LDS Alaska U.S. House Candidate Sheldon Fisher Profiled By Alaska Dispatch

Note: All posts on Sheldon Fisher's candidacy can be viewed HERE, with the most recent post displayed first.

Sheldon Fisher, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who is running against incumbent Republican Congressman Don Young to become the one and only Congressman for all Alaskans, is the subject of a video profile by Alaska Dispatch. This is part of their 49th Estate series in which the Dispatch takes the public inside the homes of prominent and not-so-prominent Alaskans:



Fisher, a former executive for Alaska Communications Systems, lives in Anchorage with his wife, Christine, and seven children. A man who describes himself as a believer in family values, Fisher hosts his children's friends for pizza parties using the home's brick pizza oven, which Fisher built himself.

Unlike the case of Mitt Romney, Sheldon Fisher's religion has been barely a footnote in public coverage in Alaska. When controversy raged about Proposition 8 in other parts of the country, there was very little of it felt in Alaska. LDS missionaries with whom I spoke said virtually no one gave them any grief over it.

Since I last posted about Sheldon Fisher on January 22nd, he's published a proposed 10-point "Contract With Alaska" which is designed to respect the Constitution to protect our freedoms, restore fiscal discipline to ensure future prosperity, and promote real economic growth to provide for our families today. Fisher also picked up an endorsement from the Alaska-based Conservative Patriots Group, which is a nonpartisan, grass roots independent advocacy organization committed to electing conservative candidates, advancing conservative ideas, promoting traditional American values, advocating responsible resource development and supporting a strong military.

There's been no official polling of this race yet, but at the moment, Congressman Don Young most likely still has a lead, primarily because of his 37 years seniority and because he is also conservative. But Congressman Young has alienated some of the U.S. House Republican leadership by refusing to join in their moratorium on earmarks, and so he's been stripped of ranking minority status on some committees. This makes him vulnerable to Fisher's challenge. There's also a third Republican in the race, John Cox of Homer, who's also conservative, but he's been running a low-profile campaign, and is likely to finish with a single-digit percentage.