Joe Vogler

Joseph E. Vogler (April 24, 1913 – c. May 31, 1993) was the founder of the Alaskan Independence Party.

He was also chair or gubernatorial nominee during most of the party's existence.

He was also known, originally in his adopted hometown of Fairbanks, Alaska, and later statewide, as a frequent participant in governmental and political affairs and frequent litigant in court.

Curiously enough, he was known to many non-political observers for his fashion sense, in particular his ubiquitous wearing of fedoras and bolo ties.

Vogler was born April 24, 1913, on a farm outside Barnes, Kansas.

He graduated from high school in Waterville, Kansas, in 1929.

That year, he began studying at the University of Kansas on a scholarship.

He graduated with a law degree in five years and was admitted to the Kansas State Bar.

He gained his first serious notoriety in Fairbanks during the 1940s and 1950s for a feud with Paul and Flora Greimann, operators of University Bus Lines.

The company was a private urban transit company, which primarily transported students between Fairbanks and the University of Alaska.

Vogler moved to Alaska in March 1942, having run afoul of many of his contemporaries in the Lower 48 regarding his views on then-U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

He ran for governor in 1974, with Wayne Peppler (born March 26, 1942), a fellow miner from Fairbanks, as his running mate.

Jay Hammond, a longtime legislator from the Bristol Bay region, was elected over incumbent governor Bill Egan by 287 votes, with Vogler trailing far behind.

Many commentators described Vogler as a "spoiler" in the election, arguing that the result would have been different had he not been in the race.

However, this campaign opened up the doors for non-major party candidates to run for major offices in Alaska, and generally this accusation is leveled during every election cycle.

Vogler, with Warren A. Taylor as his attorney, sued University Bus Lines in 1948 in what the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner at the time called the "Battle of the Bridge".

Vogler sought a permanent injunction against the buses straddling the center rail of the bridge.

After spending a year in Kodiak, he moved to Fairbanks and worked as a civilian employee of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at Ladd Field (now Fort Wainwright) in Fairbanks, until 1951 when he began mining on Homestake Creek.

He filed for 80 acre of homestead land off the Steese Highway and acquired 320 acre near Fairbanks off Farmers Loop Road.

Vogler spent fifty years as a miner and developer in Alaska.

The feud continued after the Wendell Street Bridge opened in 1953 and Greimann's buses continued using the Cushman bridge instead of the newer, wider bridge.

Police were often involved in quelling these confrontations.

The AIP and AFI, as Vogler explained, were intended to function as strictly separate entities—AIP was primarily to explore whether the 1958 vote by Alaskans authorizing statehood was legal, and AFI was primarily to actively pursue secession for Alaska from the United States.

The Alaskan Independence Party quotes Vogler as stating "I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions."

Prior to the replacement of the Cushman Street Bridge in 1959, the old bridge was too narrow to accommodate both a large vehicle such as a truck or bus, and another vehicle.

During the 1970s, Vogler founded the Alaskan Independence Party (AIP) and Alaskans For Independence.

Vogler was known around Fairbanks as a frequent writer of letters to the editor until 1973 when he launched a petition drive calling for Alaska to secede.

He subsequently launched his first campaign for governor a year later.

Vogler arose as a figure in Alaskan politics in 1973, where he began a petition calling for secession of Alaska from the United States.

Alaska magazine reported that Vogler claimed to have gathered 15,000 signatures over a period of about three weeks.

Vogler was quoted as saying about the effort: "The response has been beyond my wildest expectations. I never dreamed the people would respond like this."

The latter name was originally used to label the 1973 petition drive.

Vogler also claimed to have organized the meeting which led to the formation of the Alaska Libertarian Party.

Vogler switched to run for lieutenant governor in 1978, with Don Wright running for governor.

The 1978 campaign for governor was dominated by the extremely controversial Republican primary race between moderate Hammond and former governor Walter Hickel.

Hickel lost the primary by 98 votes and would launch a write-in campaign in the general election.

Hammond was reelected governor.

In a 1991 interview currently housed at the Oral History Program in the Rasmuson Library at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Vogler is recorded as saying "The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government. And I won't be buried under their damn flag. I'll be buried in Dawson. And when Alaska is an independent nation they can bring my bones home."

Vogler would serve as the AIP's standard-bearer for most of the party's first two decades.

Wright was also the AIP's nominee for governor from 2002 through 2010.