“He Gets It”: Bill Hill’s People First Campaign Travels 25,000 Miles Across Alaska to Meet Voters Where They Are [Anchorage Press]

A new profile from Anchorage Press highlights that “what Hill lacks in conventional political experience, his supporters say, he makes up for in Alaska bona fides” as a small-town fisherman from an Indigenous family with deep roots in Alaska.

“They deserve to be represented. They deserve to have people in Washington, D.C., who understand what their lives are like — understand the power that belonging to a remote community brings and the value it brings to your life. They should not be overlooked.” — Bill Hill

DCCC Spokesperson Anna Elsasser:
“Alaskans are sick and tired of being sold out by Nick Begich. Bill Hill understands the pressures Alaska families are facing, and is ready to get to work to make their lives more affordable. Next week, Alaskans will send Bill to Washington to make their voices heard.”

Read more:

Anchorage Press: Independent Bill Hill runs “race against time” in bid to knock off GOP U.S. Rep. Begich

• “Momentum,” Bill said calmly as Karl spun the wheels. “Gotta get the momentum up first.”
• Bill Hill’s poise and his tight family ties are both themes of his effort to knock off Begich, who’s finishing up his first term. Hill’s case on the campaign trail: Begich has prized partisan politics and wealthy allies over loyalty to Alaska constituents and he’s supported decisions by President Donald Trump that have hurt his home state, spiking the prices Alaskans pay for essentials like food, gas and health care.
• The campaign started as a long shot…but the race has now tightened to what could be nearly a dead heat: Two polls released in October show Begich leading by no more than two percentage points.
• [Hill] comes from an Indigenous family with deep roots and a long history of leadership in the Bristol Bay region, and claims an understanding of the state’s rural communities that can come only with decades spent living there.
• “Fuel, groceries, electricity, airfare, it’s getting really tough,” said Jessie Wilson…Hill “lives in it,” [an event attendee] added. “He gets it. He’s in the thick of it just like we are.”
• …“The issues that are important to rural Alaska translate directly to the rest of Alaska,” [said Hill.]He’s pledging to work to contain gas prices and health care costs, to limit the influence of money in politics and to close tax loopholes for the wealthy.
• “A lot of the work that Begich has done, through the support of the party line and what the administration wants, I don’t think reflects what Alaskans need,” Hill said.
• Begich’s campaign declined my request to spend time with the candidate in the lead-up to Election Day. 
• Hill’s story, or at least one strand of it, starts in a shallow, grassy pit that once housed a cabin near the shore of Lake Clark — a bright blue expanse tucked into the mountains some 165 miles southwest of Anchorage, at the eastern reaches of the Bristol Bay watershed.
• Frustrated by what he describes as “billionaires taking over our government,” Hill started having conversations with contacts he made at Alaska’s Capitol during his education career, when he’d travel to Juneau on advocacy trips.
• Hill and his allies have also targeted Begich’s multi-million-dollar net worth, much of which is invested in software and technology companies. And the messaging seems to be working: On Tuesday, a closely watched political newsletter, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, shifted the Begich-Hill race from “likely Republican” to “leans Republican.”
• [Hill opposes Trump’s tariffs, the elimination of renewable energy tax credits, and the Citizens United decision that allows unlimited corporate spending in elections.
• He supports expanded Medicaid coverage, abortion rights and gun rights, and natural resource extraction — except the big Pebble mine project in the Bristol Bay region, which has long been opposed by many residents and commercial fishermen for the risks it poses to the watershed’s huge salmon runs.
• Hill’s core message of affordability lands most urgently in rural Alaska, where gas prices in many communities now exceed $10 a gallon — driven…by the U.S. war in Iran. 
• “They deserve to be represented. They deserve to have people in Washington, D.C., who understand what their lives are like — understand the power that belonging to a remote community brings and the value it brings to your life,” said. “They should not be overlooked.”
• Hill’s campaign says he’s traveled more than 25,000 miles across the state since launching his bid for House this year in his effort to build a winning majority.
• “How we’re going to survive here as a rural community, given the increase in the cost of living — it wasn’t too bad when I was growing up here as a child. One season of commercial fishing, you could buy everything,” [Tref Andrew, a commercial fisherman] said.
• Something like one-fourth of the village population turned out to eat the campaign’s reheated pizza and to listen to a short stump speech from Hill after a Lord’s Prayer and an introduction, in the Dena’ina language, from his sister-in-law. 
• At our next stop… the themes were similar. One shopper left with a small bag of groceries…that cost $60. Another bought a $175 tank of gas at $11.98 a gallon — “like a stab in the back, every time you fill up.”

###