Alaska Elections

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.

A 17th candidate has announced she’s running for governor.

Meda DeWitt, 45, is a traditional healer, drawing on her Tlingit heritage. She teaches at the University of Alaska.

She’s running as a nonpartisan.

“I care about our future,” she said. “I care about the way that we steward our lands and want to see a state that has a thriving ecosystem and healthy communities that can live in perpetuity.”

In 2021, DeWitt chaired a campaign to recall Gov. Mike Dunleavy. The petition gathered more than 60,000 signatures but fell short of the number needed for a recall election.

Her campaign website lists a wide array of priorities, from cost of living to health care to the state economy.

DeWitt lives in Anchorage and has family roots in Wrangell and Yakutat, as well as relatives around the state.

The Aug. 18 primary will feature a long list of gubernatorial candidates, most running with the Republican label. In the primary, voters can choose just one. The top four candidates, of any party, will advance to the November ballot. General election voters will have the option of ranking up to four candidates.

Former state legislator Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, a Democrat from Sitka, is running for governor, he said Tuesday.

Kreiss-Tomkins, frequently known as “JKT,” served in the Alaska House of Representatives between 2013 and 2023. He becomes the 16th candidate and third Democrat to enter this year’s gubernatorial election.

Incumbent Gov. Mike Dunleavy is term-limited and unable to run for a third term.

In Alaska, the top four vote-getters, regardless of political party, advance from the August primary to the November general election. In November, Alaskans use ranked-choice voting to name their preferences.

Kreiss-Tomkins said he’s running because Alaska has big problems and he’s interested in solving them.

“I really enjoy working with people from diverse backgrounds and different viewpoints and perspectives to try to forge compromise and get things done,” he said.

While in the Legislature, Kreiss-Tomkins was a member of the bipartisan, bicameral fiscal working group that in 2021 drafted a plan intended to bring the state’s finances in line over the long term.

Though that plan was never enacted, its components resemble the fiscal plan introduced this year by Gov. Mike Dunleavy.

“We’re in a perpetual budget uncertainty,” Kreiss-Tomkins said, identifying the state’s fiscal situation as his No. 1 issue.

Since oil prices plunged in 2015, legislators and governors have struggled to balance Alaska’s budget on an annual basis, occasionally bringing the state to the brink of a government shutdown.

“We’re living and dying by the price of oil, and we have a structural budget deficit, so the state’s finances are not especially in order, and that is, I think, probably the highest-order problem,” Kreiss-Tomkins said.

He said Dunleavy hasn’t been able to work across party lines and hasn’t been successful with the Legislature. Kreiss-Tomkins contrasted that with his own experience as a member of a Democratic-independent-Republican coalition majority in the state House.

“I feel like we need that same spirit in the executive branch, and if we could have a governor and an executive with that approach and mindset … there’s a tremendous amount of good that we can get done for Alaska,” he said.

Kreiss-Tomkins said the campaign season will show how he differs from the other two Democrats in the race: former state Sen. Tom Begich, and current state Sen. Matt Claman.

When it comes to the number of other candidates in the race, Kreiss-Tomkins said it’s not a bad thing for Alaskans to have so many choices.

“Seeing so many people willing to run sort of reflects the importance of the election and the gravity of the problems facing Alaska,” he said, adding that he expects “some winnowing of the field as time goes on.”

Candidates for Governor

• Former state Sen. Tom Begich (Democrat)
• Former state Sen. Click Bishop (Republican)
• Former Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson (Republican) and Lt. Gov. candidate Josh Church (Republican)
• Former state revenue commissioner Adam Crum (Republican)
• Current state Sen. Matt Claman (Democrat)
• Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom (Republican)
• Matanuska-Susitna Borough Mayor Edna DeVries (Republican)
• Kasilof resident Jessica Faircloth
• Anchorage podiatrist and state medical board member Matt Heilala
• Former state Sen. Shelley Hughes (Republican)
• Former state Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins (Democrat)
• Author Hank Kroll (Registered Republican) with Lt. Gov. candidate Tommy Nicholson (Undeclared)
• Angoon resident and former teacher James William Parkin IV (Republican)
• Former Attorney General Treg Taylor (Republican)
• Palmer resident Bruce Walden (Republican)
• Businesswoman Bernadette Wilson (Republican) with Lt. Gov. candidate Mike Shower (Republican)

WASHINGTON — We’re only one month into election year 2026 and it’s already clear that the incumbents in Alaska’s federal races have a lot of money to defend their seats.

U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan raised nearly $7.5 million last year, according to his latest campaign finance report.

“We’re feeling incredibly strong about where our campaign is,” campaign spokesperson Nate Adams said. “Our fundraising is on track, and our support continues to grow.”

The campaign of Democratic challenger Mary Peltola is also touting its fundraising success. Peltola has only been in the race a few weeks and hasn’t had to disclose her contributions yet. But a Peltola campaign press release says she raked in $1.5 million on the first day after she announced. The campaign declined an interview request.

Campaign strategist Jim Lottsfeldt, who led a 2020 group that tried to unseat Sullivan, said the senator’s $7.5 million actually doesn’t give him much of a head start.

“Mary Peltola is in the middle of a money bomb, and she will raise every bit of that and more, and I think ultimately outspend Dan Sullivan,” Lottsfeldt said.

The U.S. Senate race is, so far anyway, a referendum on how people feel about President Trump, he said, and money doesn’t tell the whole story.

“The problem with money in this race is there’s going to be so much of it that most people will shoot their TVs and their computers,” he said. “And I’m not sure how it’s going to all get spent in a way that actually is effective.”

In the U.S. House race, Congressman Nick Begich’s campaign raised $3.2 million last year. Paul Smith, a consultant to the Begich campaign, said that’s an Alaska record for a U.S. House race in a non-election year.

“We feel really good about it and are proud of the start that he has to this election cycle, on the fundraising side,” Smith said.

Democratic challenger Matt Schultz, an Anchorage pastor, filed to run against Begich in October. He reported contributions of $300,000 by year’s end.

Schultz campaign manager Mai Linh McNicholas, said it’s a good foundation, with contributions from more than 2,000 people. She said Schultz set a fundraising record, too.

“It’s the most that any first-time candidate has raised, in an off-year, for this seat in Alaska,” she said.

An Independent candidate is also running for U.S. House — fisherman and retired educator Bill Hill. He hasn’t had to file a campaign finance report yet but his team says he’s raised, like Schultz, more than $300,000, and he did so in his first week.

The reports show Sullivan and Begich, like most incumbents, get significant money from Political Action Committees affiliated with corporations, trade associations and political groups. About half of their 2025 contribution totals are from individuals. The rest largely came from PACs, or “other authorized committees.”

WASHINGTON — Democrat Mary Peltola announced Monday that she’s running for U.S. Senate, taking on Republican incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan.

Peltola served one partial and one full term in the U.S. House, becoming the first Alaska Native person elected to Congress. She then narrowly lost her seat in 2024.

Her announcement Monday came with a video portraying her salmon-centered family life on the Kuskokwim River. She repeats her previous campaign slogan: “Fish, family, freedom.” She also hearkens back to Alaska senators who served in less partisan times.

“Ted Stevens often said, ‘To hell with politics. Put Alaska first,'” Peltola says on the video. “It’s about time Alaskans teach the rest of the country what Alaska first and, really, America first looks like.”

(Peltola modified Stevens’s oft-repeated quote. The late senator’s catchphrase was actually “To hell with politics. Just do what’s right for Alaska.”)

Nationally, Democrats believe that with Peltola on the ballot, Alaska presents one of their best hopes of flipping a seat. Political analyst and statistician Nate Silver said in a social media post last week that Democrats still have an uphill battle to win back the Senate majority but that Peltola’s candidacy moves their chances in Alaska from a long-shot to plausible.

Sullivan has already raised $6 million this election cycle. He has President Trump’s endorsement and maintains a strong alignment with Trump.

But, in what Democrats took to be a sign that he’s feeling the political heat, Sullivan last month unexpectedly voted to extend health insurance subsidies. He’s also touting a new bill that targets one of Peltola’s primary issues: Bycatch, or the accidental catch of salmon by the pollock fleet.

For U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Peltola’s candidacy presents a dilemma. They’re both moderates, and Murkowski endorsed Peltola in the past, despite their party differences. The senator declined to pick a side when a reporter asked before Christmas. But Thursday Murkowski said she’d made a decision: She’s endorsing her Republican colleague.

“We’ve had a pretty solid team here in the Senate for the past 12 years, so we want to figure out how we’re going to keep in the majority,” she said. “And Dan delivers that.”

Both sides are expected to pour tens of millions of dollars into the race.

Sullivan’s last race in 2020 was one of the most expensive elections in state history, with spending by the campaigns and outside groups totaling more than $57 million.

Sullivan was outspent but beat independent candidate Al Gross by a substantial margin.

Peltola lost her House seat to Republican Nick Begich. After ranked ballots were tallied in 2024, she had almost 49% of the vote to his 51%. (The rankings had little impact on the final result in that race. Before voters’ second- and third- choices were counted, Begich’s lead was slightly smaller.)

Sullivan and Peltola will face off first in a nonpartisan primary in August. The top four candidates will advance to a ranked-choice ballot in November.

One of Rep. Nick Begich III’s uncles is endorsing his main Democratic opponent, Matt Schultz, in next year’s election. Tom Begich’s name was atop a list released to the Alaska Beacon by Schultz’s campaign this month.

Begich’s endorsement of his nephew’s opponent won’t surprise people familiar with Alaska politics — he’s a longtime figure in the state’s Democratic scene, has been publicly critical of his nephew’s actions and is running as a Democrat in the governor’s election — but Schultz’s list and a similar list of endorsements by Republicans for Begich III shows how the state’s political establishment is settling on a two-person race for U.S. House, unlike the crowded contest for governor.

“It will be awkward. It’s always awkward,” Tom Begich said of the endorsement, “ but my mom taught us to learn to live with disagreement, to move beyond it. It doesn’t change the fact that I love my nephew. Just, I’m not supporting him in this election.”

Tom Begich is among 14 people — 12 Republicans and two Democrats — who have registered to run for governor in next year’s election.

Incumbent Gov. Mike Dunleavy is term-limited and unable to run.

While there are plenty of candidates for the governor’s seat, the number of people running for federal office is tiny. Incumbent U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Republican, doesn’t have a well-known challenger yet. Former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, a Democrat, has been rumored as a possible opponent but has yet to file.

In the U.S. House race, as Begich III seeks re-election, he has the endorsement of President Donald Trump and a wide range of state and national Republicans, including those running for governor on different tickets.

The same is true on the Democratic side, where support for Schultz appears almost entirely united.

“I’m very pleased to support him and glad he’s running,” said state Sen. Matt Claman, D-Anchorage and the other Democratic candidate in the governor’s race.

“I think he’s more connected with the general, broad spectrum of values in Alaska, more connected with some of the challenges we’re facing. He’s really looking carefully at how we’re dealing with homelessness, and I think he’s concerned about some of the affordability issues that are particularly a challenge in rural Alaska,” Claman said of Schultz.

Among the other people endorsing Schultz are independent state Rep. Alyse Galvin, who ran unsuccessfully for U.S. House in 2020 and 2018, and Forrest Dunbar, a Democratic state senator who ran unsuccessfully for House in 2014.

One notable absence is Peltola, who held Alaska’s U.S. House seat for one term before Begich III defeated her in the 2024 election.

Also missing is longtime Democrat Mark Begich, the incumbent Republican’s other uncle and Alaska’s U.S. senator from 2009 to 2015.

“There’s definitely been a lot of support from Democrats all around the state, and I’m very grateful for that. It seems to be a lot of coalescing support,” Schultz said by phone.

A pastor in Anchorage, Schultz spoke on the day that the U.S. House announced that it would not vote to renew subsidies for health insurance policies purchased on the federal marketplace.

Without those subsidies, the prices of many policies will spike with the start of the year.

“That’s really, really sad and disturbing,” Schultz said. “It seems like it should be a no-brainer that you start out by making sure that people can afford their lifesaving medicine.”

Schultz said that as he’s gone around seeking early support for his campaign, he’s found joy and excitement among people who want to find a common good.

“It really is this wonderful excitement to say — just like we pulled together as a nation to go to the moon, we can pull together as a state to provide food and health care to people. It’s a goal that matters so much and is so basically good at its heart that people can’t wait to start working for it,” he said. “I think there’s a hope out there that has felt absent in the last decade or so.”