Alaska Independence Party candidate Greg Madden has endorsed Republican John Cox in the Republican Party primary for Senate District P. The primary, scheduled for Tuesday, Aug. 18, will pit Cox against 17-year incumbent Sen. Gary Stevens. Senate District P covers Cordova, Kodiak Island, Homer, Anchor Point, Kasilof, Ninilchik, Yakutat, Seldovia and Tyonek.
Cox has strongly opposed the binding-caucus rule, which requires participating Republican legislators to vote along with the rest of the party on budget issues. Stevens has defended the binding-caucus rule as a mechanism to streamline decision-making and prevent time-consuming deadlocks in the Legislature.
“John supports the full distribution of the PFD and opposes the binding-caucus rule, topics that I feel we and most people agree on verbatim,” Madden said in a statement. “I’ve seen Mr. Stevens and what he has to offer and I don’t think anyone is really convinced that he’s going to sweep in change if he makes it to the general, which is why the Republican primary is so important… People then ask me about his experience. Well, it has to make you wonder: does being at a job for a long time make you good at it?”
The Alaska Independence Party is a third party that supports limited government and has pushed to have Alaska returned to U.S. territory status, or to have Alaska recognized as an independent nation. Madden, a Soldotna resident, is running in the open Alaska Independence Party and Democratic Party primary for Senate District P.
