Brendan Jones writes with whimsical eloquence in Thursday’s New York Times about the independence and unpredictability of Alaska’s voters. He says the Senatorial race between between Dan Sullivan and Mark Begich is far from decided. That’s the reason why the media is even interested in the vote in Alaska. It hasn’t been locked up by politics as usual. Probably a nice place to live.

You have to love states like Alaska, Maine and Hawaii, where an independent can still get a vote and kick out the entrenched interests with their national PAC’s and political machines.  Is it possible they are the last of the American frontier and the hope of moving the political needle in one direction or the other? Is it something about living on the margins of the country that gives voters the spunk to say “No one tells us how to vote. We know what we need, and we vote what we need.”

This endangered spirit means everything now that PAC-machines are distributing their largesse around the states with competitive Senatorial races, with their slimy, slandering and salacious TV ads.  You can feel an alien presence in your state, weaving its web of half-truths and casting it around target audiences like women, seniors and Hispanic moderates. The issues are overshadowed by ominous powers  stalking the land like “Big Government,” “Enemies of the Middle Class,” and “Betrayers of Women.”  No one has a platform, just groups your opponents have dismissed, offended, and subverted by their ghastly plots. These tales are woven by the PAC-bards of both parties well in advance of Halloween.

Their persistent narratives are intrusive, not provocative. There are few ads endorsed by candidates because they are unworthy of their campaigns. They are allowed to roam the airwaves because they are epidemic and financed by funds the candidate did not have to raise.  They infect our subconscious and lower our resistance to arguments that the candidates will finally bring out to win our votes. We won’t know what hit us.

We need the Alaskan resilience, the Downeast stubbornness, the Island skepticism that will send these carpetbaggers packing. We who live in the territories occupied by partisans should take advice from the frontier. No one knows what we need better than we do. We can identify our own enemies and monsters, thank you. We can even choose to listen to issues and reasoned debate, if it helps us make up our minds.  But we don’t need your slick political narratives, tested with target groups, and varied ever so slightly to the local climate.  We don’t dance to music composed in think tanks.

Begone, dark spirits of PAC-funding! Leave us to have our own nightmares. Our lands have their own giants to contend with. You can take yours back to the dark place they were hatched in.