Kevin McKinley runs for Alaska House seat 35

FAIRBANKS, Alaska (KTVF) - Republican Kevin McKinley is running for seat 35 in the Alaska House.

He said he is running because he thinks a change is needed down in Juneau. “There’s a lot of things that we hear on the street that people are wanting and looking for, and I think that safety is one of them, public safety. Jobs is another big one, people looking for jobs or wanting jobs or doing projects. I think that those are really important.”

McKinley identified education as a priority. “Parents want to have more say and be involved more with the education system, in their children’s education, whether it’s what they’re learning, how they’re learning it, it’s becoming more and more important.”

He said that while this is not his first campaign, things have been different on the trail with the state’s new voting system. “While you’re out there talking to people, the conversation’s changed a little bit. One, you’re explaining ranked choice voting a lot. There’s a lot of people out there that still don’t understand how it works. They have a lot of really good questions. ‘What happens if I just want to vote for one person. What happens if I want to vote for one person four times? Can I do that? What about if I don’t want to vote for two people? Why are we doing this?’”

McKinley is running against Kieran Brown, Ashley Carrick, Ruben McNeill, Jr., and Tim Parker in the primary election on August 16.

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