Three Republicans compete in ranked-choice general election
Alaska Democrats have not won a gubernatorial election in more than three decades. Kreiss-Tomkins — a former state representative from Sitka — is the Democratic nominee in what the Guardian described as a potential opening for the party, the paper reported. He first entered politics in 2012 at age 22, defeating a Republican incumbent for a statehouse seat by 32 votes, according to the Guardian. He grew up in Sitka, a fishing community of 8,500 on the edge of the Tongass national forest, accessible only by water or air. He left Yale University in 2011, one credit short of graduating, the Guardian reported.
The campaign has been built on a deliberate exercise in retail politics across a state larger than Texas, California, and Montana combined. In July, Kreiss-Tomkins spent four days and traveled 450 miles down the Yukon River in a 24-foot Alweld aluminum skiff, a flat-bottomed boat built for shallow Alaska rivers. Starting in Koyukon Athabascan country, he passed through Indigenous Deg Hit’an communities including Anvik, before ending among the Yup’ik villages of the lower river, Russian Mission and Pilot Station among them. The boat carried him through 11 villages — some reachable only by water or small plane, and most with fewer than 300 residents — and fewer still who could recall the last time they had seen a candidate for Alaska governor, Republican, Democrat, or independent. He has traveled by snowmachine, boat, and floatplane.
“Alaskans are hungry for change,” Kreiss-Tomkins said. “We’ve been running the same campaign since we launched in February, and I don’t take anyone’s vote for granted.”
The Guardian cited a recent bipartisan AARP poll that found Kreiss-Tomkins with 40% of first-choice preferences, compared with a combined 41% for Wilson, the top-finishing Republican in the August primary; former Anchorage mayor Bronson; and former state attorney general Taylor.
The race unfolds against a sharp drop in President Trump’s standing in the state. Trump carried Alaska by 13 points, but his approval rating there has fallen by a net 21 to 22 points — among the steepest declines in any reliably Republican state he won, the Guardian reported. A Reuters/Ipsos national poll published in September put his overall approval at 32%, with dissatisfaction over living costs among the principal concerns. The Guardian posed an open question over the race: how much of Kreiss-Tomkins’s strength reflects a changing national political environment and broad American dissatisfaction with Trump, and how much is particular to the candidates, personalities, and electoral system of the state.
National dissatisfaction is only part of the picture. The Guardian’s reporting emphasized local frustration with outgoing Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy, an early Trump supporter, over his unfulfilled promise to increase the annual payment Alaskans receive from the state’s oil-wealth savings. In 2026, every eligible Alaskan received $1,000, with an additional $200 energy relief payment. Dunleavy leaves office deeply unpopular, the paper reported.
Kreiss-Tomkins has made the dividend a central campaign issue. “I want a permanent fund dividend that is meaningful and sustainable,” he said. “We don’t need an election-year promise that blows a hole in the budget and is mathematically impossible.”
Alaska’s electoral history offers one precedent. In 1994, Democrat Tony Knowles won the governorship by 536 votes after the conservative vote split between Republican nominee Jim Campbell and Jack Coghill, the sitting lieutenant governor, who ran on the Alaskan Independence Party ticket. Knowles, the last Democrat elected to the office, went on to serve two terms.
Wilson, the top-finishing Republican in August, is an Anchorage garbage-hauling entrepreneur, a former competitive figure skater, and the great-niece of the late Republican governor Wally Hickel. She has secured endorsements from Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, one of Trump’s press secretaries during his first term; Alaska Republican congressman Nick Begich; and Florida congressman Byron Donalds, who is running to succeed Ron DeSantis as governor there.
Wilson cast Kreiss-Tomkins’s decade in elected office and his educational background as liabilities. “Alaskans are looking for fresh leadership from the private sector,” she said in an emailed statement. “Not another ‘experienced’ politician who will wreck our energy economy, raise taxes, continue to fail us on the PFD [permanent fund dividend], and sell out Alaska to advance their career.”
Bronson, who finished behind Wilson in the primary, served a single term as Anchorage mayor after winning in 2020 as a political newcomer. He fought the city assembly over homelessness — at one point floating one-way plane tickets to the lower 48 for people living on the street — before losing re-election to the independent Suzanne LaFrance in 2024. Wilson chaired Bronson’s 2020 mayoral campaign.
Taylor’s path to the November ballot was more complicated. The former attorney general was elevated to the general-election slot after Tom Begich withdrew and endorsed Kreiss-Tomkins, only to be disqualified four days later over an undeclared rental-income disclosure. He was briefly replaced by his own running mate, then reinstated after a state Department of Law review — conducted by the office Taylor once ran — found trivial but, he claimed, similar issues among dozens of other candidates.
Tom Kizzia, a longtime Anchorage Daily News reporter and Alaska historian, attributed the opening for Democrats to the state’s independent streak and its resentment of outside resource interests. The common thread, in Kizzia’s telling, is not a particular political party, but rather a distrust of whoever is currently perceived as extracting Alaska’s wealth without giving enough back — a role historically filled by outside oil and mining interests, and one conservatives have often redirected toward the federal government instead. “It’s that Alaska iconoclasm that kicks in – the simmering resentment of big business ripping off our resources,” Kizzia said. Kizzia added that Dunleavy had “hitched himself to the Maga wagon, which contained elements of that iconoclasm,” but said Trump was “mostly about non-Alaska things that don’t register strongly with Alaska voters.”
Larry Persily, who has followed Alaska politics since the 1970s as a former newspaper owner and editorial page editor at the Anchorage Daily News, attributed Kreiss-Tomkins’s standing primarily to his own campaign. “JKT is the clear frontrunner for governor not because of anything Trump did, but because he’s running a good campaign,” Persily said. “He’s energized a lot of young people. His Republican opponents are just a sorry lot. The Republicans just put up a bunch of political losers.” Persily said turnout would determine the outcome. “Elections are determined by turnout,” he said. “If you can turn out people who wouldn’t otherwise vote, that will make the difference.”
Kreiss-Tomkins’s campaign blends traditional Alaska “visiting” with a volunteer operation nicknamed “Superpod,” built on the premise that someone responding to a campaign text should reach an actual human being rather than a bot, the Guardian reported. At an Anchorage meet-and-greet attended by about 30 people, Debbie Moderow — who operates sled dog kennels near Denali national park and in Anchorage — said Kreiss-Tomkins climbed onto a folding chair to address the crowd. “He was brimming with energy and wisdom, young and bright-eyed, and it was obvious that he had been obsessed with government in a geeky way for a long time,” she said. “I immediately thought, this guy has a vision, and a way to chart the way forward at a time when our state desperately needs it.” Moderow said Kreiss-Tomkins’s relative youth was less significant than his years of experience in Juneau. “People frame it as giving a young guy a chance,” she said. “For me, it’s the opposite. It’s giving a professional an opportunity when Alaska needs a leader.”
Kreiss-Tomkins’s fundraising has drawn scrutiny. He outraised the entire field during the primary, drawing substantial contributions from outside Alaska, including six-figure sums from employees of artificial-intelligence companies, the Guardian reported. He has responded by emphasizing his proposed moratorium on new Alaska data centers and his support for regulations intended to protect Alaskans from harms associated with AI. His position, the paper reported, is that the donations reflect support for his proposals rather than an effort to influence them.
On his priorities, Kreiss-Tomkins returned to two concerns familiar to Alaskans. “Our top-of-mind campaign issues are supporting our schools and lowering everyday costs for Alaskans,” he said. The general election will test whether dissatisfaction with Trump translates into votes for Democratic candidates and whether Kreiss-Tomkins can assemble a coalition of his own, the Guardian reported, alongside the ability of Alaska’s ranked-choice system to accommodate three Republican candidates competing for many of the same voters.