By SUZANNE DOWNING
June 13, 2026 – Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Begich posted on social media: “I believe in an Alaska where opportunity isn’t limited by your zip code, your income, or who you know. That’s the future worth building together.”
It sounds like something a singer-songwriter from Anchorage would say. Everyone can have everything, everywhere, all the time. It happens to be nonsense.
Opportunity is absolutely influenced by where we live. It always has been. It always will be. Income does change life outcomes. Always has. Always will. Who you know? Well, he should know.
A young person growing up in Manhattan has access to opportunities that don’t exist in Shishmaref. Someone living in Seattle has opportunities unavailable in Quinhagak. Likewise, people in Quinhagak and Shishmaref have experiences, traditions, freedoms, and, let’s face it, ways of life that no amount of money can purchase in New York City.
This is called geography, not inequality.
The residents of Eek or Egegik are not going to stroll down to Starbucks for coffee with friends. They aren’t going to spend a Saturday afternoon at a shopping mall. They aren’t going to catch a Broadway show after work.
But the residents of Manhattan are not going to head out on a snowmachine on the frozen Yukon River under the northern lights. They are not going to experience the silence of a winter night on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. They are not going to hunt whales in the Chukchi Sea or participate in blanket tosses or traditions that have defined Alaska Native communities for generations.
Every place offers something. Every place lacks something.
People make choices about where they live because they value certain things more than others, or because they are comfortable in what they know and understand. Rural Alaskans get this concept. Many choose village life precisely because they prefer it to urban life. They aren’t waiting for Anchorage to become Shungnak, and they aren’t waiting for Kaktovik to become Anchorage.
What makes Tom Begich’s statement so ludicrous is the implication that government can somehow erase these differences.
No governor can make Bettles function like downtown Anchorage. There will be no dentists moving to Bettles — ever. No governor can make Little Diomede offer the same employment options as Chicago. There will be no chiropractors in Little Diomede, not in a million years. No governor can make every community provide every single opportunity available everywhere else.
Nor should they try. We don’t want that, Tom Begich. We want our world to be diverse, remember?
The promise that government can somehow deliver identical opportunities regardless of geography is a worn out socialist pitch. It is the language of grievance politics. It encourages voters to believe that if they don’t have what someone else has, somebody must be keeping it from them.
In Alaska, that message is just plain-old insulting.
Rural Alaskans are not victims because they live in rural Alaska. Many live there by choice. They value family connections, subsistence lifestyles, cultural traditions, and a relationship with the land that urban America cannot offer.
To suggest that they are somehow deprived until government delivers every convenience and amenity found in Anchorage or Seattle misunderstands why many Alaskans choose rural life in the first place.
Tom Begich’s statement also raises an obvious question: How exactly would he accomplish this?
Would he guarantee identical educational outcomes? Equal access to every job market? The same transportation options? The same entertainment choices? The same medical services? The same broadband infrastructure?
He says: “We can lower costs for families by expanding affordable health care, reducing energy prices, & increasing housing supply.” Who is going to pay for that?
These are not minor details. This is the entire problem behind the slogan. “Free” is not actually free. He is calling for the communist solution: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
If a candidate claims that opportunity should not be limited by zip code, voters deserve to know what policies would make that happen and how much those policies would cost the rest of us.
Otherwise, the statement is little more than campaign song and dance.
Tom Begich is currently the leading Democrat in the governor’s race. His words deserve scrutiny. Alaskans should ask him to explain precisely what he means when he says opportunity shouldn’t be limited by where someone lives or who they know. After all, Tom cannot deny that he is where he is today because of who he knows.
Unless he has discovered a way to repeal geography, climate, distance, and economics, he is promising something no governor can deliver.
And rural Alaskans deserve more than an insult to their intelligence and empty promises that sound good on social media but fall apart in the real world.
Suzanne Downing is founder and editor of The Alaska Story and is a longtime Alaskan.
16 thoughts on “Suzanne Downing: Tom Begich’s promise of equal everything doesn’t survive contact with reality”
Apparently, Tom Begich believes that Zip codes do limit opportunity when it comes to K12 education. In his previous senatorial district there are 6 schools where less than 25 percent of the students can read at grade level. Some of the lowest performing schools in the Anchorage School District are in his previous senatorial district.
Tom Begich lauds the Alaska Reads Act which has helped some students reach proficiency in reading. But get this-his bill did not require students that could not read at grade level to be held back. Result: in 2025 more than 25 percent of 3rd grade students were socially promoted to 4th grade. So much for accountability in K12 education.
If Tom Begich really believed in not limiting children to failing Zip code schools, he would support more charter schools, more home schools, and yes, even allowing the funding to follow the student to a private school. He could have done that for the children in his senatorial district rather than relegate them to failing/mediocre neighborhood schools.
Just another democrat proving their lack-of-character and their udder uselessness.
Suzanne, Is that thing connected to the internet?
Tom was always the dreamer and lived in a fantasy world of pretend. I was more the realist in the family. Nicholas is the real deal. Why Tom picked this nitwit as his running mate, I have no idea. She claims her parents were both “settlers” to Alaska. That tells me immediately, that Tom is going to lose this fall. Maybe Tom just wants to get lucky with a younger woman one more time?
Julia Hnilicka was born around d 1985 I think. Her father arrived about 1975. He built a cabin on the Yukon R. and worked for the barges and owned his own river barge biz for several years. I have known her dad since 1978. Her mom arrived around 1983 or 4. Worked for school district in Ruby. Her parents met in Ruby.
Julia is a good person for sure. Just too far left in my opinion, as is Tom.
Not sure what the definition of Settler is.
Interesting. Maybe her parents were just colonists or invaders? Why would a 42-year old woman be so disrespectful to her parents?
There are some deep dark secrets in that family, so I’m told.
The ultimate socialist utopia:
Erasing individuals and having cookie-cutter drones with same need, same desire, same everything (except of course for the more equal leaders, who work hard and deserve better…..). Denying human nature and demanding adherence to some random person’s idea of how they should live and what should make them satisfied if not happy, is the message I get from Tom Begich. Write songs Tom. There idiotic sentiments don’t matter!
Prison is the ultimate socialist utopia. Gated community, no guns, meals all provided, ” free!” Health care. Everything is ” equal!” The ones at the top get to tell everybody what, where, when, and how to do everything, with paid enforcers to impose their will. With the added bonus of the ” public” not being allowed to leave
Almost got it right Chuck…
Prison is perfect for liberals:
Everyone is equal;
Free food & housing;
No guns;
Universal healthcare;
Same-sex relationships –
and no, they cannot leave.
Living in Quinhagak I chose to pay more for my gas. I know when I push on the throttle, I’m not going to waste hours of my life away sitting at a stop light, idling expensive gas away while choking on the fumes of other hundreds of frustrated drivers, year in and year out.
I haven’t sat at a stop light in years. Mostly because there is no stop light in all of District 38, which just happens to have six miles of State maintained paved road, all six miles in Bethel .
Out here we are different. Everytime Government comes to help, we lose a bit of freedom. Maybe it’s less fishing, maybe it’s mandatory helmets for riding four-wheelers or more restrictions on shipping ammo for hunting to a village..
After watching Tom Beghich and his ponytail liberal politics for years, I know his message is wrong for rural Alaska and anyone else that’s at least half self reliant.
Tom Begich’s vision of Alaska as a utopia can never be afforded or realized.
Village and small town rural living cannot be urbanized or adjusted to urban living under any rational concept. This is a fantasy. I am not voting for Tom Begich. Tom needs to get a huge dose of reality from his vastly smarter and more capable nephew, NB3.
I’ve be even telling Tom the same thing for years. At this point, NIcholas alone carries the torch for the Begich legacy.
“……..I believe in an Alaska where opportunity isn’t limited by your zip code, your income, or who you know. That’s the future worth building together…………”
Like John Lennon (another musician, who found out the hard way how cruel life truly is), Mr. Begich is driveling out his own “Imagine” song. I’d like to quote the lyrics of yet another pair of musicians (Steely Dan) who wrote a song about Lennon and his foolish ideology (never mind the battles Lennon had with McCarthy about reality):
“A world become one of salads and sun
Only a fool would say that
A boy with a plan, a natural man
Wearing a white Stetson hat
Unhand that gun begone
There’s no one to fire upon
If he’s holding it high
He’s telling a lie
I heard it was you
Talking ’bout a world where all is free
It just couldn’t be
And only a fool would say that
The man in the street dragging his feet
Don’t wanna hear the bad news
Imagine your face there in his place
Standing inside his brown shoes
You do his nine to five
Drag yourself home half alive
And there on the screen
A man with a dream
I heard it was you
Talking ’bout a world where all is free
It just couldn’t be
And only a fool would say that
Anybody on the street
Has murder in his eyes
You feel no pain
And you’re younger than you realize
Only a fool would say that
Only a fool
I heard it was you
Talking ’bout a world where all is free
It just couldn’t be
And only a fool would say that”
Opportunity is limited by many, many, many things, and zip code (if you even have one of those, because I’ve lived in areas of Alaska with no zip code, and there was ZERO opportunity there) is definitely one of them. Ditto income. No money? No opportunity, including the opportunity to eat……….even in a “subsistence area”.
Mr. Begich, opportunity is most definitely limited, and if you doubt it, you’re a special kind of fool……………..or you take us for fools. You need a new campaign strategist……….or you need to more carefully listen to the one you have. Forget the John Lennon song playing in your head.
Just gotta be a song in the works… something that sounds a bit like an Okie from Muskogee – “Ain’t no Nordstroms in Bettles, ne’er a Starbucks in Eek; life in Alaska on a river, ain’t for the fainthearted or the weak. I’m just a Bushrat from Alaska, I earn my life by the sweat of my brow and kill the meat I eat…” To be sung by a Randy Travis sound-alike or maybe Frank Walters.
Big time needs some work… but if half-witted tommy b can write tunes, surely I can scrounge something up in ten minutes from a whiff of suggestion! Thanks Suzanne, this was fun…
The best way to improve the quality of life in ” bush” Alaska is to develop a large scale mine in that region. Give resident’s of the area an opportunity to receive training and learn skills. Its amazing what happens when hands and minds cease being idle.
Of course those running and profiting the Welfare Industrial Complex are in opposition to such an idea. Mercy, these folks would lose their incomes, title and prestige!