Long commute? Try being Begich

The last Northwest Airlines flight out of Minneapolis arrives at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport a little after 10 p.m. Two Mondays ago, it included Alaska freshman Sen. Mark Begich, who, upon entering the baggage claim area in Terminal A, looked less like a Washington politician than a model from an Orvis catalog — khaki-panted, sea-green-polar-fleeced and navy-blue overcoated.

Never much of a big traveler before, Begich, the 46-year-old former mayor of Anchorage, got into the itinerant swing of things while serving on the advisory board of the U.S. Conference of Mayors and then in the course of fundraising for his Senate bid. At one point during his race, he hit eight cities in the course of two days, catching winks on planes and changing clothes in airport bathrooms.

But now that he’s made it to Washington, Begich’s air travel will mainly be dedicated to the whopping 3,370-mile journey back to his home state. While most every lawmaker is bedeviled by trips home, it’s a whole different state of affairs for Alaskans such as Begich — one that presents added logistical burdens but also precious and rare luxuries.

“I have a lot of time to read,” Begich said.

And so, in his recess trip back to Alaska as the state’s junior senator, Begich spent a good portion of his aerial hours leafing through the conference report of the stimulus bill. If not for being at 35,000 feet for such an extended period, he doubts he would have had a chance to comb through it as thoroughly.

That’s the plus side of the equation.

The downside, of course, is being up in the sky — BlackBerry inoperative — when there’s so much to do on the ground.

“It’s taking a fifth of the workweek out of play anytime he goes home,” said John Vezina, the senator’s scheduler. “That’s a fifth less time for meetings with staff or constituents who come to Washington.”

However, some of this can be made up on the plane.

Begich generally travels with a couple of copies of business or current affairs magazines. On this latest trip, he had an issue of BusinessWeek in tow, which, by nightfall, had been voraciously dog-eared and spattered in blue pen. A man whose hair remains kempt after a day of travel is a fastidious man, and Begich has thought out his system for traveling, down to the placement of reading materials. He keeps his magazines and papers in a blue shopping sack that he then slings over the collapsible handle of his carry-on.

“I don’t want to be one of those people backing up the line,” he said.

It takes about 10 hours of flying time to get from Anchorage to Washington, plus the additional time in airport security lines, parking lots and newsstands. All told, it was 15 hours of travel time on his latest trip back to the district.

The day started at 7 a.m. Alaska Standard Time: Begich dropped his son off at school, ran a couple of errands, parked the car at the airport (his wife would grab it the next day) and boarded the flight to Minneapolis.

There’s no nonstop flight from Anchorage to Washington, but Begich considers the upside: His layovers — usually in Seattle or Minneapolis — allow him to grab magazines or newspapers from other parts of the country “to get different perspectives,” he said.

His time in the air is not always solitary. Former Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), for whom the airport in Anchorage is named, would rarely go unrecognized on flights back home. Begich is starting to experience the same treatment. On the first leg of his trip last week, a fellow passenger chatted him up about Alaska pipeline issues. Another passenger handed him a leaflet about a suicide-prevention program.

“What has surprised me,” said Vezina, “is that there are so many Alaskans coming back with him [to Washington].” Begich, he recalled, talked with one constituent who had planned to meet with him later in the week in Washington. The in-flight conversation was long enough that the person could withdraw his scheduling request.

Vezina says he’s not about to start lining up constituent meetings for the senator on airplanes — and the office doesn’t make the senator’s itinerary public — “but if it happens, and they have a chance, he is very approachable and is about using the time efficiently.”

“It is this chunk of time that is taken out of your public schedule, but that allows you to do other things.”

For Vezina’s end, the job of planning ahead is fairly simple.

“In some ways,” he said, “I think it may be easier than for some of my colleagues [whose members] are closer. I have very limited possibilities for getting him in and out. It’s not like someone who can drive to North Carolina.”

There are two departing options out of Reagan National in the morning and one in the evening that will get Begich back home to Alaska in the same day — more or less. If the senator leaves DCA on the 5 p.m. Alaska Airlines flight, he arrives in Anchorage at 2:44 the next morning. If he’s unable to make that departure, he’s forced to fly out Saturday morning or, in some cases, scrap the trip.

As a freshman, Begich has had to choose among some of the least desirable slots for carrying his share of presiding-officer duties: Friday afternoons or Monday mornings. He takes a three-hour block on Fridays so that on weekends when he goes home, he doesn’t have to get back to Washington so soon.

“We rooted for late votes Monday and no votes Friday,” recalls Aaron Saunders, Stevens’ former communications director who now works in the office of Sen. Mary L. Landrieu (D-La.). “Friday travel would always be viewed as tentative.”

And some options are simply off the table when Point A and Point B are 3,370 miles apart.

“If something were to happen, like a death in Alaska,” Saunders said, “it was extremely difficult and near impossible to get back.”

Expense is another concern. Vezina has found that most round trips to and from Alaska wind up costing between $1,100 and $1,400, a pretty penny that necessarily means other travel will be sacrificed.

“Our travel budget is somewhat higher,” said Vezina, “but we have other needs and we have to watch it and try to figure out in advance to get the best fare. But he won’t be jetting off to other places because he has this commitment to going home — and you have to pay it, fair market value.”

Begich does now possess the spangled distinction of being an MVP gold member on Alaska Airlines, which gives his staff some flexibility to change things around at the last minute without having to eat nonrefundable plane tickets at taxpayers’ expense.

“He has a very ambitious plan of getting back as often as he can, and he is going to stick to that,” said Vezina. “He is committed to going back there and hearing from them firsthand.”