Legislative Odysseys

by Karl Kurtz

In geographically large states it is necessary for many legislators to move to the state capital for the length of the legislative session, making only occasional visits home on weekends. This may require traveling hundreds of miles and taking family members and pets along. In a handful of states, personal staff to legislators do the same: they spend most of their year living and working in their members' district, but they come to the capital during the legislative session. Nowhere is this legislative odyssey more unusual than in Alaska where the distances are measured in thousands, not hundreds of miles.

Juneau, the state capital, is inaccessible by road to the rest of the state, so members and staff have to travel there by plane or ferry. Both members and staff need supplies for a 90-day stay and want a car available to them, so they use roads and ferries to make the trek each January.

Erin Harrington works for Rep. Alan Austerman and lives most of the year in Kodiak. Her annual trip to Juneau by car takes her four days and requires two ferries, an open sea crossing, traveling through Canada and showing her passport twice! "Temperatures of 50 below or so are often a good part of the story," she says. Here's a map showing the route from Kodiak ("A") to Juneau ("B"), a distance of 1,258 miles.

Konrad Jackson has served as legislative aide for Rep. Kurt Olson for six years, representing  a portion of the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska. His wife, Mary, has worked for Sen. Tom Wagoner from the same area of the state for 18 years. Konrad provided this description of some of their trips to Juneau, accompanied by their four Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, Princess, Blenheim, Taafe and B.B.:

Our trips to Juneau vary between either a 36 hour, cross gulf ferry ride, which is preceded by a 90 mile drive to Whittier and a two-day, almost 1,000 mile drive with a short (roughly three hour) ferry ride at the end.  Either trip can have it's moments.  On the ferry ride we cross the North Pacific in the Gulf Of Alaska.  In January this can be a wild ride:18 foot seas and 35 knot winds are not unusual.  On the drive we have experienced temps to 60 below, ice fog, white outs, heavy wet snow, rain on ice and all during a day with around five hours of daylight.  Almost every year someone goes in the ditch.  Some have even rolled their cars. 
 
So far our major excitement was having to stay for three days in tiny Destruction Bay, Canada because our engine broke down. We had to be towed 250 miles into Haines and then caught the four hour ferry into Juneau.  This all happened in a year of 60 below weather.  I can honestly say that at one point during the tow truck ride, my wife and I turned to each other and said "It's been fun, I love you".  We sincerely thought we were about to die.

Comments

[Patrick Ralston]

I just returned from eight days of Legislative Staff Management Institute training with Erin Harrington, Konrad Jackson, Aurora Hauke and David Teal, all of Alaska. For those of us who think we have rough travel schedules, Erin's tales of traveling four days to Juneau for a session really put things in perspective. I'll never complain about driving three hours to a committee meeting in Arkansas again.