Many Alaska Democrats Remain Uncommitted in Caucus Voting

In a typical Alaska free-for-all, Democrats meeting in presidential caucuses here have split three ways, with the biggest group voting to remain uncommitted.

Former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. finished second, narrowly edging out Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton in the caucuses Thursday night.

With 100% of the caucus results tabulated Friday, 36% of those who participated chose no candidate, 33% favored Brown and 30% voted for Clinton.

Alaska has only 18 delegates to the Democratic National Convention this summer. Thirteen are pledged delegates chosen at the state convention, one is an unpledged delegate chosen at the convention and four are unpledged “super delegates” selected from among Democratic party officials.

Although the largest state in square miles, Alaska has the smallest population, with about 550,000 people clustered in cities and widely scattered villages.

Neither Brown nor Clinton visited Alaska and, as caucuses go, Thursday’s were not very well attended. About 1,100 of the state’s 53,000 registered Democrats showed up, party officials said.

The Democratic precinct delegates selected Thursday will meet at 27 district conventions on May 2 to select delegates to the May 30-31 state convention. From there, delegates will be chosen to attend the national convention.

None of the representatives selected Thursday are technically bound to the candidates; they can switch sides at either of the next two stages in the process.

Alaska Republicans will select their delegates at a party convention April 23-25.

Clinton was backed earlier this year by much of the state’s Democratic Party Establishment, and he was the only candidate with a campaign office. But Brown forces began organizing after the former California governor’s victory in last month’s Connecticut primary. By Thursday, they had managed to pack a number of the caucus meetings, where any registered Democrat was allowed to participate.

“Alaskans tend to be real quirky,” said Ann Sponholz of Anchorage, a longtime party activist who is Clinton’s statewide coordinator. “They love to support underdogs and outsiders, and Brown fit right into that. And there were a lot of them that weren’t ready to support either candidate.”

There were few, if any, issues unique to Alaska, and party officials were having trouble making sense of the results, which varied widely from district to district. One theme, they said, was that there was a sizable number of Democrats who apparently are not crazy about either Brown or Clinton.

“We had people out there in caucuses voting for (independent candidate H. Ross) Perot,” said Bill Bobrick, the state party political director.