Scott McAdams is starting to get noticed by the Press in Alaska and across the country.
After weeks of hearing and reading about Miller vs Murkowski, folks are starting to get it that Scott McAdams exists, is running a powerful campaign, and may very well be the best choice for Alaska.
From Social Security to resource development to green jobs to equal rights for all, McAdams is impressing a spectrum of folks from the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce, to those looking for a true fiscal conservative, to folks seeking ethics and sanity in government.
His poll numbers are the only one of candidates in Alaska that are steadily rising. His supporters are not bailing. He's the one candidate this year who clearly can get the winning 40% of the vote in Alaska.
Some positive press excerpts below the fold.
From the Fairbanks News-Miner on Social Security issues:
Democratic nominee Scott McAdams has a much more optimistic view of the future of Social Security. He is in favor of eliminating that ceiling on taxable payroll. That added income would make the program solvent throughout the 75-year window the Social Security Administration analyzes, according to the government agency.
McAdams said it’s a relatively simple solution to funding Social Security, a program that he said has unfairly been portrayed as doomed.
"It would solve that problem," he said. "That’s something I’d support."
Another move that would allow Social Security to remain viable is an increase in the full retirement age, which is 65 years old, or 67 years old for those born after 1960. McAdams said he’s opposed to that solution.
"He feels that’s especially relevant in Alaska, where people’s professions are more strenuous than in other areas," his spokeswoman, Heather Handyside, said.
McAdams said he is opposed to shifting the program to a system that emphasizes private accounts.
http://newsminer.com/...
From the Anchorage Daily News by Sean Cockerham
Scott McAdams told a supportive crowd last night to have faith that he can win the U.S. Senate race over Joe Miller and Lisa Murkowski.
"That group of folks that are in the Miller camp, they have got a faith in him that defies reason. I need for the people in this room to not look for reasons to lose faith in themselves, and their own beliefs, and in this campaign," McAdams said.
McAdams, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, drew an enthusiastically friendly audience of more than 150 people to his crowded "Town Hall" at the Spenard Recreation Center in Anchorage. McAdams has a similar event set up for Fairbanks tonight and one in Palmer on Thursday...
McAdams ended his town hall by urging the crowd to "vote your values, not your fears. Tell your friends to vote their values, not their fears. We can win this race, we will win this race."
McAdams said that if "we do as well as the average losing Democrat in a two way race, in this election we win by a landslide." He said the most recent poll showed him gaining ground at the pace he wants.
McAdams, at his town hall last night, told the crowd on development he believes that:
"Alaskan resource extraction is the progressive choice in a global marketplace." He said if the oil doesn’t come from Alaska then it will come from another nation that doesn’t have the same environmental safeguards and workers rights.
"Every time we take a plane trip to Seattle, every time I buy a pair of shoes with petroleum in its sole I export a little bit of environmental degradation to a place in the developing world," he said.
McAdams said he supports mining but not the proposed Pebble mine, calling it the "wrong mine in the wrong place in the wrong era of history" that would endanger the Bristol Bay red salmon fishery.
He said he "would be a strong supporter of a woman's right to choose."
...If I had my way, if I had my wish, both the conversation in rooms like this and especially the dialogue in our state’s media would be focused on the issues as opposed to this train wreck nobody can take their eyes off of in the form of a family feud between Sarah (Palin’s) endorsed candidate and the senator," he said.
http://community.adn.com/...
Shocking the Voters Back to Life
From the Alaska Dispatch (by Patti Epler):
..."We are putting jumper cables on the hearts of rational Alaskans and shocking them back into life," McAdams told the standing-room-only crowd of about 150 gathered at the Spenard Recreation Center for the first of three town hall-style meetings he's holding this week...
McAdams told the crowd he's raised about $800,000 since the primary and he's outraised Murkowski and Miller combined...for a candidate who had less than $6,000 in the bank two months ago, his point is well taken. "We are that little campaign that could," he told the appreciative audience...
McAdams is working hard to keep his political flock close, and on Tuesday implored them to "vote our values, not our fears."
McAdams fielded questions from the audience on everything from whether he'd vote to end the Senate filibuster practice to his view on a national immigration policy...
The clearly Democratic crowd listened closely when he was asked about his views on opening the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil development, a sacred liberal cow Outside but not so much in Alaska political circles.
"This position might be a little bit counter-culture in this room," McAdams said as he proceeded to explain that drilling for oil in ANWR is better than doing it in, say, Nigeria, where environmental practices are non-existent and laborers toil without any benefits. Alaska oil development not only helps the state but the world as well by helping "align" development, his theory goes, so products can still be produced without it only coming from countries with bad practices.
But any oil and gas development in ANWR would have to meet rigorous safety standards with tough oversight, he said....
...the issues facing Alaska and the country are too important to get lost in the background noise of a rough-and-tumble political campaign.
"The time for the great conversation is now," he said. "Let's have that conversation."
http://alaskadispatch.com/...