Friends rally to aid Alaska lawmaker

In 1991, the state representative from Nome faced federal gun charges. Six unregistered machines guns and a 50 mm Soviet mortar were found in Richard Foster's possession.

In many other places, such troubles could be grounds for a recall or at least cold shoulders. Instead, Foster's constituents threw a fundraiser to help pay for his defense.

Now facing a more serious challenge _ he has a life-threatening kidney disease and needs a transplant _ friends once again are rallying to Foster's side.

Half a dozen people at the Alaska Capitol have offered him one of their kidneys, and more than 200 legislators, staff, lobbyists and well-wishers turned out in Juneau last month to raise money to help cover out-of-pocket expenses for him and his wife, Catherine.

"I was real touched and humbled by it, especially by the donors who came out of the woodwork to help," said Foster, the father of eight adult children and one teen. "You have all these people in the building here and they are at each other's throats sometimes but when someone needs help they are the first to step forward."

Silver-haired and easy-going, with a ready, somewhat manic laugh, Foster has a knack for making friends. At the fundraiser, the stories flowed thick and fast about the Democrat's corny jokes and biting sense of humor.

On the House Floor, Foster rarely joins in legislative debate and is often observed leafing through a gun magazine. He is better known for his birthday roasts to colleagues, and for "Fridays at Foster's," the end of the week music jam he hosts in his offices.

Foster said most legislative bills aren't relevant to residents of his far-flung, often icebound northwestern district. He represents Nome, population 3,540, and 28 small native villages _ of which only two are connected to each other by road and none to the greater world.

As a lawmaker, his single-minded focus is on the capital budget and its ability to build jobs and infrastructure in remote, cash-poor villages. In homes there, the toilet is often a bucket behind a curtain in a corner off a main room. Seat belt laws mean little to people who rely on all-terrain vehicles or snowmobiles.

"The question is trying to get good safe conditions, water and sewer mostly, and affordable power," Foster said.

His constituents certainly recognize the importance of seniority and Foster's success in bringing projects home.

In recent years, those have included schools in White Mountain, Sheldon Point, Hooper Bay, Chevak and Stebbins, the repaving of several airport runways, and smaller community projects like laundromats and dust and erosion control.

The senior member of the House of Representatives, Foster is now in his 10th two-year term. He has also remained a member of the House majority during his long tenure despite a shift in power 14 years ago from Democrats to Republicans.

He kept his party affiliation but joined the Republican caucus with three fellow rural Democrats. The move angered those who were left in the minority, but former lawmaker and Anchorage Democrat Ethan Berkowitz said he came to appreciate the pressures that the state's handful of rural lawmakers work under.

"If I don't get a capital project, no big deal. We'll get it later on," Berkowitz said. "If he doesn't get a school, that means his family, his friends, aren't going to get the education they deserve. That's a very heavy burden."

Foster inherited his passion for firearms from his father, former state Sen. Neal "Willy" Foster, who also shared his air taxi business and Will Rogers-style humor with his son.

It was the younger Foster's zeal for collecting weaponry that landed him in trouble 16 years ago. A Vietnam veteran and former Army captain, Foster grabbed the attention of federal agents when he asked a Juneau machinist to craft some submachine gun parts.

But a sympathetic Nome jury acquitted Foster _ to the applause of the gallery.

Former Nome mayor Leo Rasmussen is not surprised that people in the capital are now rallying again to his support.

"Richard is just good old Alaskan in the true sense," Rasmussen said. "The old Alaskan doesn't fit the mold of today. They have a genuineness to them that by and large the country has lost."

At the fundraiser on his behalf, Foster was characteristically low-key. He has been disappointed several times, though he is now undergoing dialysis and has a friend who is being tested as a possible donor.

"I hope this is not an obituary," he told well-wishers with a soft laugh.