Singer: Has he had to run a race?

Begich: No, he's never had to run a race. The grassroots campaign that we do, that door-to-door, that very strong kind of people campaign is just nothing he's used to. We got in about three and a half months ago, and we also got in late for a variety of reasons. One, I wanted to wait to make the decision personally and family-wise. Once we made the decision, I decided we were going to get in the race late and do a sprint - that's the kind of race I like. That's how I won the mayor's race in '03, had a nine-week campaign, went against an incumbent - no incumbent had lost in the history of the city - and we beat him in a three-way race with a plurality of 45 percent plus .03, and .03, which was 18 votes, prevented a runoff. And we were outspent 4-to-1.

So we have run those kind of races before, very sprint oriented. This race is the same thing. This quarter, which just reported out two days ago, we actually outraised Ted Stevens in the quarter. He has outraised us totally. He has raised about $4 million, we've raised about $1.3. He's burned off probably 75 percent of it. He has about 1.5 or so in the bank, but he's spent off a lot of his money already. But just this last quarter, to be able to outraise him and the most important part that I think is this quarter we had 4,100 donors to the campaign, individual people. He had 900. That just shows a different kind of base we're working from that didn't really exist in '04. The style of campaign is very different.

Also, as mayor of Anchorage, Anchorage is 43 percent of the state's population.

Singer: And media market wise?

Begich: 70 percent. And it's the funniest thing. I can go to a village up north before we started running our ads and they will recognize me, and once I start talking it connects, "Oh, he's the mayor of Anchorage." So the media market, when we do press, we use a lot of free press, it gets around fairly quickly.

Singer: And do people remember your father as well, have positive memories?

Begich: Yeah. I still get things from people that they have held on for 35 years, they give me as a kind of memento. People see the name in a variety of ways. First my father, and then my two brothers do a lot of work with tribal rights and Alaska Native issues throughout the state. And so they have been engaged in a variety of ways.

And then as the mayor of Anchorage, it is also the largest Alaska Native village, so we by 2012 or 2015, will have 50 percent of Alaska Natives living in Anchorage. So it's very connected to the rest of the state. What I've tried to do as mayor is reconnect it, because the last mayors didn't do that. By doing that it has really filtered out to a lot of the villages. In Alaska politics, you have the governor, then the mayor of Anchorage - that's the power structure - because the mayor of Anchorage, it's a home-rule city, line-item veto, very powerful position, but because it is the economic engine, the transportation component of the state, it has a variety of areas that it kind of manages for the state. When you work on certain things, it becomes statewide. When I work on energy issues, statewide impact. When I advocate for education funding, statewide impact. So that has really played very well. It's great public policy, getting a lot of things done. But also people recognize it across the state.

Singer: Now you talked about going door-to-door. I know that several thousand - I'm assuming it's a record by many times over - several thousand people caucused.

Begich: 4,500 in Anchorage alone.

Singer: And these are people whose names are presumably on the Democratic rolls. There's also talk in the Anchorage papers of the possibility of Obama coming and campaigning in the state. How do you think, not to diminish John Kerry's performance in 2004 nationwide, but he got 36 percent. How do you think the energy on the presidential level and him running ads, things of that nature, will impact your race?

Begich: It absolutely impacts the race. It's kind of interesting. We haven't figured out why this dynamic is the way it is, and I think as time develops we'll have a better understanding, but we do well in the urban areas, Obama does well in the rural areas, which is great. Two sides. Because as we run consistently 5 to 7 points ahead of Obama total, and more in some cases, but the positive is we play off of each other very well. He will, by his strategy in Alaska of registering new voters and getting new people to the table, more than likely 75 percent of those folks will be our voters. Alaska is kind of an oddball thing. You think if they vote Obama they'll vote Begich. It's not necessarily the case. But at the end of the day, we'll get a bulk of those.

For us, our strategy, obviously, is to get our voters to the table. We get about 26, 27 percent of our base from Republicans. So as we bring people, and if they're voting for me the opportunity is they might end up voting for him. So it's kind of an interesting mix. So it plays very well. Also because we're both peers in age, we both have young families, we're both running against individuals who have been around a long time, and people see a future, and they see the next 20, 30 years on the ballot. And I think that's a powerful tool in an election.

So we love the fact that he's running ads, we like the fact that he has a crew up there of 30, 40 people working. That's fantastic for us. And on the reverse, we're going to have an equal size to compliment that. That's a big difference than '04. In '04, you had President Bush running against Kerry, and Kerry did not do well and had a lot of negatives in the sense of some people's minds up in Alaska. Obama, you don't hear like personal, "I can't vote for him because X, Y, Z." They just some of them don't like his policy. That's different than the personal kind of grinding voter that shows up - it can be a blizzard and they can show up just to vote no because they're angry. That's not what you have with Obama voters who are anti-Obama voters. They are voters because they're voting for McCain.

Or they're voting for the third party candidate, which I wouldn't doubt that Bob Barr would get a nice chunk of votes because he is more Alaskan than McCain from the Republican viewpoint. Barr wants to drill in ANWR, Barr is an NRA board member or former board member, he doesn't think climate change is reality. He's as Republican as the Republican Alaskans get. And that's really their guy.

So that's a different mix. There's not a passion for McCain, but there's a passion for Obama.

Singer: So talk about kind of the broader path to victory. It's been since 1974 since a Democrat has won a federal race in the state, and that was a unique year. It's been since your father before that to win a federal race in the state. And Alaska, I'd imagine, is a different place than it was 30, 35 years ago.

Begich: 10 years ago.

Singer: So this is a new game. You're blazing a new path.

Begich: That's all I've done in my life. I've never had easy races. In '88, when I ran for the Anchorage Assembly, I was 26 years old, and people told me to kind of sit on down and not worry about the life, go do something else. And I didn't like the way the establishment was working so I ran, won, had a ragtag team of folks and we won. I won the mayor's race, the same situation. I literally had no money 9 weeks before that campaign when I got in. Not a dime, and no one yet, except about a dozen people. Then it just did what I like, which is the campaigns - and I've always believed this - the person running is important. But what's really important about a campaign is it needs to be for a purpose and a cause. And people galvanize behind that. That's what's important.

So I think this is a different time. The state has changed from where it was 10 years ago. In Anchorage alone we have over 90 different languages spoken in our school district. A very diverse community. I couldn't say that 10 years ago, I couldn't say that 20 years ago, I couldn't say that 30 years ago. It's so much different.

And the situation of Alaska has shifted. It used to be, "Well, what's the federal government doing? What's the delegation bringing back to us this week or that month?" But now energy costs are killing people. The fishing fleets, a portion of them will not go out fishing because they can't afford fuel. We have rural communities collapsing because they can't heat their homes. We have education costs, healthcare costs, all these things now are kind of compiling into one pile of a mess. That has never been the case in Alaska.

And I think the difference is, and I don't mean to toot my horn too much, they get a credible candidate, a candidate that's about results who's kind of a mixed bag. You know I'm an NRA member, I'm a second amendment rights believer, but I believe in the whole constitution - I made a statement a couple weeks ago on FISA, where the Republicans have peeled away little bits and pieces of the constitution to basically fit their desire or their agenda.

This is where Stevens and I differ. In Alaska, in our constitution, we have the strongest part of the constitution that talks about individual rights, privacy rights. One of the strongest in the country. He has just been wrong on these issues.

So we have this kind of libertarian streak that comes down us, kind of let like the way we want to live. But at the same time we recognize our place in the sense of how to help the country move forward. It's much different than the politics of the last cycle. It really has changed.

Singer: You talked about in one of your ads, it's very powerful to an outsider and even more to people who kind of have the history, of the impact that your father's career and his unfortunate disappearance and death had upon you, how that's driven you to where you are today?

Begich: Sure. Oddly enough, put yourself in my perspective. I was 10 years old, and my father was taken away from me by the job he was doing, which was politics. And my mother had to raise, at 34 years old, six kids.  So kind of put that in perspective. You don't really see that really today. That's a different model than it is today. Four of them boys, which was even worse, to add to the equation.

So I actually moved to business. My first business license was at 14. I opened up the first teenage nightclub in Anchorage at 16. I owned real estate. I've been in the vending business, restaurant business, printing business. I've been in a lot of different businesses. But each time I've done that, one of the things, as time progressed, I learned from other people more about my dad's history and things because at 10 I didn't know a lot about what he had done. But also through my mom's (as I call) survival of six kids and raising, what I did know that as a member of a community you need to give back. And it could be through your church, it could be through a non-profit, it could be through political life. I've done a variety of ways.

I've just found myself honestly by default ending up in politics. Got mad in '88, as I said, about a guy who wasn't doing his job, I thought. When I ran for mayor, I got in there because I actually asked the two main guys who were running what they were going to do, what was the future, and all they thought about was the next election. So I said I'll talk about the next 20 and 30 years. What are you going to do so at the end of the day, 20 years, 30 years from now, we have a more stable, sustainable community. And they couldn't answer that.

I think a lot of that comes indirectly from my father. He was only there up to my age of 10. And my mother, and that is the whole public service, what it really is. Public service isn't really where I make my living. I make my living in real estate and other ventures. My wife has four stores that she operates and owns. My view is you serve for what it is: and that is public service. So I think that was instilled.

And I get things all the time from people. I mean I got one, this great speech he did in 1971 to the Anchorage Press Club. A woman came and gave it to me. And when you read the speech - Vietnam War, budgets that are going out of control, healthcare costs - all the things we could just substitute the dates, and it is what it is today. But what's so unique is that it's a speech that my dad gave, and I actually used it at the Alaska state convention, pieces of it, because what he talked about was some pieces about what's important about public service, ethics, openness, transparency, do what the people are asking for, not what the groups behind closed doors are. It's very... literally, it's like a time warp. It's like we went back to the future.

[Laughter]

It's kind of an interesting thing. So it absolutely had impact, indirectly and directly. And via other people. I love when I do presentations, I like telling stories because I hear so many stories. And that really helps you understand what's going on.

I look back at the Alaska Native Land Claims Act, which shaped the state for what it is today. My dad did it in two years as a freshman. And people always say, seniority this, seniority that. Seniority doesn't mean anything if you don't have relationships and good ideas. That's what it's all about. And somehow in 435 people on the U.S. House side and he comes in from Alaska and in two years passes a landmark piece of legislation that hadn't been done in decades. I think it's because his style was engaging, not confrontational in the sense of a negative personal confrontation - it was based on the issues and you argue the issues but you could still go have a beer with someone you disagreed with. That doesn't exist in Washington, DC today. Now it's how hard do you pound the other guy into the ground personally, and then, oh yeah, there's some issue he's working on. I think that's very dangerous for us. And that's, I honestly think, why we are where we are.

Singer: Last question. Our site has done a little bit of fundraising for you, I think a few dozen people have given several hundred dollars. I know across the netroots there has been a lot of fundraising. Whether it's that or other issues, if there's one message that you'd like to send to the netroots broadly today, what would that be?

Begich: I'll give them two. The first one is, what folks who help and support and are interested in this campaign are going to know that I'm a candidate that's going to be... you get what you get with me. I mean I'm straight forward, I'm out there. But I understand where we need to be in the next 20 and 30 years, that where we are today, it's a mess and we have to make some tough decisions, but it's going to be fully engaging with everybody. No special group here, special group there.

I think the netroots group is a great access point. I'm one of the few, actually I think I'm the only politician in Anchorage that blogs literally on webpages of other people, even before I was campaigning. I use technology to the highest level because it's a great way to communicate. I mean I'll video call my six year old son tonight to have a conversation with him.

And I think what folks engaged in the netroots I hope realize is that I'm a candidate who touches a lot of their issues and understands them and not afraid to step out there.

The other piece is it is the netroots and the small donors that are making a big difference in our campaign. 75 percent of our donations are under $100.

Singer: And you're disclosing everying?

Begich: Yeah, we disclose everything. I not only disclose every donation, I disclose all my disclosure statements back to 1988 for every office I've ever filed for where the Senate destroys them after every six years. And I don't use the ranges. I put down exactly how much I make and I added how much my wife makes, which I'm not required to do. And I think a lot of times these Senators have their spouses and they're lobbyists, and they never have to disclose anything, which I think is outrageous. I think it's unbelievable that they get away with that. So I have challenged Ted Stevens, and he of course has said to me, I'm not running against you. And then he has the Republican committee pounding me into the ground. So I'm not sure what the real story is there

But I think the single message is that I'm a candidate that's as grassroots as it gets, very open and honest, and going to be very in tune with what's going on, even to the point sometimes when I get banned from blogging because I do midnight blogging when I shouldn't be.

[Laughter]

That is true. They have controlled me.

[Laughter]

But it's hard.

Singer: I hear you, I hear you. Well, thank you so much.

Begich: Thank you, absolutely.

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