Walker plans Homer talks
• Conservative candidate advocates for Alaska-owned gasline, tourism jobs, renewable energies
By Naomi Klouda
Homer Tribune
Bill Walker
Bill Walker, an Anchorage attorney and lifelong Alaskan, is challenging Gov. Sean Parnell and candidates Ralph Samuels and Gerald Heikes in the Republican primary for governor. Walker, who characterizes himself as a right-leaning Republican, goes on the air with K-WAVE from 9:30-10:30 a.m. today, with a meet-and-greet planned for tonight at the Best Western Bidarka Inn from 7:30 to 9 p.m. On Thursday, from 6:45 to 8:45 p.m., he will visit the Anchor Point Town Hall meeting hosted by the Anchor Point Chamber of Commerce.
The focus of Walker’s campaign throughout the summer will be to visit rural Alaska, he said Monday morning. This is his first visit to the area in the campaign.
“At this point, we’re all geared up with organizations to meet with as many communities and individuals as we can to share my vision and message about the state,” Walker said.
Walker opened a Kenai office for the campaign, along with other Alaska towns.
“So far it’s going well,” Walker said, speaking of the campaign. “I think people like the idea of someone who comes from a tourism background; who was born in Alaska, involved in commercial fishing, and is a private business owner. I come from the local, municipal side of government.”
As an attorney specializing in counsel for municipal governments, Walker’s firm, Walker and Levesque LLC, represents the City of Seldovia, the Aleutians East Borough and the City of Valdez. In the past, his firm has done contract work for the Cities of Homer, Soldotna, Kenai and the Mat-Su Valley.
As a Republican, Walker said his role model is former Gov. Walter Hickel, who encouraged him to run for office. He recently advocated for Alaska to join other states in suing the federal government on the healthcare reform legislation as unconstitutional.
Other top issues concerning Walker relate to seeing an Alaska-owned gas pipeline built, as well as energy issues.
“The high cost of energy is of concern to me,” he explained. “Alaskans should be paying the lowest — not the highest — costs in the nation. We have tremendous renewable resources that we need to transition to as we get our gas onto the world market to replace revenues we are losing from slower (oil) production.”
Walker said tourism, a stronger educational system and commercial fisheries also are among his priority topics.
Walker, who was born in Fairbanks in 1951, highlights his Alaska roots in his campaign talks. His dad served with the Alaskan Scouts in the Aleutians and his mother worked with the Corps of Engineers during the construction of the Alaska Highway. Later, she was the Women’s Page editor for the Fairbanks Daily News Miner. For Walker, a defining moment in his formative years was the 1964 earthquake that took nearly all of the family’s possessions.
“I put myself through my first year of college on a meager basketball scholarship, living with a former elementary school teacher and her family,” he wrote in his bio. “All my family lost materially (in the 1964 earthquake) we regained as the TransAlaska pipeline boom hit our town.”
After graduating with a business degree from Lewis and Clark College in 1973, Walker represented Valdez and as part of the Organization for the Management of Alaska’s Resources delegation, lobbying key elected officials around the country to support an All-Alaskan gas line. He was elected to the Valdez City Council in 1977, and two years later, became Valdez’s youngest mayor at the age of 28.
In 1983, Walker graduated from the University of Puget Sound with a law degree. He has since practiced law in Alaska with an emphasis on oil and gas issues, acts as council to several municipal governments and is general council to the Alaska Gasline Port Authority.
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Posted by Newsroom on Apr 28th, 2010 and filed under Headline News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Posted by Newsroom on Apr 28th, 2010 and filed under Headline News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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