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Perhaps the most surprised man in the whole territory was Alaska's own Attorney General J. (for James) Gerald Williams, who had confidently offered to roll a peanut with his nose from Big Delta 120 miles to Tok Junction, if , Alaska should win statehood.
Polka Dots & Pioneers. Doubter Williams and, more particularly, the rear-guard of antistatehood people have a certain amount of cold logic on their side. Despite its rapid urban development, Alaska is still a wildly savage land. It is bigger (586,400 sq. mi.) than two of Texas plus one Indiana, and 99% of the land-much of it faceless tundra—is owned by the Federal Government. Nearly one-fourth of the 213,000 population is in military uniform manning a polka-dot pattern of defense posts, and the rest of its inhabitants depend chiefly on two sources of income: fishing and timber.
But the statehood forces are encouraged —not awed—by such statistics. They see Alaska as resources waiting for resourcefulness, as a challenge to be met better by home government than by the Interior Department, 3,500 miles away in Washington. For more than anything else, statehood is a matter of heart, a spirit singing. In the cities, in the countless villages that all but defy outside contact, the zest to build and to carve something fresh and distinctive beats with the same kind of pioneer's pulse that drove the trail blazers of the continental West.
Look Sharp. "There's no second-generation money here." says 38-year-old Anchorage Millionaire (real estate) Wally Hickel. who went to Alaska from Claflin, Kans. in 1940 with 37¢ in his pocket. "This is the crib. We're it. We're trying to make a Fifth Avenue out of the tundra, to accomplish in less than 50 years what the U.S. did in 100. Where else could you get that kind of mission, in a land that cozies you with beauty on one hand and swats you hard—if you're not looking sharp—with the other?"
Says Alaska Federation of Labor President Bob McFarland, 47 (home town, Republic, Wash.): "You find so many brilliant people here, people attracted by the sense of challenge that Hawaii, for example, could never supply. Yet life is slower and tastier somehow. I've been back to New York twice—a walk up Times Square and I've just about had it. Now put the reins in our hands and see what we do with it." Says Governor Mike Stepovich: "Only the people of little faith are against statehood now."
Coffee Royals & "Pan Ginney." Mike Stepovich typifies the pioneer's sense of destiny better than any Alaskan Governor before him. A Republican appointed by a Republican Administration, Stepovich handles himself like a man of the people, and the people—65% Democrats, 35% Republicans— like him that way.