Alaska Beacon

The Trump administration has denied Alaska’s request for full reimbursement for disaster relief efforts immediately following last October’s devastating Western Alaska storms, despite the Dunleavy administration’s claim that the federal disaster declaration meant the state would be fully reimbursed.

That leaves the state on the hook for millions of dollars for disaster recovery, however the full amount is still unknown.

The state’s request for federal support for 100% of disaster relief efforts in the first 90 days after the storms hit was denied on Dec. 20, according to a spokesperson for the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management on Thursday.

The state appealed the denial on Jan. 15, and asked for a 90% federal cost reimbursement, but has not yet gotten a response from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“We have not heard back from FEMA on approval or denial and there is no timeframe requirement,” said Jeremy Zidek, public information officer for the division, by email.

A spokesperson for Dunleavy’s office did not respond to a list of questions, but confirmed the appeal on Friday. “An appeal has been filed and the administration will await the federal government’s decision,” said Jeff Turner, Dunleavy’s communications director.

In the meantime, the federal government is reimbursing Alaska’s disaster recovery efforts at roughly 75%, leaving the state to cover 25% of its costs, with some exceptions for certain relief programs, Zidek said.

Following the West Coast storm disaster in October, Dunleavy quickly declared a state disaster emergency. On Oct. 22, his office announced that the Trump administration approved the state’s request for a federal disaster declaration, and the state’s full costs would be covered immediately following the storms.

“President Trump was deeply concerned with the wellbeing of Alaskans who lost their homes and livelihoods to this historic storm,” Dunleavy said in a statement along with the announcement. “I want to thank him and his administration for approving the disaster declaration because now Alaskan families have local, state and federal support for rebuilding their lives in the months ahead.”

“The federal disaster declaration authorizes a 100 percent federal cost share for all categories of relief assistance for the next 90 days,” the statement said.

Dunleavy’s office did not respond to questions about his previous statement or whether his office had communication from the Trump administration about why the request was denied.

Alaska’s Republican U.S. congressional delegation applauded the federal disaster declaration and Trump’s support for the Western Alaska disaster response last year. All three members said through spokespeople Friday that they support the state’s appeal.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski has been actively engaged with FEMA and state officials throughout the disaster relief efforts, said her communications director, Joe Plesha, in a statement on Friday. “Alaska’s vast geography and many rural communities make disaster response more challenging and recovery efforts significantly more costly,” he said. “She supports the state’s appeal and will work to secure the maximum amount of federal support available to Alaskans who have suffered so much from this devastating storm.”

A spokesperson for U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, Amanda Coyne, said the senator has advocated for the 100% federal cost share, as well as organized a delegation of FEMA and other Trump administration officials to visit Western Alaska.

“Given the severity of the storm and its devastating impacts on communities in Western Alaska, Senator Sullivan believes an increased federal cost share is warranted,” Coyne said. “He will continue strongly advocating with FEMA and other senior officials in the Trump Administration for an increased federal cost share as the state’s appeal goes through the process.”

A spokesperson for Alaska’s lone U.S. Representative, Nick Begich III, said on Friday that he supports the appeal and will continue to advocate for those impacted by Typhoon Halong at the Congressional level. “Our office is in communication with the Administration to ensure recovery efforts in Western Alaska remain a priority,” spokesperson Silver Prout wrote.

Western Alaska storm recovery is ongoing

The Western Alaska storms and particularly ex-Typhoon Halong brought record-breaking winds and flooding — damaging thousands of structures, roads, boardwalks, airports and other critical infrastructure. It prompted the state’s largest mass evacuation of residents from their homes to other villages, Bethel and Anchorage.

While some Western Alaska residents are continuing to rebuild through the winter, other residents who evacuated to Anchorage are living in temporary housing. As of Thursday, the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management reports that 471 residents are still sheltering in hotels in Anchorage.

The state is administering public assistance programs, which reimburse costs of repairing public infrastructure and utilities, as well as provide individual disaster assistance, in partnership with other agencies, including FEMA.

FEMA has awarded $31.2 million in individual assistance to date, Zidek said.

More than 2,000 residents have been awarded state individual assistance, and 1,794 households have registered for federal assistance from FEMA.

Those applications for state and federal assistance are still open until Feb. 20.

State disaster relief funding under debate

The state’s disaster relief funding is a point of ongoing debate among lawmakers and the governor, as they kick off discussion of Dunleavy’s proposed $7.75 million budget and its $1.5 billion deficit.

Last year, legislators approved $23.3 million in state disaster relief funds, but Dunleavy vetoed $10.3 million of that sum last summer, leaving $13 million in the budget. In November, following the federal government shutdown, Dunleavy announced a state disaster to help provide food aid, transferring $10 million to the state’s disaster relief funding from the Department of Environmental Conservation’s Village Safe Water and Wastewater Infrastructure program.

This year, the governor has requested an additional $40 million in the state’s supplemental budget, which is a routine ask for additional money to pay the state’s bills for the previous year.

Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka, a co-chair of the Senate Finance Committee, didn’t mince words about the governor’s back and forth with disaster spending. “Ill-advised and foolish,” he said. “It makes no sense what he did to me, frankly, and it’s embarrassing for him, his veto.”

But Stedman said he hopes the state’s federal appeal is approved, and expects legislators to pass the governor’s request for the additional $40 million. “Obviously, 100% is better than 90 and 90 is better than 75,” Stedman said of the federal cost share. “So that’s pretty much a given there. But we will fund the disaster request as the governor puts it on the table, through next week’s amendments.”

Sen. Jesse Kiehl, D-Juneau, also a member of the Senate Finance Committee, commended the governor for his record on disaster response, and echoed hope for the appeal to move forward. “There’s no question in my mind that this is exactly what the federal disaster relief programs exist for. So I think the governor’s request was the right thing, and if it came back at less than full funding from the feds, that’s the wrong call,” Kiehl said.

Kiehl described the state’s fiscal picture, with rising costs and ongoing debates on how to raise more revenues, as “bleak.” “So there isn’t cash just sitting around for disaster assistance,” he said. “We have to step up for western Alaska financially. That’s going to stink, but we have to do it, as far as I’m concerned.”

A typical cost share between the federal government and a state for disaster relief efforts is a 75% federal and 25% state cost split.

“We have dozens of federal declared disasters we are currently working on that have the 75/25 cost share structure,” said Zidek, with agency. “Large disasters are occasionally given a modified cost share structure adjustment, but it is not guaranteed. When we have a large disaster, we ask for modification to reduce the amount of state funding needed because as managers of state funds it is the responsible thing to do.”

Alaska’s population rose slightly between 2024 and 2025 and is now at its highest level since 2017, the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development announced Wednesday.

Alaska had an estimated 738,737 people as of July 1, 2025, the department said in its annual state population estimate. That’s up 1,649 people from the department’s July 2024 population estimate of 737,088.

The rise comes despite a revision that erased thousands of international immigrants that the U.S. Census mistakenly believed had moved to Alaska.

Last year, relying on Census figures showing that thousands of people had migrated to Alaska from other countries, the department in July 2024 estimated Alaska’s population at more than 741,000 people.

Since then, and after prodding from Alaska state demographer David Howell, the Census Bureau retroactively lowered the number of international migrants that came to Alaska, and this year’s population estimate is significantly lower than last year’s but higher than the state’s revised 2024 figure.

“We think (that) is more accurate given that people crossing the southern border aren’t very often making their way to Alaska,” Howell said.

With the extra residents removed and a new baseline in place, the state’s population grew on a year-over-year basis because the number of births in the state exceeded the number of Alaskans who died.

That natural increase — births minus deaths — of 3,389 people was greater than the number of people who moved out of the state.

Between 2024 and 2025, 1,740 more people moved out of Alaska than moved here. It was the 13th consecutive year of negative net migration in Alaska, extending the longest streak of negative net migration since 1945.

Overall, the state’s population grew by 0.22%. That was less than the nation as a whole (0.5%). Compared with the other 49 states and the District of Columbia, Alaska’s population growth ranked 40th.

South Carolina (1.5%), Idaho (1.4%) and North Carolina (1.3%) had the highest growth rates among states. Vermont (-0.29%), Hawaii (-0.15%) and West Virginia (-0.07%) had the lowest and were among five states that posted population declines.

The U.S. Census Bureau has slightly different figures than the state — it estimated a 0.1% population gain between 2024 and 2025 — but the Alaska Department of Labor conducts surveys of military bases and group homes that the Census Bureau does not, Howell said. For that reason, he believes the state’s estimate is more accurate than the Census Bureau’s.

Overall, Howell said, Alaska seemed to simply extend existing population trends between 2024 and 2025.

“We’re continuing to see losses in the working-age population. … We’re really starting to see declines in the school-age population. It was growing slightly at the beginning of this decade, but at this point, there’s about 1,000 more 17-year-olds than there are 4-year olds. And so we’re just going through aging,” he said.

Alaska’s median age is 37.1, one and a half years older than it was at the start of the decade. Haines, the state’s oldest community, has a median age above 50.

As the state ages, the number of new births is dropping and the number of deaths is rising.

Howell and the Department of Labor and Workforce Development are predicting that the state’s population will start dropping steadily by the year 2050.

The number of births in the latest population estimate is the lowest since the trans-Alaska oil pipeline was built. The number of deaths dropped slightly last year, but Howell said there may be a morbid reason for that: The COVID-19 pandemic peaked in Alaska in 2021-2022 and may have killed elderly Alaskans who would have died later.

This year’s state population estimate retroactively updated the population change between 2021-2022, turning it from a small gain into a decline.

On a borough and city level, existing trends continued in the latest forecast. The Matanuska-Susitna Borough continues to be the fastest-growing large area of the state, the population of Anchorage is relatively flat, the Interior’s population is growing slightly and Southeast Alaska’s population is falling.

A new nonpartisan report by the Institute of Social and Economic Research at the University of Alaska Anchorage has concluded that raising oil and corporate taxes to balance Alaska’s budget likely has the lowest negative side effects for Alaskans’ jobs and income.

The report, eagerly anticipated by state lawmakers and experts, comes as legislators consider ways to balance Alaska’s expenses and revenue over multiple years.

Commissioned by the administration of Gov. Mike Dunleavy, the report was released days after the governor debuted a plan intended to bring Alaska’s expenses and revenue in line.

Since 2015, when oil prices plummeted, Alaska has struggled to balance its budget on an annual basis despite steep cuts to state services. At times, the tug-of-war between services and the Permanent Fund dividend has driven the state to the brink of a government shutdown.

Figures from the Legislative Finance Division, which advises the Legislature on fiscal issues, show state agencies have had their budgets cut by 16.6% when adjusted for inflation since Fiscal Year 2015.

During the same period, lawmakers have passed no significant revenue measures. Dunleavy, who opened his first year in office by proposing massive budget cuts, hasn’t proposed significant reductions in recent years and is now suggesting a statewide sales tax and other revenue measures are needed for the state to keep up with spending.

ISER’s analysis of the situation was keenly awaited by state legislators and other experts, who crowded into a ballroom at Juneau’s convention center on Thursday morning to hear its economists deliver their report.

A 2016 analysis by ISER remains widely consulted in the capitol and was a contributing factor to lawmakers’ decision to begin using the Alaska Permanent Fund as a trust fund two years later. Legislators installed an annual transfer from the fund to the treasury for dividends and services, and it’s now the No. 1 source of general-purpose state revenue for Alaska, accounting for almost two-thirds of the state’s flexible spending each year.

The report released Thursday concluded that Alaska’s unstable fiscal situation has created so much uncertainty that it’s lowered Alaska’s real gross domestic product growth by 2-3% over the past decade, the equivalent of billions of dollars, said Brett Watson, an economist with the Institute of Social and Economic Research and the lead author of the report.

Alaska’s GDP — the value of all goods and services in the state — is about $70 billion and ranks near the bottom of U.S. states in terms of growth over the past decade.

ISER examined 11 different options to balance the state budget, including spending cuts, cuts to the Permanent Fund dividend, income taxes, sales taxes and business taxes.

Raising business and oil taxes would have the lowest negative impact on jobs and income, while cuts to services would have the biggest negative effect on them, the report found.

Reducing the Permanent Fund dividend to balance the budget — which has been the existing legislative policy for the past several years — has similarly large negative effects on income, but smaller negative effects on employment. Poor Alaskans are affected more by a PFD reduction than rich Alaskans, making it the most regressive option.

Among statewide taxes, a progressive income tax would have the biggest negative impact on high-income Alaskans and the lowest negative impact on low-income residents.

Nonresidents would pay 27% of a statewide sales tax with many exclusions — food, utilities, and health care, for example — making it the option with the least direct impact on individual income among broad-based taxes.

Corporate and oil taxes have a lower impact overall, ISER concluded.

Making a sales tax higher in the summer and lower in the winter “shifts the burden toward visitors, reducing the impact on Alaska families by 2-5 percentage points per dollar raised,” ISER concluded.

Dunleavy’s fiscal plan includes a seasonal sales tax as one of its pillars.

ISER also concluded that its models suggest that it is possible to come up with “a budget neutral combination that stimulates growth.”

“For example,” its report states, “coupling a less distortionary revenue source (like property tax) with expansionary spending (like capital project investment) can result in a net increase in total employment.”

Imposing a statewide property tax and a broad corporate tax cut in combination, ISER suggested in a slide presented to lawmakers, would result in increased employment and personal income by 2050, it estimated.

The effect of each tax or cut was examined independently, Watson said, in $100 million chunks.

“You can think about these as items on a buffet, and you kind of scoop from them different serving sizes as you construct a plate that is a state fiscal plan,” he said.

ISER also considered things linearly — economists didn’t try to predict whether Alaskans would react differently if a sales tax went from 5% to 6% instead of from 0% to 1%.

“In reality, it is likely that there are certain important thresholds that if you turn that dial too far, consumers start reacting in more and more aggressive ways to it, but we assume that their reaction is the same, regardless of what the level set is,” he said.

Watson said there is a cost if lawmakers do nothing. In addition to the GDP penalty caused by uncertainty, the state remains vulnerable to what’s called the “Alaska disconnect.”

Imagine, he said, if “something crazy would happen and one of the Silicon Valley tech giants were to announce that they were going to create a Silicon Valley of the north somewhere in Alaska and that they would move 100,000 employees somewhere in Alaska and create this northern hub of tech.”

“It would be absolutely catastrophic from the standpoint of the state of Alaska budget,” he said. “There would be 100,000 new Permanent Fund dividends to pay, the children of 100,000 new employees to educate, more roads to maintain, more state services to provide, without any additional revenue collected for any of those individuals. And so there’s this disconnect now that’s growing between our private sector economy and what goes on in our public sector.”

While Alaska school districts are seeing improvements in kindergarten to third grade students’ reading proficiency, which officials credit to the Alaska Reads Act, some districts are struggling to access state managed funds for a federal grant program aimed at supporting literacy programs, teacher development, and student learning.

Lawmakers with the House Education Committee heard from two district superintendents about the successes and challenges of the Comprehensive Literacy State Development grant program — which in 2024 awarded $50 million to Alaska schools over five years.

In 2025, roughly half of Alaska’s districts, or 27 school districts, qualified for these grant funds administered through the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development, according to the department.

The program is aimed at advancing literacy for children from birth through 12th grade students, including pre-literacy skills, reading and writing. The program focuses on districts with disadvantaged children, including those living in poverty, English language learners and students with disabilities.

While all Alaska districts are required by state law to implement the Alaska Read’s Act, the policy did not come with additional state funding, said Rep. Rebecca Himschoot, I-Sitka, co-chair of the education committee, in an interview on Monday. She said some districts are struggling to fund the kindergarten through third grade reading initiatives. “I would like to see us supporting schools so that everybody gets the support they need to implement the law the way it was written,” she said.

The program isn’t new, but it has more money and it’s funding more districts now. In 2019, nearly one third of Alaska districts were awarded $25 million over five years, according to DEED.

“The literacy grant is a really powerful tool that is going to help the districts that it’s in, a lot,” Himschoot said. “I’ve heard a lot of gratitude from superintendents about having this opportunity for those who have it, but we did hear about some bumps in the rollout of it.”

District officials’ testimony prompted Himschoot to send a list of questions to DEED about how the grant is managed.

Michael Robbins, superintendent of the Bristol Bay Borough School District, which serves approximately 135 students, said the grant has been crucial for implementing the Alaska Reads Act, particularly supporting teachers’ training professional development, which helps retention. “The grant supports training, coaching and leadership development grounded in research-based instruction, including the science of reading,” he said.

“It creates consistency across classrooms in schools, helps prevent problems before they grow, and ensure that limited resources are utilized where that matters most,” Robbins said.

But Robbins said in implementing the grant, districts need more “clear, timely and reasonable guidance around allowable use of grant funds” from DEED.

He said the district would like to use the money for professional services vendors to provide training to teachers, and funding to attend conferences. “The approval process has been particularly cumbersome as some districts have had to resubmit their application multiple times, which takes valuable time from our grant leaders and administrators, as well as delaying the implementation of important activities,” he said.

Officials with DEED did not attend the legislative hearing, but department spokesperson Bryan Zadalis said by email on Monday that the department recognizes the importance of clear guidance, which is communicated through multiple channels including webinars and office hours. “DEED also aligns state-level guidance with federal updates as they are released to ensure accuracy and compliance, which can at times require sequencing information rather than issuing it prematurely,” he said.

In addition, Robbins, who formerly served as the superintendent of the Ketchikan Gateway Borough School District, said that that district did not qualify for grant funding. “The need was there, but the resources are not,” he said. “We need to find ways for all districts and all students to have access to the same level of support and opportunity.”

Robyn Taylor is superintendent of the Petersburg School District which serves approximately 420 students, and was awarded $350,000 per year through the grant program. She testified to lawmakers and echoed the need for equity in supporting reading programs across Alaska’s school districts. She said Petersburg still continues to have challenges with implementing the Alaska Reads Act, which she called “a real tension.”

“In Petersburg alone, between FY 25 and FY 26 we eliminated one of our three elementary reading interventionist positions, positions that were directly supporting Reads Act implementation and student outcomes,” she said. She said the district was told that CLSD funds were for supplementing programs not replacing funding.

“(The) restriction makes it difficult to use this grant to maintain positions or systems that are already working but are no longer financially sustainable under current funding structures,” she said.

Taylor and Himschoot both emphasized that districts who did not qualify for funding need support with the administrative work to apply. They said some schools should have easily qualified for the funding, but didn’t in part because they lack proper documentation of their students’ need for free or reduced school meals, which is one of the federal poverty guidelines. “It’s not that they don’t have kids in need,” Himschoot said. “It’s that they haven’t been identified through the paperwork, because they don’t have the capacity in their district to go chase that down.”

Zadalis said the grant process is a competitive one. He said the primary source of education funding is through the state’s funding formula, but districts may also access state or federal funding through other grants focused on literacy efforts.

Taylor said Petersburg students are making gains in reading proficiency, and the district is committed to continuing improvements beyond the grant cycle. “What we are asking for is greater flexibility, clearer and earlier guidance,” she said. “And increased trust in districts to make decisions that reflect local context and student needs.”

School districts awarded CLSD grants in 2025

• Alaska Gateway School District
• Aleutians East Borough School District
• Anchorage School District
• Bering Strait School District
• Bristol Bay Borough School District / Chugach School District
• Copper River School District
• Cordova City School District
• Dillingham City School District
• Galena City School District
• Iditarod Area School District
• Kake City School District
• Kashunamiut School District
• Kenai Peninsula Borough School District
• Kodiak Island Borough School District
• Kuspuk School District
• Lake and Peninsula Borough School District
• Lower Yukon School District
• Mount Edgecumbe High School
• North Slope Borough School District
• Northwest Arctic Borough School District
• Petersburg Borough School District
• Pribilof School District
• Southeast Island School District
• Yakutat School District
• Yukon Flats School District
• Yukon–Koyukuk School District

Alaska had fewer overdose deaths in 2024 than in the year prior, and state health officials are working on ways to continue to reduce that total in the future.

In all, 339 people died from drug overdoses in 2024 Alaska, a 5% decline from the record high of 357 hit the year before, according to an annual report released by the state Department of Health.

Alaska’s decline was not as dramatic as the nationwide drop in overdose deaths.

Nationally, the 2024 death total was nearly 27% lower than the total for the previous year, continuing a declining trend that followed several years of sharp increases, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Overdose deaths, as measured in total numbers, peaked in the U.S. in 2021, according to the CDC. As measured by rate per 100,000 people, they peaked in 2022.

It is not yet clear whether Alaska’s decline in fatal overdose rates will catch up to the national rates or even if the state’s decline will last, said Jessica Filley, an epidemiology specialist with the department.

“I think it’s too early to say if this trend is going to continue,” said Filley, speaking on Thursday during a break at the annual Alaska Public Health Association Summit in Anchorage.

If the trend does continue, several factors may be responsible, she said. One of those factors could be the wider use of naloxone, an overdose-reversal medicine, she said.

Distribution of the emergency medicine has increased substantially in recent years, said Tim Easterly, coordinator of a Department of Health program that provides naloxone kits to people who might be treating at-risk Alaskans.

When the program started about eight years ago, it distributed about 8,000 kits annually, Easterly said at the health summit. In the past two years, it has distributed more than 40,000 kits annually, he said. “So this program has grown. And, unfortunately, we continue to see demand, steady around that 40,000 kits per year,” he said.

Naloxone kits are provided to schools around the state under a law enacted in 2024, for example.

Filley, in a presentation at the conference, described some state efforts to try to use a more holistic approach to prevent overdose deaths.

The state’s medical examination process includes an overdose committee that gathers information not just from official documents like toxicology reports, but also from family members, healthcare providers, first responders and other people who can fill in the backstories of overdose victims.

Those reviews reveal life stories that can contain complex and interwoven challenges that preceded the overdoses. Some victims had complex mental or physical health problems that did not get addressed. Some had traumatic experiences in childhood. Housing insecurity and homelessness also emerged as a factor in some cases, she said.

Reviewing each case took hours; the committee reviewed two every quarter, or eight in the past year. Using those reviews, the committee compiled some recommendations for more comprehensive prevention and treatment.

One of the committee’s recommendations, Filley said, is for “more integrated peer support” and more coordination of case management across different settings, including healthcare facilities, treatment facilities, parole operations and interactions with first responders.

Another recommendation is for better education about trauma, including from experiences in childhood that may have long-lasting effects, she said. “We definitely have some cases where there’s evidence that the decedent experienced trauma or adversity in childhood,” she said.

The committee also recommended more education about dangers from substances other than opioids, including alcohol. While opioids have received heightened attention in recent years and are implicated in most fatalities, there are many cases where victims are abusing multiple substances simultaneously.

Statistics from the state’s annual report show that only 35% of overdose deaths between 2020 and 2024 involved a single drug. The most common combination in fatal cases over those years was a blend of synthetic narcotics like fentanyl with psychostimulants, the state report said. Examples of psychostimulants are amphetamines and cocaine.

There were twice as many fatal overdoses among men than among women in 2024, similar to ratios in the four preceding years. By region, Anchorage had the highest rate of fatal overdose per 100,000 people over all years from 2020 to 2024, according to the state report. In 2024, Anchorage had about two thirds of the state’s overdose deaths, even though it has about 40% of the state’s residents.

After the dissolution of the state’s third-largest political party, the Alaska Division of Elections is sending out notices to the 19,117 members of the former Alaskan Independence Party, warning them to update their voter information.

“In the coming weeks, the DOE will inform the voters registered as affiliated with the AIP that the party is no longer recognized,” the department said in a notice published Wednesday. “These voters will have the option to select a new party or group affiliation if they wish. If they do not update their registration — by phone, email, in person, or through the online form — within 30 days of receipt, the Division plans to change their registration status to ‘undeclared.'”

The Alaskan Independence Party’s leadership formally dissolved the organization in a vote on Dec. 7, then released a statement at the end of the year about the decision.

That statement said the party elected a new board of directors in April 2024, and that board analyzed the state of the party.

“The board carried out its work and found that the current party membership is either apathetic to the goals of the party, believes that the party is a branch of the Republican party, or is registered to the AIP by mistake,” the statement said in part.

“The party has for some time been legally alive yet spiritually dead,” the statement said.

The AIP’s origins date to the early 1970s, when interior Alaska gold miner Joe Vogler attempted to rally opposition to federal land control after statehood.

Vogler ran for governor as an independent in 1974, and the AIP developed out of his Libertarian-like vision for the state — local control, limited government, and a new statewide referendum on whether Alaska should be a state, commonwealth, territory or fully independent.

For decades, AIP members contended that Alaska’s 1958 statehood vote was not valid because it did not present Alaskans with a full set of options.

The party peaked in 1990, when conservative Republicans abandoned their support of Sen. Arliss Sturgulewski for governor, who they deemed too moderate on abortion and environmental issues.

Former Republican Gov. Wally Hickel replaced John Lindauer on the AIP’s gubernatorial ticket, and Sturgulewski’s lieutenant governor candidate, Jack Coghill, defected to serve as Hickel’s lieutenant governor candidate.

Hickel and Coghill won the three-way election with just under 39% of the vote, marking the AIP’s sole statewide electoral win.

That was the party’s high-water mark; Hickel governed as a Republican in all but name and rejoined the Republican party before his term ended.

Vogler was murdered in 1993, and the party became an annual also-ran in statewide races. In 2024, when John Wayne Howe ran as the party’s candidate for U.S. House, he received just 4% of Alaskans’ first-choice votes.