Joshua Saul photo

Scott McAdams sitting in on a community council meeting in Downtown Anchorage on Sept. 9, 2010.

In a short interview outside the Fairview Recreation Center in Downtown Anchorage, U.S. Senate candidate Scott McAdams laid out his vision for oil development in Alaska.

"I support oil exploration in ANWR," McAdams said Thursday, referring to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which has long been the Holy Grail for Alaska politicians. "The first thing I'll do is put together a report on the way we capture royalties on federal oil developed on federal land."

McAdams' plan to open up ANWR isn't new in Alaska politics. For more than 30 years Alaska's congressional delegation, including U.S. Sens. Ted Stevens and Frank Murkowski and U.S. Rep. Don Young, has fought unsuccessfully to open the federal lands to resource development.

When it comes to ANWR, Alaska Democrats' point of view tends to deviate from national Democrats. McAdams made his national television debut on "The Rachel Maddow Show" on Sept. 1, but Outside MSNBC fans would likely be horrified to hear a Democrat argue for the drilling of wild lands.

But that's the line McAdams is pushing. Before heading inside to introduce himself to the Fairview Community Council, the former commercial fisherman and football coach said he would spur development by making "a new case to a national audience about the development of Alaska."

"Everyone recognizes that the planet still needs oil and gas," McAdams said. "Development of Alaska oil and gas is the right choice in a global marketplace," he added, explaining that U.S. laws and technology make for safer and greener drilling than extraction in developing countries.

McAdams also said the royalties the state would receive from the development of ANWR could be used to endow a renewable energy permanent fund (though those royalties are collected by the state and a U.S. senator would have little say in how they were spent).

Fairbanks attorney Joe Miller, McAdam's opponent in the general election, has a vastly different vision for developing Alaska. Miller has said repeatedly that Alaska's path forward must include the handover of federal lands to state control. That way, Miller has said, Alaska can make its own decisions about development and collect its own royalties while weaning itself off of the federal funds it currently depends on.

McAdams said ANWR could be a "cash machine" to generate money that would go towards renewable energy programs in the 150 Alaska villages that currently operate standalone electric utilities.

"I think we could make Alaska the Silicon Valley of renewable energy," McAdams said.

Contact Joshua Saul at jsaul(at)alaskadispatch.com.