Candidate Kitty Hafner’s campaign photo
In the spirit of the election season, it’s time to celebrate Democrat Carol “Kitty” Hafner, the former flight attendant, National Education Association member and self-proclaimed ‘biotechnology industry professional” now hoping to win her party’s nomination to challenge the long unbeatable Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, in the general election this fall.
Where but in the good, old U.S.A. could a 64-year-old, know-it-all from South Dakota run for election to Congress from Alaska where, in her own words, “the negative environmental effects of (oil) drilling will impact every aspect of Alaska’s economy – and, as far as increasing an oil surplus, basic economics dictates that increasing the available supply will simply further drive down the cost of oil on the market. None of it makes any sense except to those pockets of the drilling companies and their cronies that are paid off to support this folly.”
Whatever the hell all that gibberish means.
If elected, Kitty promises to do for marijuana what the late Bob Palmer did for barley in the north. If you’re new to Alaska and don’t know about the Great Barley Boondoogle of the 1980s, just imagine the cannibas version of “vast amber waves of grain,” and you’ll get the picture.
But give Kitty a pat on the back for staging the ultimate outsider campaign. A candidate for office in Alaska can’t be more of an outsider than to actually live Outside.
Then again, South Dakota is a little like Alaska only with a lot more pheasants. In both states, the human population is out numbered by the wildlife population. Those pheasants outnumber people more than 7 to 1 in South Dakota.
The latest S.D. population estimate is 877,790 – only about 140,000 more than Alaska’s 738,068. If you married the two states, they’d have almost half the population of Los Angeles.
And though South Dakota might have more people than Alaska, Alaska at least has a real metropolitan area. The Anchorage Metropolitan Statistical Area at over 400,000 is the 134th largest in the nation. The Sioux Falls MSA, the largest in the southernmost Dakota, barely makes the top 200. It’s smaller than Green Bay, Wisc.
Maybe that’s why Hafner wants Alaskans to vote her out of S.D. and move her to metropolitan Washington, D.C. by way of Alaska, which she will finally be called upon to visit if she wins the primary.
Though Hafner is not now an Alaskan, as the Los Angeles Times explains, “under the U.S. Constitution, to serve in Congress one must meet age and citizenship requirements and inhabit the state at the time elected.”
So primary slime-ary.
Hafner does claim to have some idea of what Alaska is like because as a flight attendant she reports using “travel privileges to frequently visit remote places including the mountain regions of Argentina and Chile that have many similarities to the pristine beauty and delicate ecosystems of Alaska,” except wine grapes grow a lot better there and most of the residents speak Spanish.
But what does it matter?
If Hafner wins the primary today, she will have plenty of time to move north to inhabit the state and get to know all about it in the run-up to the November general election.
Oldest Congressman
And in some respects, she’d be the perfect replacement for the now 85-year-old Young, who was still something of a cheechako from California in 1972 when he lost the election to a dead man only to later win.
His opponent wasn’t actually, officially dead on the day of the election. Incumbent Rep. Nick Begich, D-Alaska, had, however, been missing for weeks on an airplane flight from Anchorage to Juneau with House Majority Leader Hale Boggs, D-La., and everyone presumed both men were dead.
Still, Begich (the father of former Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, now running for governor) wasn’t declared legally dead until December, a month after Alaskans re-elected him with 54 percent of the vote.
Begich and Boggs were never found. The missing airplane remains missing.
Young got a second chance at Congress in a special election in March of the next year. He won and has been the “Congressman for All Alaska” ever since. He is now the longest serving member of the House of Representatives.
Down south in the Mount Rushmore State, Kitty has read up on Young and believes he needs to be voted out of office because, in her own words on her own webpage:
Oh, and Young is a “sexist and a bigot.” Kitty isn’t big on her Democrat opponents either. Stealing a line from candidate Donald Trump, she has labeled them “Lying Alyse” and “Outsourcing Dimitri,” whatever that means.
None of the other candidates have labeled Kitty anything.. Too bad. Think of the fun Young, who hung the “Captain Zero” label on poor Sean Parnell, could have had with Kitty.
Crazy Kitty seems almost too easy, but it has a nice ring to it in more ways than one. Consider this, her plan for replacing the falling oil revenues that have supported Alaska since the mid-1970s:
“If we can get the federal cannabis laws changed, the extensive Alaska summer sunlight hours can produce bumper crops for export. But the key here is changing the federal law. Shipping out-of-state to, for example, New York and Las Vegas could bring in substantial revenue that could be earmarked to fund education for Alaskans. Jobs would be created and education generously funded — a winning combination for everyone. Additionally, the medical benefits available via cannabis would reduce the opiate option for medical use.”
Ah yes, daily flights of weed to New York and Las Vegas from the vast seas of green in the 49th state to give Americans a perfect Arctic high.
Maybe someone should ship some marijuana to Kitty in her post office box in Box Elder, SD. Or call her – she has an Alaska phone number: (907)313-7379 – and invite her to come pick it up.
The phone was being answered with a recording featuring a male voice on Monday night. She was thus unavailable to comment on where she plans to spend election night with the 22 people who have liked the Carol Hafner for Congress Facebook page since the day after the Fourth of July.