republican voters are going to decide how my election goes with their willingness to roll down the ballot and rank the red,” LeBon said.

Seeking to unseat LeBon is Democratic candidate Maxine Dibert, a longtime Fairbanks elementary school teacher who has out-fundraised LeBon and is campaigning each evening after she finishes work.

One of her biggest issues, Dibert said, is the way LeBon left the House’s multipartisan majority coalition in his second term.

“He just went farther right, which doesn’t match our district,” she said. 

Republican Kelly Nash, a hairstylist and business owner, is testing that supposition by running to the right of LeBon and advocating a variety of conservative causes, including a ban on abortion, the censorship of school textbooks, and increases to the Permanent Fund dividend.

House District 31 mostly follows the city limits of Fairbanks under new boundaries drawn this year. Though the boundaries are new, voters in the area are closely divided between those who lean Democratic and those who lean Republican, with a slight edge for Republicans.

Dibert has raised more money than LeBon this campaign season, but in the August primary, LeBon received 37.9% of the vote, followed by Dibert with 37.2%. Nash had 24.8%. 

Ranked choice voting could give LeBon the edge if the pattern holds in November and Nash is eliminated first, but that’s not guaranteed. General election turnout tends to be more Democratic-leaning than primary-election turnout, and many of Nash’s voters may follow the pattern seen in August’s special election for U.S. House, where the most conservative voters were much more likely to pick only one candidate.  

LeBon, a longtime Fairbanks banker before his retirement, sees himself as a middle pick for voters.

“You could say I’m a moderate Republican, and I’d be a conservative Democrat,” he said. 

LeBon and Dibert differ on their views of a proposal to revive a pension plan for state employees. Dibert supports the idea, saying it would improve the state’s ability to hire and keep teachers and other public employees.

“Just in the past five, seven years, I’ve known so many good teachers who have left the state. No retirement is a big thing,” she said. The state does contribute to public employee retirement accounts, but no longer provides define-benefit pensions to new workers.

LeBon says he’s wary of the possible cost.

“One of the concerns I have with the new defined benefit program is to make sure it’s affordable, and that it can succeed without creating a $5 billion underfunding. Which the last one had,” he said.

Education is a key issue for Dibert, who also supports universal pre-kindergarten programs and says the cost of child care is hampering the economy. 

Both candidates advocate increased state funding for the University of Alaska and have similar thoughts on the Permanent Fund dividend.

LeBon has repeatedly voted in favor of state budgets containing dividends smaller than called for by a historic formula that remains in state law.

That formula needs to be balanced with “needs and wants,” LeBon said.

“You want a big PFD, but you also need troopers to respond to the 911 call. You want to have a statutory formula guarantee and payment guaranteed, but what about reimbursement on school bond debt? That’s in statute as well,” he said.

Dibert, born in Fairbanks and a lifelong resident, has a similar view. She said the PFD helped her as a new mother and has helped her children. If payments have to be lower in order to be sustainable, she’s willing to vote that way.

“I want the PFD to be here for a long, long time, for my own kids and their own kids. So I want a formula that lasts and lasts,” she said.

Nash did not respond to interview requests by phone, email or a contact form on her campaign website. According to her website, she advocates a larger dividend payout but does not say what service cuts she would make or new taxes she would support in order to pay for it.

According to biographies submitted to the Alaska Division of Elections and posted on her campaign website, Nash was born in California and moved to Alaska as a child.

Nash owns Pivot Point beauty salon in Fairbanks and said in a January 2021 interview that she became politically active after the COVID-19 pandemic shut down her business.

She reiterated that position in the biography submitted to the Division of Elections.

Nash organized protests against public health restrictions intended to prevent the spread of COVID-19, referring to vaccine requirements as “rape,” and organized political rallies in Fairbanks and elsewhere to garner support for former President Donald Trump during his re-election campaign.

She traveled to Washington, D.C., for the protests that preceded the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and has said she believes that Trump is the rightful winner of the 2020 election.

A post-election audit conducted by the Alaska Division of Elections found no problems here. Nash has said she believes otherwise, and claims that the state’s new ranked choice voting system was “passed fraudulently.” 

Nash advocates banning abortion in Alaska, dismantling the Office of Children’s Services, censoring school curricula, and increased development of natural resources.  

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