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The first round of fundraising reports in the 2026 governor’s race were released Tuesday, shedding some light on a crowded field.

Altogether, candidates raised more than $4.3 million by the beginning of February, according to the first batch of campaign finance reports in the race.

Anchorage podiatrist and Republican Matt Heilala accounts for more than a quarter of the total. Heilala contributed nearly $1.3 million to his own campaign, accounting for more than 94% of his fundraising. In an interview, Heilala said self-funding his campaign means he can turn down contributions from donors or groups that don’t jive with his values.

“I’m not in desperate need of big money from big, influential donors. There’s a quid pro quo, and that’s a major problem,” Heilala said. “Not to say I’m not going to take money from some big donors as we keep going, but I’m going to be able to be very, very selective.”

Heilala has also accumulated hundreds of smaller donors, raising more than $60,000 from just shy of 350 donors.

Former Attorney General Treg Taylor is another Republican candidate relying on self-funding to an extent. He’s the No. 2 fundraiser in the race so far, with roughly $880,000 in total contributions. About a third of that comes from Taylor himself.

Taylor leads in external fundraising by a significant margin. He’s raised more than $592,000 in outside funding from nearly 250 donors, including $100,000 from Anchorage anesthesiologist John Morris and several five-figure checks from business and medical professionals in Anchorage and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough.

Former state Revenue Commissioner Adam Crum is in third with roughly $350,000 in contributions, much of it from himself and family members. An uncle of Crum’s wife, Charles McGarrity of Florida, was the largest single contributor at $40,000, and Crum kicked in an additional $60,000. Another notable Crum contributor is state Education Commissioner Deena Bishop, who donated $5,000.

Crum said he’s expecting more money to come off the sidelines and head to candidates as the August primary draws closer.

“Knowing that there’s a handful of us that are kind of out in front on the money side, I think that fundraising is going to ramp up,” Crum said.

Tom Begich was the top Democratic fundraiser in this round of reports. The former Anchorage state senator has also taken in roughly $350,000 from a wide range of donors. He said fundraising ramped up in earnest when Mary Peltola announced she’d be running for U.S. Senate rather than for governor.

Begich is “not a wealthy person,” he said in an interview, and he said he’s proud of the fact that 92% of the funding for his campaign has come from Alaskans.

“Buying your way to the governorship is just not — I just don’t think that’s good for Alaska,” he said. “What I want to see is people reaching out to regular donors, getting people who are regular Alaskans engaged and involved in their campaign. And that’s certainly what I’m doing.”

Among Begich’s largest donors are Anchorage wealth manager Justin Weaver, donating $75,000, Anchorage attorney Robin Brena, who kicked in $50,000 and attorney Mark Choate of Juneau, who contributed $15,000. Chicago-based Jennifer Pritzker, a cousin of billionaire Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, donated $10,000. Begich said he’d never met her but appreciated the support.

Another Democrat in the race, former state Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, didn’t join the race until after the reporting period had ended. But according to his campaign, he’s raised $750,000 in his first two weeks in the race. That’s more than twice as much as Begich, who has been in the race since August.

Including Kreiss-Tomkins, 10 candidates reported raising six-figure totals. Those include Republicans Shelley Hughes, Bernadette Wilson, Click Bishop and Dave Bronson, in addition to Democrat Matt Claman. Republican Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, who won Trump’s endorsement in the 2024 House race, raised just over $17,000.

“It’s a little bit like being a venture capitalist,” said Scott Kendall, an attorney and occasional campaign operative. “When you’re a candidate, you’re selling a product — and if no one’s investing, that’s a bad sign.”

But with strong early fundraising, quite a few candidates have a real shot at winning, Kendall said.

“For probably the most important race in the state, we have a level of competition maybe we’ve never seen,” Kendall said. “Yeah, there were 48 candidates in the special election for Don Young’s seat. But really, there were only, like, four or five, six serious candidates. Here, there’s really 10 legit candidates, and it’s pretty exciting.”

The top four vote-getters in the nonpartisan blanket primary in August will advance to the general election in November.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated where Mark Choate lives. He lives in Juneau, not Anchorage.

In this newscast:

• The City of Hoonah has a new chief of police, and his hiring comes after the last chief was fired while trying to resign last spring.
• The Juneau School Board will hold its first reading of the school district’s budget tomorrow.
• Nearly all who testified at a public hearing yesterday afternoon at the state capitol were in favor of a Juneau representative’s bill that seeks to ban law enforcement officers from wearing face masks on duty in Alaska.
• The U.S Forest Service officially kicked off its public process for the Tongass National Forest Plan Revision on Wednesday.
• Travelers can now schedule ferry rides with the Alaska Marine Highway for May through September.
• The first round of fundraising reports in the 2026 governor’s race is out, shedding some light on a crowded field.

Nearly everyone who testified at a public hearing Tuesday afternoon at the state capitol was in favor of a Juneau representative’s bill that seeks to ban law enforcement officers from wearing face masks on duty in Alaska.

But one person who spoke against the bill happened to be the chief of police for Alaska’s largest city.

Juneau Democrat  Sara Hannan’s House Bill 250 would ban anyone acting as a law enforcement officer in Alaska from wearing a mask while on duty — including federal, state and local agents — with some exemptions like medical masks, transparent safety shields, cold-weather masks or masks worn by undercover officers. 

Hannan promotes it as being “pro-law enforcement.” She prefiled the bill in January, following public outrage after a masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed a Minnesota woman on camera. A U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officer killed another man in Minneapolis just weeks later. 

At the bill’s second hearing in the House State Affairs Committee on Tuesday afternoon, the bill received support from eight of the nine public testifiers. That’s after a chilly initial reception from a couple of legislators the week before. 

Bridget Smith of Juneau said while she respects law enforcement, she doesn’t respect anyone who hides their identity.  

“A peace officer wearing a mask to conceal his face would immediately lead me to question that person’s motives and distrust whether that officer was really there to protect and serve me, or whether they wish to be unaccountable for their behavior,” she said. 

As the bill is currently written, an officer who violates the ban would be charged with a Class B misdemeanor per violation, which is punishable by up to 90 days in jail and a $2,000 fine. Some testifiers ask for the charges to be harsher.

Laura Lucas, also from Juneau, said she supported the bill because she believes it could prevent what’s currently happening in Minnesota, where federal immigration officers have ramped up deportations amid widespread public protests, from happening in Alaska in the future. Other states across the U.S. have sought to impose similar bans in recent months. 

“Within the past year, we’ve seen changes in this country that we’ve never imagined would happen before,” she said. “I see this legislation as potentially proactive for an issue that might arise in Alaska.”

The main dissent against the bill came from Anchorage Police Chief Sean Case. He said while he opposes police officers wearing masks to conceal their identity, he argued the bill is trying to address a problem that doesn’t exist in Alaska.

“Masking is not a practice in Alaska, and enforcing this bill would be impractical, giving it numerous exemptions,” he said. “It attempts to solve a nonexistent issue, while inserting local law enforcement into a debate about federal immigration enforcement, something outside our role and responsibility.”

He said the Anchorage Police Department already has other accountability measures in place, like requiring uniformed officers to wear their badges and identify themselves upon request.

“Despite real risks of harassment and violence, officers have continued to serve openly 

with visible name tags and badges,” he said. “That visibility is part of our responsibility to protect and serve our communities.”

While Case was the only one who verbally testified against the bill, the committee received written testimony as well — that included a couple of comments against, while most were in favor. 

Hannan’s bill is slated to be heard again by the House State Affairs Committee and has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee. It’s unclear if it will have enough support to advance in the Legislature.

The Juneau School Board will hold its first reading of the school district’s budget on Thursday. 

In a work session on Saturday, the board directed district administrators to create a list of items that they can discuss adding to the budget. That includes things like additional positions for the district’s nursing staff, special education and homeschool program.

Student services director Jason DeCamillis said at the meeting that an additional position for the nursing team could support the growing number of students with severe medical needs.

“It’s a little bit more of a centralizing of a position, but it does allow that person to float, be more supportive of the whole system,” DeCamillis said.

The discussion comes as the board grapples with a preliminary budget with a more than $5.3 million deficit. That could be addressed by dipping into savings or making cuts. The district is projected to have about $7.8 million in savings, which is almost $7 million more than what it’s required to maintain.

Board members also requested adding grant-funded positions for the Tlingit Culture, Language and Literacy program to the list. Grant funding for three positions is ending after this school year, and the board has to decide on directly funding them from its operating budget. The board already supported funding one of the positions.

The board is also considering ways to factor in staffing vacancies and people that don’t opt into the district’s health insurance plan. Right now, the district budget assumes it fills all positions and that everyone hired uses the district’s health insurance plan. Unspent funds from vacancies and people waiving health insurance currently go into the district’s savings. The Juneau School district began the school year with about 6% of teaching positions unfilled. And as of February 9, about 7% of the district’s classified positions were vacant.

The board requested staff to present various scenarios: how much money a 1% and 3% vacancy rate would look like. Those funds could be budgeted toward other items. The board is also looking at how much money it can use if it assumes 10% of employees waive the district’s health insurance.

Since at least 2022, the number of district employees opting out of the district’s plan has increased. As of this month, more than 22% of them have waived the plan this school year.

The board will meet to discuss the budget Thursday at Thunder Mountain Middle School at 5:30 p.m. The meeting can also be accessed on Zoom, and the public will have an opportunity to testify in person, online and by emailing budgetinput@juneauschools.org.

The U.S. Forest Service officially kicked off its public process for the Tongass National Forest Plan Revision on Wednesday, with an initial 30-day public comment period intended to guide a draft plan and environmental review. 

The Tongass National Forest is the largest national forest in the U.S., with more than 16 million acres covering 80% of Southeast Alaska, including more than a thousand islands.

Forest-wide decisions made at the federal level shape the environment and the lives of Southeast residents — from industrial uses like mining and timber, to tourism and recreation, to the health of ecosystems and quality of subsistence harvests.

The last forest management plan was completed in 2016. That plan phased down the amount of old-growth available for logging over several years. The revised plan will set the stage for how the agency intends to manage the forest over the next 10 to 15 years. 

In its public notice released Tuesday, the agency outlined six proposed goals for the updated plan that address land use designations; economic uses of the forest; the rise in cruise ship visitors, collaboration between different groups; subsistence hunting, fishing and gathering needs; and Indigenous knowledge.

The public notice said the agency will ensure the plan is consistent with two of President Trump’s executive orders aimed at maximizing mineral extraction and logging in the Tongass. 

The agency also noted that a long-term timber demand analysis underway at the Pacific Northwest Research Station will inform projected timber sale quantities. The last analysis, published in 2016, estimated demand for Tongass forest products would range from roughly 41 to 76 million board feet per year between 2015 and 2030.

The public comment period for the scoping phase ends March 19 at 11:59 p.m. The agency expects to publish a draft revised plan and draft environmental impact statement this fall, followed by a 90-day public comment period. The final plan is expected next May.

Immigration enforcement agents swarmed a Soldotna home Tuesday morning and took a family of four, including a kindergartner, into custody.

Sonia Arriaga, from Jalisco, Mexico, has lived in Alaska since 2023. Her husband, Alexander Sanchez-Ramos, said agents arrived in about five vehicles and pulled her from her car when she returned from driving her middle child to school.

“I’m not talking about nicely, either. I’m talking about aggressively grabbing her and pulling her out. You know, she’s still in her pajamas, for crying out loud,” he said.

Sanchez-Ramos is an American citizen, born in Seward. He said masked agents placed him in handcuffs as he stood outside in temperatures hovering in the teens, wearing gym shorts and sandals. They questioned him about who else was at home. A relative brought the youngest child out.

“He was upset. He was crying, asking for his mom,” Sanchez-Ramos said.

Arriaga and her three sons, ages 5, 16 and 18, were eventually taken to Anchorage. The oldest son was put in jail, Sanchez-Ramos said, while the younger sons and their mom were detained in a hotel.

The story of their arrest reached a group of church leaders in Anchorage who told reporters the case raised grave moral concerns.

“How could anyone possibly claim to support family values when they are willing to stand by and be silent when a five year old is taken into detention?” said Rev. Michael Burke, senior pastor at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church.

He said the incident could traumatize a child for the rest of his life.

Burke said he isn’t disputing the lawful enforcement of immigration restrictions. But, he said, federal agencies are trampling the law and violating the pledge that stepped-up enforcement would target criminals and the “worst of the worst.”

“As faith tradition leaders, grounded in the Hebrew Scriptures, in the gospel of Jesus Christ, we say that there is something deeply wrong here,” he said from his church pulpit, with eight pastors representing different congregations behind him. “There is a moral crisis in America where we detain and arrest families and small children.”

Sanchez-Ramos said Arriaga was in the country legally and was seeking asylum based on threats of violence in Jalisco. She had legal authorization to work, he said. She missed a hearing date in January, he said, but their lawyer assured them all the paperwork had been filed to revive her claim.

They met at a Mexican restaurant where they both worked and married earlier this month, he said.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has not yet responded to an emailed query about the case.