Letters to the Editor

Letter: Replace McConnell

Thanks to Sen. Lisa Murkowski for her excellent speech on the government shutdown. I wish her colleague, Sen. Dan Sullivan, would join her in trying to help Alaskans.

In our town of Cordova, there is a food bank to feed Coast Guard, TSA and Forest Service families. They make up a significant portion of our town’s work force, and they are hungry. Cordova is an odd place financially — half the town’s residents make all their money in the summer, and just have to hold it together through the winter — and half the town works year-round. Well, a significant portion of residents who work year-round have no money, and they’re being fed by those who work in fisheries — who don’t really know if their money will stretch to next May’s first salmon opener.

There is a solution in hand: The Republicans in the Senate must move to replace Mitch McConnell as the Senate majority leader. He is obstructing the democratic process by not allowing senators to deliberate on a bill that is almost an exact duplicate of what the Senate passed in December. A bipartisan coalition in the Senate must move to take back the country from this hostage situation. For an example of how this can be done, I refer you to the Alaska legislators who formed the bipartisan “Musk Ox coalition” and made huge strides in helping to keep Alaska running in recent Legislatures.

Tuckerman Babcock may scream and storm at Rep. Louise Stutes, but our District 32 voters re-elected her with 53 percent of the vote. Alaska and the country need representatives who can move across party lines when it is in the nation’s best interests. We elected our lawmakers to be Alaska’s representatives, not Tuckerman Babcock’s or Donald Trump’s.

— Kate Laird

Cordova

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