The 1960 Election in Alaska

Abstract

N NOVEMBER 8 when Alaskans voted for the first time in a presidential election, the state's three electoral votes were still thought to be securely in the Democratic column by everybody but a few die-hard Alaska Republicans. One national news magazine, in presenting its forecast of the election, referred to Alaska as being as safely Democratic as Georgia. There was good reason for the lack of doubt about the outcome in the forty-ninth state. When the first Alaska election under statehood was held in 1958, the Democrats had made a clean sweep of the two U.S. Senate seats, the one seat in the House and the governorship, and they had gained overwhelming control of the state legislature. The primary election, held in August, gave no hint of the upset to come. Under territorial government, the Republicans had been successful in Alaska only twice since the war, in the elections of 1946 and again in 1952. In spite of the Republicans' brave talk of returning the state to a two-party system, there were few among them who really expected 1960 to be anything but another Democratic year. Vice President Nixon's narrow victory over Senator Kennedy in Alaska can thus be rated as an upset. Senator E. L. Bob Bartlett has always commanded bipartisan support and Congressman Ralph Rivers is also a very popular figure in Alaska. The greatest surprise of the election was not Richard Nixon's triumph, but the sensational resurgence of the Republican party within the state. The Democratic lead in the state House of Representatives was reduced from thirtyfour to twenty-one seats, while the Republicans took nineteen seats. In the Senate, the Republicans gained five seats. Although Alaska still has a Democratic representation in Washington and its state legislature has a Democratic majority, the 1960 elections did, in effect, make Alaska a two-party state. The presidential election attracted little attention and generated little excitement or interest. The debates between Senator Kennedy and Vice President Nixon, which were heard directly by radio and televised several weeks later, did have the effect of bringing the election closer to Alaska, but, on the whole, people probably felt too great an isolation from the rest of the states to be very much concerned Personalities and local issues dominated the election. Both sides were far more interested in their local candidates than in the campaigns for national office where the results were taken for granted. The Republicans, in particular, were primarily interested in building up their party within the state. In the United States senatorial race, the election was all but conceded far in advance to the incumbent Bob Bartlett, who is probably unbeatable in Alaska, and is: popular not only with Democrats but with Republicans as well. In 1958, he received 83 per cent of the total vote in the short-term senatorial election. Part of this seeming popularity must be discounted, however, since his Republican rival did not receive the support of his party, nor did he campaign personally. Bartlett, who