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JUNEAU — When Rep. Scott Kawasaki came to Juneau last year as a freshman lawmaker, he was “kind of wide-eyed, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” he said Wednesday, referring to the 1939 classic starring James Stewart. “You want to stand up on the floor and say it like it is.”

Now things are different.

Kawasaki wouldn’t say he’s jaded — he did manage to get some legislation passed last year — just a little more savvy on politics.

“I’m definitely less idealistic,” he said.

Kawasaki and Sen. Joe Thomas, Fairbanks’ first-term lawmakers, both say they feel a lot better informed, more confident and ultimately more effective in their second years.

Wednesday afternoon, Thomas was at his desk studying a thick, blue volume of the Alaska Statutes. A constituent had contacted him with a problem — his daughter wanted to get a drivers’ permit but hadn’t yet applied for a Social Security number — and Thomas was trying to figure out what the law said.

Scanning the law books is just one of the things that’s gotten easier.

Thomas said he spent a good chunk of time last year studying the state’s oil tax law and going to committee hearings. He has a better idea now of how things work and how to find the information he needs.

He’s also learned something about politics, he said, like how lawmakers from different parts of the state think differently about issues.

“Sometimes you’re a little surprised that what you thought was a good idea, they don’t even care about,” he said.

Thomas said he didn’t expect the opposition he got to his bill allowing municipalities to boost their property tax exemptions and would probably feel out lawmakers more beforehand if he had to do it over.

“You don’t learn politics doing regular things,” Kawasaki added.

Being a first-year lawmaker is actually like being a freshman in high school, he said, “(figuring out) which class to go to, what the bell means, when’s your lunch hour.”

Kawasaki said he relied a lot last year on the other Fairbanks lawmakers in the committees he’s on — Reps. David Guttenberg and Jay Ramras. Now he’s got a better understanding and figures he’ll be “more bold.”

Kawasaki has no intention of changing his technique, though. If he thinks, “Gee, there ought to be a law against that,” then he tries to pass one. It worked last year, when he thought state officials who broke the law and went to jail shouldn’t keep getting their state pensions.

Kawasaki and Thomas are both Democrats.

Guttenberg, a Fairbanks Democrat with five years behind him, described coming to Juneau as a “throw them in the water and see them swim” kind of process.

“I think they’re both doing great, actually,” he said of his fellow Democrats.

Sen. Gary Wilken, a Republican from Fairbanks with 11 years under his belt, likened the job to bull-riding, especially for Thomas, who has a seat on the influential Finance Committee. (Wilken didn’t get a spot on the committee until his third year in the Legislature.)

“You just grab a hold of something and go along with it, trying to figure out how to slow it down,” he said.

Wilken remembered working a lot on education funding his first year and only passing one small piece of legislation — a resolution in support of trapping.

It barely got through in the last six hours of the session, he said with a laugh, “I didn’t know what I was doing.”

Thomas and Kawasaki both said it didn’t take long last year to figure out who was who among the 60 state lawmakers.

Reaching out to other lawmakers was the first thing he did last year, said Kawasaki, who at 31 was the youngest lawmaker by a few years. “I went to every door and introduced myself so they wouldn’t think I was the new page.”

Contact staff writer Stefan Milkowski at 388-6141.