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Doherty proves its not about dollars

October 7th 5:18 pm | Jason Evans Print this article   Email this article   Create a Shortlink for this article

Janice "Salesky" Doherty mounted her campaign for mayor of Nome with less than five days before the election. Doherty, formerly from Kotzebue but who has now lived in Nome for more than 15 years was waving signs and greeting people as they went by for 12 hours on election day. Doherty decided to run for mayor after receiving calls from supporters.

Write-in campaigns have become more common after last year's successful election of Lisa Murkowski as a U.S. senatorial write-in candidate. More people throughout rural Alaska feel a write-in campaign is a viable way to get elected to city, regional and state offices. Fenton Rexford is running for the North Slope Borough Mayor as a write-in candidate after the post office didn't deliver his required forms in on time.

Janice on the other had been in the early planning stages to run for mayor of Nome in 2013, two years from now. Janice said, "when I got off the plane last week from a family trip, I had supporters telling me you better tell us how to spell your name, because we're voting for you either way."

Janice, a fourth generation Nome citizen decided to run against Denise Michaels who has served as mayor of Nome for several years and is considered a fairly popular mayor. Denise was unopposed in the race.

When the votes were counted Tuesday night in Nome, Doherty had an impressive 42 percent of the vote casted for a write-in candidate, falling short of winning the election, but a significant vote total for a five day campaign.

Given more time and if Doherty was on the ballot, I think this race would have only been closer. In five days, Doherty almost beat a popular mayor in a fairly large hub community in Northwest Alaska.

This really shows that in Alaska, especially rural Alaska, a candidate can run for office with very little money. The campaign started on facebook, then spread to include handmade posters, and plywood signs. It doesn't take high dollar donations to win an election.

 

Jason Evans can be reached at news@reportalaska.com

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