Former Alaska Attorney General Dan Sullivan spoke at the Sitka Chamber of Commerce on a campaign swing through town on September 5, 2014. (KCAW photo/Rachel Waldholz)
Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Dan Sullivan spoke to the Sitka Chamber of Commerce this morning (Friday 9-5-14). He followed hot on the heels of the man he hopes to replace, Democratic Senator Mark Begich, who spoke to the Chamber on Wednesday.
Fresh off his primary win over fellow Republicans Mead Treadwell and Joe Miller, Sullivan decried over-regulation, called for a more assertive stance on national security — and said it’s his goal to win Southeast in November.
When Sitka resident Roger Hames, whose family owns Sitka’s Seamart grocery store, stood up to tell the candidate that his business is being “crushed by rules and regulations,” Sullivan said that reducing burdensome regulations is the number one issue in his campaign.
Sullivan: This is not a Republican or Democrat issue. This is an Alaskan, American issue. There was a Wall Street Journal article several months ago that talked about how it takes now in America eight years to permit a bridge. Eight years to permit a bridge. We built the Al-Can highway in 11 months. We went to the moon! And we can now build bridges with eight years of red tape. No American wants that, and yet we don’t have any leaders to take this on. I guarantee that I will take this on.
Sullivan also criticized the Obama administration, saying it lacks a coherent strategy on national security. He called for more “engaged leadership” on the international stage.
Sullivan: We have gotten to the point where our friends no longer trust us and our adversaries no longer fear us in the international world. We have been a country that’s been exhibiting weakness, and weakness in my view is provocative. And you’re seeing that all over, whether it’s Russia, Iran, Syria, Iraq, China. We gotta show strength again. And the best way to do it in my view is not flexing the military might…but the best way to do it is strengthen our economy, to get back to a strong America.
Sullivan argued that his resume gives him an advantage over Begich on national security issues: he has been an officer and reservist in the U.S. Marine Corps since 1993, and had a front row seat to foreign policy in the George W. Bush Administration. He worked for the White House National Security Council in the early 2000s, spent two years as a staff officer to the general overseeing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and then served as Assistant Secretary of State under Condoleezza Rice from 2006 to 2009.
Asked how he thought the U.S. should handle the rapidly deteriorating situation in Iraq, he said that there are no easy answers, but laid the blame for the current situation squarely on the Obama administration.
Sullivan: Right now we need engaged American leadership, which we don’t have, and…
KCAW: What would that look like in Iraq right now?
DS: Well, look, first of all you gotta remember where we were in Iraq when we left. I spent some time in Iraq as a marine. We left at the end of the Bush Administration with the surge where Iraq was a largely stable place that was on a very positive trajectory, mostly because of the work that we did closely with the Iraqis.
In an interview earlier this week, Begich ruled out sending ground troops to Iraq. Asked whether the U.S. should intervene more directly, Sullivan brought up the events in Banghazi, Libya, in 2012, when the American ambassador was killed in an attack on a State Department compound.
Sullivan: With regard to ‘boots on the ground’: I think we learned a lesson on boots on the ground in Benghazi. If American diplomats, or American personnel are at risk in a foreign country? I’m a U.S. Marine. U.S. Marines train to do exactly that, to go have boots on the ground to protect our citizens. So when Mark Begich says, ‘Absolutely, positively no boots on the ground no matter what,’ I’m not sure he’s thinking through all contingencies. If we have another Benghazi type of situation? If you had a company of Marines in Benghazi that night, we would have owned that town, and you wouldn’t have a dead ambassador and three dead Navy Seals.
The general election will take place on November 4.
