Alaska Elections

Former Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson is joining the race for governor. He announced his candidacy Thursday as he kicked off a two-day series of events in Fairbanks, Wasilla, Anchorage and Soldotna.

“I’ve tackled crime, I’ve taken on homelessness, I brought record investment to our city and I’ve shown that when you put the people first, government can work in the way it was intended,” Bronson said at the Anchorage event Friday morning. “That’s why I’m running for governor. To put Anchorage first, to put Alaska first, and to fight for a smarter, stronger government that serves the people, not the other way around.”

Bronson is running as a Republican and said in a news release that he plans to focus on economic growth, infrastructure, affordable housing, education and “protecting the Permanent Fund Dividend.”

In a crowded field that includes 12 Republicans, Bronson said he shared many of his competitors’ values and policy priorities, but he said his experience as mayor sets him apart.

“I’m the only one that’s had that executive experience,” he said. “Others have legislative experience, and that is important, don’t get me wrong, and others had some small business experience, but at the end of the day, chief executive experience within the government realm is fairly unique.”

Bronson rode a wave of pandemic-induced frustration to be elected to lead the state’s largest city, serving as Anchorage mayor from 2021 to 2024. He frequently clashed with the left-leaning Anchorage Assembly over the city’s approach to COVID-19 and homelessness, and faced accusations of creating a hostile work environment, resulting in numerous wrongful termination lawsuits and high amounts of staff turnover across departments.

He lost a bid for reelection to former Assembly chair Suzanne LaFrance last year.

Bronson said he expected to work closely with Republican caucuses in the state Legislature if elected.

“I’ve worked with the Legislature as mayor, many of the same folks in Juneau, and they’re far more reasonable and rational than the Assembly was,” he said. “I think it’ll be easier. It’ll be tough, but it won’t be irrational.”

Gov. Mike Dunleavy appointed Bronson head of the Anchorage International Airport in January. He left the role in September.

Dunleavy is term-limited and cannot seek reelection. Candidates have until June 1 to join the race.

Former Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor filed to join the 2026 race for governor on Wednesday. Taylor is the 10th Republican to enter the race to replace his former boss, Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who is term-limited.

Taylor was Dunleavy’s attorney general for more than four years and, in an interview, he said he could hit the ground running.

“I know what the issues are that we face,” he said. “We definitely need to get the economy moving again. We need to create good-paying jobs. We need affordable, reliable sources of energy and to get the cost of living down, and we need to get Juneau working again and not be politics as usual.”

Taylor touted his work challenging the Biden administration, especially on resource development, and his collaboration with the Trump administration. He said he worked with Trump’s team on the president’s Day 1 executive order seeking to ease drilling, mining and logging in the state.

Taylor also cited significant declines in violent crime and sexual assault in the state during his tenure as attorney general.

He said that if elected, he’d seek to attract data centers and other new businesses to the state, echoing a priority of Dunleavy.

“I think that the overall theme from me is going to be not taxing your tax base more, but growing your tax base,” he said.

Taylor also echoed Dunleavy’s approach to improving the state’s education system, saying he would focus on improving students’ performance, rather than seeking to boost funding for public schools. He pointed to “some distinction in the sort of the focus of what elements I would like to see in education, on the accountability side, on the option side” compared to Dunleavy’s approach but said he was still developing the specifics.

Taylor and his family have also backed efforts to allow students to use state homeschool funding to pay for tuition at private and religious schools, the subject of an ongoing lawsuit.

As the state continues to face a budget crunch, Taylor said he’d like to take a “serious look” at the state’s spending. He said he’d also like to scrutinize federal spending that flows to the state.

“What you know some people might call free money, well, it’s not free. It comes with purse strings, one, and two, it’s paid for by taxpayers like you and I,” he said. “We need to look and see what the cost of that money is to the state, and whether those programs and those things are worth (it) to the state.”

Taylor and his wife recently asked state campaign regulators for an exemption from a requirement to disclose the names of tenants paying rent at properties they own in Anchorage, saying disclosure would open the tenants up to harassment. The Alaska Public Offices Commission has yet to decide whether to grant the request.

Taylor joins nine other Republican candidates and one Democrat seeking to succeed Dunleavy.

The top four vote-getters in the August 2026 primary will advance to the general election in November.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Bernadette Wilson announced Tuesday that state Senate Minority Leader Mike Shower, a Wasilla Republican, would join her ticket as her pick for lieutenant governor.

Shower is a conservative who has served in the state Senate since 2018. He’s a commercial cargo pilot and retired Air Force officer. He has focused some of his legislative work on election security, though his reforms have largely failed to find support in the state Legislature.

Wilson highlighted that work in a statement, calling him a “deeply respected conservative leader.” If elected, Shower would be responsible for administering state election laws and appointing the director of the Division of Elections.

In a statement, Shower called Wilson “the clear choice to be Alaska’s next Governor.”

Wilson is a business owner, conservative activist and former talk radio host. She has never held elected office and pitches herself as an outsider.

Alaska’s 2026 governor’s race is becoming a very lopsided affair. While a dozen or so Republicans are either running or believed to be preparing a run, a big question hangs over potential Democratic hopefuls: What will Mary Peltola do?

Nobody has reliable intel, not even Alaska pollster Ivan Moore.

“Well, hang on. Let’s do this: I have three Alaskan buddies here in the car,” he said Monday, when he happened to be driving through western Canada.

He put his phone on mute to do some quick research.

“We had one yes and two nos to the question, ‘Is Mary Peltola going to run for governor?'” he said.

Moore himself is in the yes-she-will camp, making it 50-50 odds in one very unscientific sample.

What does former Alaska congresswoman Mary Peltola say about her plans? She declined to comment for this story. But she attended fundraisers this summer, met with important political players and spoke at the Alaska Democratic Party’s annual picnic, fueling much speculation and inquiry.

Peltola is the only Democrat to win statewide in years. She lost her seat last year to Republican Nick Begich. But Moore said, — based on his real polling, beyond the occupants of his car —that she remains popular. If she enters, Moore said she’d do well in the open primary and would be “overwhelmingly likely” to win one of the four spots on the ranked choice general election ballot in November 2026.

“So it’s kind of an awkward situation: Do you wait for Mary or do you get in?” Moore said, channeling the dilemma other Democratic hopefuls are in. “And if you get in, do you say that you’ll get out if she gets in? Because no one wants to just be in a race to lose it. No one wants to take money away from Mary.”

As he sees it, Alaska Democrats have an innate culture of not competing against each other, because they can’t afford to. There are fewer of them.

The only Democrat to enter the governor’s race so far is former state senator Tom Begich. He pledged to step aside if Peltola runs.

“And I’m hopeful that she will be in a statewide race, too, and that that statewide race will be for the U.S. Senate,” said Begich, who is the uncle of the current Alaska congressman.

Moore polled on the possibility that Peltola might challenge U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan. He found that more respondents had a positive view of Peltola but, in a head-to-head match, Moore’s poll suggests Sen. Sullivan would win.

Moore described those two findings as “very unusual” and attributes it to the incumbent advantage.

Axios and other news sites reported last month that Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer is recruiting Peltola to run against Sullivan. That could mean another multi-million contest, with national Republicans spending a ton of money in Alaska to defend what’s otherwise a safe seat for them. The National Republican Senatorial Committee says it’s not worried.

“Chuck Schumer’s best options in red-state Senate races are losers like Mary Peltola,” a spokesman told Axios.

Anchorage political consultant Jim Lottsfeldt, who generally helps Democrats and moderate Republicans, ardently hopes Peltola enters the governor’s race.

“I think she will just sail far and above everybody else, based on her popularity, her accomplishments, her name ID,” he said. “And the Republicans will be busy in a knife fight amongst the 47 of them to try to get the right to challenge her. It’s sort of a perfect race for her.”

Peltola could spend a year raising money and consolidating support across the left and middle, he said.

“Whereas, with that crowded Republican primary, everybody on that side has to figure out how to get to the second-, third- and fourth-places,” Lottsfeldt said. “And they’re going to be pursuing their niche.”

He figures they’ll take far-right positions to stake out specific GOP lanes to do well in the primary, and then have to walk it back by November.

Alaska AFL-CIO President Joelle Hall said it may feel like potential Democratic candidates are hanging back and waiting for Peltola, but it’s still early. The candidate filing deadline isn’t until June 1, 2026.

“She’s the most electable Democrat in the entire field, and so, yeah, it is natural for everybody to want to know what she’s thinking,” Hall said.

While Peltola lost in 2024, that was a presidential election year. Non-presidential years have lower turnout and Hall said the Alaska voters who stay home skew conservative.

Hall said she doesn’t care which race Peltola files for — governor or U.S. senator — as long as she runs.

“And then when she makes her choice,” Hall said, “we will organize ourselves to try to make the most out of the choice that she makes.”

A document submitted by the Alaska Division of Elections to the U.S. Department of Justice in response to a nationwide data request names 70 possible noncitizens who voted or attempted to vote in state or local Alaska elections since 2015.

Among the 70 people are 10 American Samoans from Whittier who now face state criminal charges related to their voting. American Samoans are not considered U.S. citizens by the federal government, and civil charges against an 11th individual are now being considered by the Alaska Court of Appeals.

Noncitizen voting remains extraordinarily rare, nationwide figures show, and Carol Beecher, director of the Alaska Division of Elections, said there is no evidence that noncitizen voting changed the result of last year’s elections here.

Ahead of last year’s elections, Donald Trump and other Republican politicians said they believed large numbers of non-U.S. citizens would seek to vote and influence the result of elections.

Since becoming president, Trump has asked Congress to impose citizenship checks on all potential voters. His Department of Justice has asked all 50 states for copies of their voter lists in order to create a national government database.

Alaska turned over its voter list and other documents to the U.S. Department of Justice last month.

In response to a public records request filed by the Alaska Beacon, the Alaska Division of Elections provided copies of documents it delivered to federal authorities.

Most of the documents, including a copy of the state’s official voter list, were already public. The voter list, for example, is available for purchase from any state elections office and doesn’t include sensitive information beyond a voter’s name, how often they’ve voted, and where they live.

The state’s inactive voter list — showing people whose voter registrations have been flagged for review and possible removal — is also a public record, but it isn’t commonly circulated. Inactive voters can’t cast a ballot without additional ID checks.

The inactive voter list provided to the DOJ and to the Beacon is from August. It includes 541 people whose voter records were tagged “NC” for non-citizen.

But it’s not clear whether these Alaskans are noncitizens or were on the list because of mistakes.

Carol Beecher, director of the Alaska Division of Elections, said some people may have been erroneously labeled, so it isn’t correct to say that there were 541 noncitizens registered to vote.

“As we get more information, things change. So what I’m telling you today on a number may change tomorrow because of new information that we got,” Beecher said in an extended interview on Wednesday.

Stephen Kirch, the division’s spokesperson, said by email that “the DOE cannot say with any degree of certainty whether the current number of NC-coded entries is ‘abnormal’ or ‘unusual’ in a historical context. This is because the number is a moving target and not a static one; it is not tracked.”

The inactive voter list shows only people whose records have been flagged for additional attention and isn’t confirmation that they are not citizens. It may include people who filled out paperwork incorrectly or registered to vote shortly before becoming a citizen.

“It’s really hard to say whether this particular number (541) is a problem, because there’s so many questions behind even that particular number,” said Mara Kimmel, a former immigration attorney who now works as executive director of the Alaska chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

That total also might miss noncitizens who are on the active voter list but haven’t yet been identified.

Beecher said she considers the “NC” tag to be “kind of like a file drawer. You put things into that file based on the status when you put it in there. But that could change.”

Kimmel said that the issue is “never as easy as it seems or as it would be framed. … Noncitizens voting has become a real political hot-button issue.”

In her experience, “there’s so much confusion and misinformation that is born out of a benign desire to participate in your new home.”

In Alaska, residents can register to vote by contacting the Alaska Division of Elections. Residents are also asked if they want to register when they update their driver’s license, get a new driver’s license, and apply for the annual Permanent Fund dividend.

As Beecher explained, if someone attests that they’re not a citizen through one method but says they are a citizen via a different method, that gets the attention of authorities.

“When we have gone in there and looked and contacted them, we have found that usually it was a mistake,” she said.

In other cases, particularly with the state’s “motor-voter” program, the mistake might come from a typo or someone’s misunderstanding of the rules, particularly if they don’t speak fluent English, as might be the case with new immigrants.

The Division of Elections doesn’t have investigative powers, which means voting officials rely on an applicant’s sworn oath about their citizenship. There’s no automatic double-checking, and it’s federally unconstitutional for the division to ask for proof of citizenship.

Judges have thrown out a Kansas law that required voters to verify citizenship, and the U.S. Supreme Court has only partially allowed a different Arizona law.

“All we get is the affirmation, and however frustrating that can be for everyone out there to say, ‘Well, why can’t you make sure?’ Well, we are not given that authority. So essentially, the division takes people at their word is really what it comes down to,” Beecher said.

If someone’s registration is flagged by a complaint or because of a discrepancy in the records, the division forwards the case to the Alaska Department of Law for investigation.

“We provide them with documents if they request that, as pursuant to an investigation, but if not, we may never hear from them,” Beecher said of the investigation.

In 2023, the division flagged the registration of Tupe Smith, a Whittier resident, after she ran for and won a seat on the local school board.

Smith was born in American Samoa, an island territory in the South Pacific. Its residents are U.S. nationals — having some of the same legal rights as other Americans — but aren’t citizens.

During the subsequent investigation, Alaska State Troopers learned of 10 other American Samoans who had voted in Alaska. The state charged them with civil crimes in April, and this week, they were indicted.

All 10 are labeled noncitizens on the inactive voter list supplied to the Beacon and Department of Justice. They, and another 60 other people, are shown as having voted or attempted to vote at least once during the past 10 years.

It isn’t clear whether all of those ballots were actually counted. Many are labeled as “questioned,” meaning that they were subject to additional ID verification. Beecher said “it’s possible” that some were counted but that she didn’t have numbers.

She believes “very few” noncitizens have voted.

“I’m speaking very anecdotally, because I don’t have those kinds of numbers for you, but our sense is that it’s very small. And I think the underlying reason for that is because there is no nefarious intent out there to try to sway an election. It’s people who either — and this is my personal opinion — they’re confused about the rules or somehow ended up marking something that they didn’t understand,” Beecher said.

Alaska had 605,302 registered voters on Aug. 3, according to Division of Election statistics.

If the noncitizen-tagged voters on the inactive list had still been active, they would have represented just 0.09% of Alaska voters.

Last year, 340,981 Alaskans voted in the state’s November general election. The division’s inactive list shows six noncitizens either voted or attempted to vote in that election.

In Michigan, officials announced in April that they had found 16 credible cases of noncitizen voting out of about 5.7 million votes cast overall, or one per every 360,000 votes.

Nationally, noncitizen voting remains exceptionally rare.

Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage and a supporter of election reform legislation in Alaska, noted that the rate of noncitizen voting in Alaska is likely well below the rate at which legitimate voters are being disqualified because of problems with the state’s absentee voting system.

“Any time you have people who are voting that shouldn’t be voting, that’s cause for concern,” Wielechowski said in an interview Wednesday.

“But at the same time, we’ve got hundreds of people that we know of, actually thousands of people who were disenfranchised,” he said, referring to the state’s regular practice of disqualifying absentee ballots because of submittal errors.

“In rural Alaska, we had 10% or 15% of the population in rural Alaska that was disenfranchised a couple of years ago, legitimate voters who were disenfranchised because of a bureaucratic technicality that’s not even checked. So I think there’s bigger problems,” Wielechowski said.

In 2023, Rep. Sarah Vance, R-Homer, proposed legislation that would have required the Division of Elections to cross-check the state’s voter rolls with a national citizenship database.

“I always like to presume innocence, but we have to put the safeguards in place, and by having the division use those databases as a check and balance, I think that’s a very simple way to make sure that we’re crossing our T’s and dotting I’s,” Vance said Wednesday.

She noted that current Speaker of the House Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham, won his 2006 primary election via a coin toss that followed a tied election.

“When you look at how slim some of our elections are, how tight races can be, these numbers matter,” she said.

The Alaska Senate stripped out Vance’s citizenship provision and passed a revised bill, but the Republican-led House failed by a single vote to take up the legislation on the last day of the regular session in 2024. The bill died at the end of the session, and lawmakers started anew this spring.

In recent years, the Alaska Department of Law has requested funding for a part-time elections investigator. The Legislature has not approved that request.

“We shouldn’t have anyone voting in our elections on any level who shouldn’t be,” Vance said.

“This is important and significant because we want to make sure that we protect the sovereignty of every individual’s vote,” she said.

A year before Alaska’s 2026 primary election, 10 candidates have already announced their intent to run for governor, and more are expected to announce campaigns in the coming months.

Incumbent Gov. Mike Dunleavy is term-limited and unable to run himself, and with so many people in the race, there is no clear front-runner.

During a question-and-answer session at this week’s Alaska Oil and Gas Association conference in Anchorage, Dunleavy was asked who he supports.

Among the confirmed candidates are Dunleavy’s lieutenant governor, Republican Nancy Dahlstrom, and his former revenue commissioner, Adam Crum. His former attorney general, Treg Taylor, is also expected to enter the race.

But given the opportunity to endorse any or all of them, Dunleavy didn’t name any specific candidate as his preference and spoke only in generalities.

“Who do you want to replace you as governor?” asked the event moderator.

“Somebody taller than me,” Dunleavy said to laughter. “No, I’m kidding. … Somebody that believes in Alaska like you do and like I do. You’ve got to be on a mission, right?”

Dunleavy said he believes any governor faces distractions and nay-sayers, people who will oppose projects and a governor’s efforts.

“I would hope that whoever is the next governor has a mission to continue the good things that are happening for the state, continue to work with the Trump administration, because I’ll be gone,” Dunleavy said, alluding to President Donald Trump’s efforts to increase mining, logging and oil and gas drilling in Alaska.

“There’ll be two more years, at least, of President Trump, and hopefully someone after him in a similar vein, who wants to keep this going for the country. So whoever you talk to that’s running for governor, ask them what their mission is. If they balk, or they look up at the sky or they think about it, that’s a concern,” the governor said. “Getting things across the finish line, getting things across the finish line, is the most important thing.”

After the governor’s remarks, deputy press secretary Grant Robinson said by email that the governor’s statement about “at least” two more years was “nothing more than an approximation of the time remaining in the President’s term.”

The 22nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibits someone from being elected President more than twice.

Dunleavy’s own political future is also in question. On Thursday, Fox News, citing unnamed sources, said the governor is considering whether to run against Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, when her current term expires in 2028.

The Fox News report could not be immediately corroborated, but Murkowski herself has said she may leave the Senate. In interviews earlier this month, she declined to rule out a run for governor in 2026.

In addition to Crum and Dahlstrom, seven other Republicans have filed documents for a campaign: former state Sen. Click Bishop of Fairbanks; current state Sen. Shelley Hughes of Palmer; 2022 write-in governor candidate Bruce Walden of Palmer; Matanuska-Susitna Borough Mayor Edna DeVries; podiatrist Matt Heilala of Anchorage; former teacher James William Parkin IV of Angoon; and business owner Bernadette Wilson of Anchorage.

Former state Sen. Tom Begich of Anchorage is the only Democratic candidate to have filed paperwork for a candidacy, and no independents have entered the race so far.