From the Anchorage Daily News:
Jake Metcalfe, former Anchorage School Board president and former head of the state Democratic Party, announced late Sunday that he plans to run against Don Young in the 2008 congressional election.
“All this stuff has been coming out, there's been a barrage of new information about the corruption and the ethics violations, and I thought, 'You know, somebody's got to run against him,' ” he said.
“I just figured I'd do it.”
Metcalfe, an attorney for IBEW, grew up in Southeast Alaska in a large, well-known Juneau family. He worked previously as a prosecutor in Bethel. He said by cell phone from Washington, D.C., Sunday night that he plans to file the paperwork today.
Metcalfe joins 2006 nominee Diane Benson in the primary for the Democratic nomination. And I suspect that those two won't have the race to themselves, considering that the DCCC and DSCC have been courting the likes of former state Rep. (and 2006 Lt.-Gov. nominee) Ethan Berkowitz and Anchorage mayor Mark Begich to take on the embattled Young and Senator Ted Stevens (who had his home raided today by the FBI and the IRS, incidentally). If there are Democrats who ever wanted to move on up in Alaska and aim for statewide federal office, 2008 could very well be their best shot in decades, with corruption investigations heating up against the once-popular incumbents and the Club For Growth making suggestions that it might finance a primary or two in the state.
Metcalfe, for his part, seems to have gotten tired of watching the courted candidates wait as Stevens and Young implode:
Metcalfe said that former state Rep. Ethan Berkowitz and Mayor Mark Begich have also been considering a run against Young. Neither could be reached.Young has a large campaign war chest and any candidate who runs against him needs to start early raising money and making connections across the state, Metcalfe said.
“People have to quit waiting for other people to make up their minds,” he said.
“The Democrats are in the majority, and we've got a back-bencher for an incumbent,” he said. “He's no longer powerful. …We need someone that's in the majority.”
With Republicans mired in scandal upon scandal, Berkowitz and Begich would be utterly insane not to run in 2008. Perhaps Metcalfe's entry in the race will bump up the timeline for one of them.
With Sen. Stevens officially now in an ethical morass, we need to field a legitimate challenger to take him on and try to force retirement.
would be a lot harder to win as a special election or open seat than AK-AL. Party affiliation hasn’t historically been as important for Alaska. A lot of independant minded people, like Maine, a lot of native American democrats and a strong, growing Democratic vote total in and around Juneau, (in 2006 we left only one Republican State. Rep left in the whole Borrough, and it delivered some very strong totals for Knowles State Campaign). I think Alaska is very open to electing a Democrat in many instances.