Alaska Beacon

Moderate Republicans and Democrats appeared likely to win several seats in the Alaska Senate from more conservative Republican incumbents and challengers Tuesday night, increasing the odds that the Alaska Senate will be controlled by a bipartisan coalition in January.

If Election Day trends hold, Democrats would gain two seats from the Senate’s current makeup.

Of the 20 seats in the state Senate, 19 were on the ballot this year because of Alaska’s once-per-decade redistricting process.

Preliminary results Tuesday night showed Republicans leading in 11 of the 19 and Democrats leading in eight. (Democrats also control the one seat not up for election this year, the one held by Sen. Donny Olson, D-Golovin.)

The closest head-to-head race is in West Anchorage, where Democratic Rep. Matt Claman is challenging Republican incumbent Sen. Mia Costello and led Costello narrowly, by 139 votes out of more than 13,000 cast.

In South Anchorage, a three-way race between Republican Sen. Roger Holland, former Republican Senate President Cathy Giessel and Democratic candidate Roselynn Cacy is almost precisely split into thirds, with Giessel and Holland both having 34% of the vote and Cacy having 32%.

In close head-to-head races, a winner may not be known for a week or more. Tens of thousands of absentee ballots and early votes cast in person before Election Day have not yet been counted.

Ballots may arrive as late as 10 days after Election Day and still be counted, or as late as 15 days after Election Day for ballots mailed from overseas.

In addition, this year’s election uses ranked choice voting, and the final sorting process for races with three or more candidates and none reaching more than 50% of the initial votes will not take place until Nov. 23, adding another layer of uncertainty.

Political poller Ivan Moore, speaking on an analysis program hosted by the Alaska Landmine website, said he believes the preliminary Senate results “make a coalition in the Senate very likely.”

“I think it’s a win for balance. I think it’s a win for moderates,” he said.

Two Anchorage races head to ranked-choice sort

The West Anchorage election featuring Claman and Costello is likely to be decided by late-counted votes. As of Monday night, 4,271 absentee and early votes in the district had been received by the Division of Elections, and many of those remained uncounted early Wednesday morning.

Elections officials have previously said they intend to release updated results next Tuesday and next Friday but could also release additional incremental tallies before then.

Democrats spent heavily to flip the seat from Costello, helping make it the most expensive state Senate race in Alaska. Third-party groups also bought ads on both sides of the race.

The three-way South Anchorage race among Holland, Giessel and Cacy isn’t the only one that will be decided by ranked choice voting. Democratic Anchorage Assembly member Forrest Dunbar leads a three-way race for Senate District J in Mountain View with just under 49% of the votes cast. The seat is a new one, created in the redistricting process, and it effectively replaces a Republican seat elsewhere in the city that was held by Sen. Natasha von Imhof, a Republican.

Dunbar’s two opponents are Republican Andrew Satterfield, who has 35% of the vote, and Democratic Rep. Geran Tarr, with just over 16% of the vote.

If that margin holds until the 23rd, when the ranked choice vote sort takes place, it likely will result in Dunbar’s victory, with second-choice votes from Tarr supporters lifting his total in the Democratic-leaning district.

In a head-to-head race for South Anchorage Senate District F, Republican Rep. James Kaufman led Democratic candidate Janice Park by a margin of 55.9% to 43.9%. Kaufman’s lead of 1,432 votes out of 12,295 cast appeared to be enough to ensure victory in the head-to-head race, even with more ballots yet to be counted.

As of Monday night, the Division of Elections reported about 3,926 absentee and early votes cast in the district. Many were not included in the Election Day tally.

If his victory is certified, Kaufman will replace Republican Josh Revak in the state Senate.

In Senate District G, which covers most of midtown Anchorage, Democratic Sen. Elvi Gray-Jackson led Republican challenger Marcus Sanders by 899 votes out of 9,610 cast. Sanders raised less than $5,200 for his campaign and ran about 10% behind Gray-Jackson, who had been expected to win the Democrat-leaning district.

In downtown Anchorage’s Senate District I, Democratic candidate Löki Tobin led undeclared candidate Heather Herndon by more than 32 percentage points. Tobin was the chief of staff to Senate Minority Leader Tom Begich, who held the seat until announcing his retirement shortly before the candidate registration deadline.

Longtime Democratic Sen. Bill Wielechowski was on pace to win re-election in Senate District K, with more than 56% of the vote against Republican John Cunningham.

Merrick overcomes Republican critics

In Eagle River, Republican Rep. Kelly Merrick leads fellow Republican Rep. Ken McCarty by more than 16 percentage points in the race for Senate District L, currently held by Republican Sen. Lora Reinbold.

Reinbold has been one of the most staunchly conservative members of the Senate, while Merrick was one of only two Republicans to join the House’s multipartisan coalition and campaigned on the need to elect someone who can work across party lines.

Merrick was censured by local Republican Party officials but raised significantly more money than McCarty, and her victory has the potential to significantly alter the balance of power in the Senate if she chooses to again join a coalition majority.

Kawasaki leads in Fairbanks

Democratic Sen. Scott Kawasaki led Republican challenger Jim Matherly by 383 votes on election night, or about 5.3% of the 7,258 cast in the race, but the race isn’t decided yet.

Critically, Kawasaki has just under the 50% threshold needed to avoid ranked choice voting. A third candidate in the race, Republican Alex Jafre, has 464 votes, and though Jafre asked his supporters to pick Kawasaki for their second choice, if they select a fellow Republican instead, it could be enough for Matherly to win.

Many absentee and early votes remain to be counted in the race as well, adding to the uncertainty.

In the two other Fairbanks-area Senate races, the result is certain, even with more votes to be counted. Incumbent Republican Sen. Click Bishop had more than 56% of the vote in Senate District R, which includes a vast swath of Interior Alaska, and incumbent Sen. Robert Myers had over 64% of the vote in his North Pole-area Senate seat.

Conservative Republicans lead in the Mat-Su

The Matanuska-Susitna Borough appeared to favor its conservative incumbents on Tuesday, with Senate Majority Leader Shelley Hughes receiving more than 76% of the vote.

Sen. Mike Shower, R-Wasilla, held a smaller lead over Republican challenger Doug Massie. Shower had 52.4% of the vote, to Massie’s 46.6%. Write-ins accounted for the remainder.

In the third Mat-Su seat, incumbent Sen. David Wilson had 44.1% of a three-way contest featuring two other Republicans.

Kenai, Kodiak and rural Alaska stay with moderates

Republican candidate Jesse Bjorkman appeared on pace Tuesday night to upset fellow Republican Tuckerman Babcock, a former head of the Alaska Republican Party and former chief of staff to Gov. Mike Dunleavy, in a race to replace Senate President Peter Micciche, R-Soldotna.

With 15 of 17 precincts reporting, Bjorkman had 46% of the vote to Babcock’s 42%. Nonpartisan candidate Andy Cizek had about 11% of the vote, and observers believe many of Cizek’s votes will go to Bjorkman during the Nov. 23 ranked choice sort.

Babcock campaigned in favor of a strong Republican-led Senate majority, while Bjorkman emphasized the need to work across party lines. By phone on Tuesday night, he declined to say whether he would join a coalition if elected, explaining that many votes remain to be counted.

In the south Kenai Peninsula and Kodiak, incumbent Sen. Gary Stevens had just over 55% of the vote in a race against two Republican challengers. In Southwest Alaska, Democratic Sen. Lyman Hoffman, the longest serving member of the Alaska Legislature, remained on track to win another term, having earned about 63% of the vote with 53 of 59 precincts reporting results.

Southeast Alaska races uneventful

In Southeast Alaska, Democratic Sen. Jesse Kiehl was unopposed for the Senate seat covering Juneau and northern Southeast Alaska. In southern Southeast, incumbent Republican Sen. Bert Stedman was on pace to resoundingly defeat Republican challenger Mike Sheldon.

“I’m ahead of him on everything but Courtview,” Stedman said of Sheldon on the Alaska Landmine show, referring to the website that lists court records.

This story originally appeared in the Alaska Beacon and is republished here with permission.

Alaskans went to the polls Tuesday to answer a once-in-a-decade ballot measure question: Shall there be a constitutional convention? Their answer was a resounding “No.”

With 96% of precincts reporting, only 30.2% of Alaskans had voted yes, while 69.8% voted against the measure.

At a convention, the state constitution may be amended or revised, subject to approval by the voters.

Alaska hasn’t held a constitutional convention since the mid-1950s, when the state constitution was first written. The authors said they wanted to give Alaskans a chance to rewrite it in the future. Voters have consistently rejected the question ever since. But, in this election, groups on both sides of the question made the ballot measure a top concern.

Bruce Botelho, co-chair of the Defend Our Constitution group, was feeling good about the Ballot Measure question Tuesday morning.

“I’m feeling confident that a majority of Alaska voters will reject the idea of a convention in 2022,” he said on the phone.

Defend Our Constitution, whose executive committee is made up of Alaskans often on different sides of the aisle, garnered support from several large organizations around the state who oppose the convention and have encouraged their memberships to vote no. Close to four dozen are listed on the Defend Our Constitution website, including Alaska Municipal League, Doyon Limited and Alaska Public Employees Association/AFT.

Botelho said “people are justly proud of what they see as a state that values individual rights and that’s reflected in our first article of the constitution.”

He also said the amendment process – as opposed to holding a convention – is a good way to change the constitution, and that message has resonated with voters he said.

“We’ve had the legislature propose 40 changes since the constitution took effect in 1959. And of those, 28 have been approved by the voters. So there is a process; it’s a rigorous process, but one that I think has served us very well,” Botelho said.

He said the vote no campaign has included television and radio ads, social media, mailers, yard signs and fliers, op-eds in newspapers and online news sites, and several volunteers who’ve spoken to community groups and at debates for the past several months.

At the polls

Voter Jillian Buker didn’t see or hear any of that. She didn’t know the question would be on the ballot and said she voted no.

“I’m careful to say yes to things that I don’t know what they’re for or what they stand for, so I thought it was just easier to say no,” the 20-year-old Juneau resident said.

“I’ve seen the ads on Hulu about Lisa Murkowski and Bill Walker and Kelly Tshibaka,” but didn’t see anything on Ballot Measure 1, Buker said.

Stash Ginger, a painting contractor in the capital city, was in a similar boat. He also voted no on the constitutional convention question at the Shepherd of the Valley Church polling place in Juneau.

“No is the safest way I can go with, because I really don’t know anything about it,” he said.

The most he heard or saw about it was a few vote no yards signs.

“One or two here and there, but I’ve never heard anyone talk about it and I haven’t seen any commercials. But I’ve seen all the, you know, Murkowski doing her thing, Tshibaka doing her thing, Walker and all that stuff,” Ginger said.

Juneau voter Jay Feliciano said, “Politics is not really my thing so I don’t really pay attention to much of it.”

Still, the 29-year-old lifelong Alaskan saw enough campaign ads “pop up whenever I watched, like, YouTube and stuff like that,” and voted no. Feliciano said he doesn’t want to lose any rights.

Adam Underwood, voting in Lemon Creek in Juneau, was clear about wanting to “open that thing up.”

He voted yes on having a constitutional convention.

“If politicians don’t want to do it, I want to do it. That’s pretty much it,” Underwood said. “If politicians don’t like it, there’s a reason to open it up.”

When asked what issues he’d want to see addressed if a convention was held, Underwood said, “corruption. It’s all corrupt.”

For Anchorage resident Theresa Obermeyer, who voted yes on the ballot measure at Rogers Park Elementary, there are two specific issues she wants to see addressed during a constitutional convention.

One is confirmation of the Alaska Permanent Fund Board by the Alaska Legislature; currently board members are appointed by the governor.  “I think a lot could go better if there were more checks and balances,” she said on the phone Tuesday.

Obermeyer also wants Alaska to have an elected official who’s required to be a member of the Alaska Bar Association. For example, she wants the attorney general position or an inspector general position, which Alaska doesn’t currently have, to be elected by voters.

“If only that would be something that the constitutional convention would address and decide — whether it would be an inspector general or whether it would actually be an elected attorney general. It would be up to the delegates to put that on a list of issues that the voters would have to approve,” Obermeyer said.

Obermeyer put her name as a supporter of the constitutional convention on the Convention Yes website.

Craig Campbell, chair of the Convention Yes group, did not reply to requests for an interview. On its website, the group has named “the never ending theft of our permanent fund dividend” and “judicial overreach” as reasons to vote yes on the ballot measure.

Abortion rights

Other voters on Election Day had abortion rights on their mind when voting against the constitutional convention.

Sommers Cole – who had his family with him at the Auke Bay Ferry Terminal polling place, including an 8-week-old and a 2-year-old – said holding a convention would be too risky.

“The right to choose just got lost federally, and so I think those folks who are interested in removing women’s right to choose are now going to focus on state-by-state tactics,” Cole said. “There will definitely be an ongoing effort to make that the case here.”

Tim Fullam, a 50-year Alaska resident, said he’s always opposed the constitutional convention when it’s been on the ballot in the past, and this time was no different.

“All the conservatives up north are going to want to put some sort of an abortion thing on there. There’s going to be messing around with voting rules. And so I just think, keep hands off. It’s a good constitution already. It’s been recognized as a classy constitution throughout the country, and I think it should be left alone,” he said.

This story originally appeared in the Alaska Beacon and is republished here with permission.

Fairbanks Democratic Sen. Scott Kawasaki does not live in his mother’s basement.

She doesn’t even have one.

And yet, in the final days of his closely fought re-election race against Republican Jim Matherly, Kawasaki is defending himself and answering questions from constituents who have read satirical ads sent through the mail by a group called Alaska Policy Partners Inc., which lists Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor among its founding directors.

Alaskans’ mailboxes are being flooded with mailers, and campaigns typically send their sharpest attack ads immediately before Election Day, but the ones by Alaska Policy Partners stand out and have caused candidates to defend themselves.

The one targeting Kawasaki features a digitally altered image of him, showing him sitting on a stuffed chair, accompanied by a bowl of potato chips and a TV remote. Alongside the image is a caption that includes the phrase “choosing to live in his mother’s basement.”

“This is like a full-out, I think, malicious lie,” Kawasaki said. “And it’s at the last minute, so I have no way to respond to it.”

Kawasaki expects a close race against Matherly, and said, “if I have even one question from a person who, I believe, is fairly knowledgeable about politics, who asks me, ‘Do you really live in your mom’s basement?’ … I think it does have an impact. It’s not a positive impact, that’s for sure.”

In addition to the ones targeting Kawasaki, the group sent mailers describing incumbent Fairbanks Democratic Rep. Grier Hopkins as a “puppet.”

In another race, mailers labeled former Senate President Cathy Giessel as a “pro-life candidate.” Giessel has a record of opposing abortion rights, but in this campaign, her website describes her commitment to the right to privacy “regarding healthcare decisions.”

Giessel responded to the mailer by producing a radio ad that features her shoveling snow.

“There’s other shoveling needed as well,” she says in the ad. “That’s throwing away the negative campaign mailings that show up during the last week before an election. They make wild, false claims.”

Campaign finance records show Alaska Policy Partners Inc., funded by a variety of donors, has spent more than $110,000 on advertising in a handful of close-fought state House and Senate races.

The group’s leadership is unclear. Jesse Sumner, a Republican candidate for state House in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, is listed as its president of the board but says he is no longer with the group.

Trevor Jepsen, listed as a contact for Alaska Policy Partners Inc., said he left the organization nine months ago and at that time, Jodi Taylor, the wife of Attorney General Taylor, was in charge. A document filed Oct. 20 with the state’s licensing division does not list Jodi Taylor as a director of the organization. It does list Treg Taylor as a director. A record filed with the Alaska Public Offices commission on Nov. 1 lists Jodi Taylor as a director but not Treg Taylor.

The group paid Massey Political Consulting, a Utah firm, for its advertising. Campaign finance disclosures incorrectly list Massey’s address as that of a Fairbanks home belonging to Seth Church.

Church did not respond to a call seeing comment before this article’s initial publication but said afterward that the campaign spending was by a political action committee also named Alaska Policy Partners but a different organization than the one Treg Taylor belongs to.

That statement could not be immediately reconciled with documents filed with the state by both groups.

While the Alaska Public Offices Commission, the state’s campaign regulator, does list both Alaska Policy Partners Inc. and a separate group called Alaska Policy Partners PAC, it is Alaska Policy Partners Inc., not the PAC, that’s listed as accepting donations and spending money for the mailers.

Alaska Policy Partners Inc. was incorporated as a 501(c)6 in 2021. Nonprofits registered under that section of the tax code may engage in political campaigns as long as they aren’t the organization’s primary activity.

Church did not answer requests for documents showing the leadership of the two groups.

Correction: The initial version of this article failed to state that Trevor Jepsen said he left Alaska Policy Partners nine months ago. He remains listed as the group’s contact. The article has been updated to include that information and additional information about public disclosures filed by the group.

This story originally appeared in the Alaska Beacon and is republished here with permission.

One of the world’s biggest caribou herds is continuing a long-term population slide, according to new numbers released this week by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

The Western Arctic Caribou Herd is down to 164,000, a decline of 24,000 from the population count made last year and roughly a third of the peak herd populations last reached in the early 2000s, according to the numbers.

There is no obvious reason for the past year’s decline, but it is not surprising, said Alex Hansen, a Kotzebue-based Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist who is part of the team monitoring the herd. “We’ve seen, for the last number of years, reduced cow survival,” Hansen said.

The Western Arctic Caribou Herd is, in most years, the largest of Alaska’s 32 herds. Its range covers a nearly California-sized swath across Northwest Alaska that stretches from the North Slope in the summer to the eastern Seward Peninsula in the winter.

The annual census is the product of radio tracking, on-site North Slope observations and high-resolution aerial photography that allows biologists to count and categorize individual animals. The work is meticulous, Hansen said. “If we report a number, it’s a good estimate,” he said, noting that the population figures reported include a range known as a confidence interval.

Caribou herds are known to fluctuate widely in size, and the Western Arctic herd’s record since 1970 shows it is no exception. Since then, the herd has veered between a low of about 75,000 in the late 1970s to a high of nearly 500,000 in 2003.

The herd is important to Indigenous villagers in northern Alaska who depend on the animals for food and for cultural traditions. That potentially makes the herd’s decline a problem.

“I can’t say that it isn’t concerning. It depends on what your needs and purposes in life are,” Hansen said. There has been local concern expressed about the caribou’s present population, he said, “because folks rely on them.”

The herd has been at the center of a debate over the proposed Ambler Mining District Industrial Road, a 211-miles project that would cut through the Brooks Range foothills – and a large swatch of the caribou’s range – to connect an isolated copper-mining district with Alaska’s existing road system.

The road, proposed by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, is needed to make mining commercially viable, argue proponents. But tribal governments and other organizations have consistently opposed the road, citing threats to the Western Arctic herd. In the past, members of the Western Arctic Caribou Herd Working Group, which comprises community residents, hunting guides, environmentalists and other interested parties, have expressed opposition.

The working group makes recommendations about hunting regulation and other management issues. It is scheduled to hold its annual meeting in December.

Caribou and reindeer populations have been declining around the circumpolar north.

The 2018 Arctic Report Card issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration noted that the migrating populations of caribou and reindeer have declined 56% over the prior two decades. . Only two of the cited 22 regularly monitored herds had populations at or near historic highs, and some once-large herds in Canada have collapsed almost entirely, that report said.

Arctic climate change is considered to be a likely culprit. Threats from climate change include vegetation changes and a shift in both summer and winter conditions. Through “shrubification,” plants covering tundra are transitioning from the lichen and mosses that are ideal caribou food to woody shrubs that are not, scientists have said. Warmer winters increase the frequency of dangerous rain-on-snow events, and warmer summers increase risks of disease spread, scientists say. Other threats to caribou populations come from development that has fragmented habitat, they say.

The decline of the Western Arctic herd may leave the Porcupine Caribou Herd, which has a range that straddles northeastern Alaska and northwestern Canada, as the state’s largest. The most recent census, conducted in 2017, put that herd population at between 202,000 and 235,000. The Porcupine herd has long been at the center of another development controversy: long-proposed oil drilling in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That coastal plain is the heart of the herd’s calving grounds.

This story originally appeared in the Alaska Beacon and is republished here with permission.

After Alaska’s Aug. 16 special election for U.S. House, mathematicians Adam Graham-Squire and David McCune noticed something strange: If 6,000 voters for Sarah Palin had switched to Mary Peltola or not voted at all, Peltola would have lost the election.

The two, who study spoiler effects in ranked choice elections, wrote their findings in a September paper, concluding that it was the first known example of a “no-show paradox” in an American ranked-choice election. The paradox? If Peltola had gotten more votes, she might have lost.

After the result, there was some criticism of ranked choice voting, including a comment from Arkansas U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, who called it a “scam.”

“These comments raise the question: is RCV some kind of crazy scam to rig elections?” they asked in their paper.

“The short answer is: No. (The long answer is: Nooooooo.),” they wrote.

Looking ahead, the two say it is possible to make strategic choices on a ranked choice ballot, but only if there is good pre-election polling.

“As a generic rule of thumb,” Graham-Squire said, “there isn’t really any good way — with the exception of this particular election.”

McCune is a professor of mathematics at William Jewell College in Missouri, and Graham-Squire works in the math department at High Point University in North Carolina.

They both say that because the Aug. 16 special election was so close to the November vote, and because three of the four candidates in both races are the same, the special election amounted to an enormous opinion poll with almost 189,000 participants, giving unusually good data about Alaskans’ actions.

The detailed results of that earlier election showed that if Begich had been in a head-to-head race with Peltola or in a head-to-head race with Palin, he would have won either contest.

“If I was someone who had voted for Palin previously and then put Begich second and Peltola third or not at all, I would be thinking hard right now about strategically voting and putting Begich first,” he said.

He and McCune, caution that in a ranked choice – also known as an instant runoff – election, it’s pretty hard to vote strategically because polls are inexact. And in this case, the electorate in August and the one in November will be different.

“I can only speak for myself, but I think most voting theorists would say that instant runoff voting, top four or not, is much less susceptible to strategic voting than plurality is,” McCune said.

“It’s difficult because you essentially need really good poll data, and this Alaska House election is a good case study of that,” he said.

There are signs that Democrats are already voting strategically in the U.S. Senate election.

In the Aug. 16 primary and in public opinion polls since then, Democratic candidate Patricia Chesbro has received less support than similar Democrats in prior statewide races.

Conversely, Republican incumbent Lisa Murkowski has polled in first place despite being censured by the Alaska Republican Party, which is backing a more conservative Republican, Kelly Tshibaka.

Chesbro said by text message that she doesn’t believe her performance is about her specifically, and that another Democrat would be in a similar situation.

Because Republicans outnumber Democrats in Alaska, Democratic voters seem prepared to back a preferred Republican over a Democrat who might align more with their values but would be less likely to win in a head-to-head matchup. (A third Republican in the race, Buzz Kelley, has suspended his campaign and is backing Tshibaka.)

A similar situation exists in the statewide race for governor, but there, the choices are less clear. Incumbent Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy was the frontrunner in August and has been the leader in opinion polls since the election.

Two challengers, Democratic candidate Les Gara and independent candidate Bill Walker, appear to be running close together in second.

Gara appears to have more first-choice support, but Walker could attract the votes of Republicans who are unwilling to support a Democrat.

“The decision to vote strategically really depends on how you think the election will go,” Graham-Squire said.

“Generally speaking, voting your actual feelings is the best bet,” he said, but if someone has doubts, break the race into head-to-head matchups.

In a head-to-head race, would Gara be more likely to beat Dunleavy, or would Walker be more likely to beat Dunleavy?

Finding what’s called the “Condorcet winner,” the person who wins all possible head-to-head matchups, can make sense, he said.

“In this way, instant-runoff elections are similar to a top-two primary system, where you may want to choose the candidate who is the most ‘electable,’ as opposed to the one who is your actual favorite,” Graham-Squire said.

What makes this — and other strategic-voting decisions — risky is that they are based on polling data that may be wrong. Voting strategically could mean accidentally contributing to the defeat of a candidate you prefer.

Gara and Walker have each urged their supporters to rank the other man second, and both believe they will need all of the votes of their friendly opponent in order to beat Dunleavy.

Walker has also released ads that repeat a statement from campaign poller Ivan Moore, who has said that in every one of his polls, Walker fares better than Gara in a head-to-head matchup against Dunleavy.

The ads do not show Moore’s other comments, which indicate Walker still loses that matchup.

Former Alaska Gov. Bill Sheffield died Friday at his home in Anchorage after an extended illness. He was 94.

Sheffield, a Democrat, served a single term from 1982 to 1986 before a near-impeachment and the 1980s oil crash foiled his re-election chances.

During his term, he directed the spending of billions of dollars in oil revenue from the trans-Alaska pipeline, supported the opening of the Red Dog Mine near Kotzebue and the switch from four Alaska time zones to two.

Born in 1928 in Spokane, Washington, he served in the U.S. Army and became a salesman. Sent to Alaska, he arrived by steamship and railroad and remained, eventually founding a chain of 19 hotels. Later sold, they today operate under the Westmark name.

In 1982, he defeated Republican Tom Fink, Libertarian Dick Randolph and Joe Vogler, founder of the Alaskan Independence Party, to replace Jay Hammond and become the sixth governor and the fifth person to serve as governor. (Bill Egan served two non-sequential terms.)

Sheffield, who advocated the transfer of the Alaska Railroad from the federal government to the state, served on the railroad’s board of directors after leaving office and later became CEO of the state-owned corporation.

He served as director of the Port of Anchorage (now named the Port of Alaska) for a decade, retiring in 2012 at age 83.

He remained active in state politics until his death, supporting a variety of candidates and causes, including some Republicans and independent former Gov. Bill Walker.