Republican Paul Seaton also ran unopposed in this year’s race for the House District 31 seat. He received nearly 96 percent of the vote.
Seaton is a member of a new bipartisan House Majority group announced Nov 9. The group consists of 22 Republicans, Democrats and Independents.
Seaton says the group's main priority will be developing a more sustainable fiscal plan for Alaska.
“It’s not just people wanting to cut the budget massively and destroy the economy, but actually solve the problem. There are about four big elements to do that. One is some sensible budget cuts and we also have to do some restructuring of oil-gas tax credits. We also have to have some way to have a broad-based tax to generate revenue and we’ll going to have to limit the permanent fund, probably to what the Governor vetoed it to last year,” he said.
Seaton says he was surprised to see Donald Trump elected as the next U.S. President, but he’s more focused on state-level issues at this point.
“It’ll be interesting to see all the policy initiatives that come out of that and how they affect Alaska, but I’m really focusing on state issues right now. Those federal issues are going to be what they’re going to be and we’re just going to have to work with them, but hopefully we can solve our own problems here,” he said.