Alaska Elections

Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor will resign Aug. 29, he told employees at the Alaska Department of Law in an all-staff email Thursday afternoon.

Taylor, who became the state’s top attorney in 2021 after his two immediate predecessors resigned in disgrace, is expected by political observers to join a competitive field of candidates running for governor in the state’s 2026 general election.

Incumbent Gov. Mike Dunleavy is term-limited and unable to run for reelection, leaving the office open to challengers.

This week, former Alaska Revenue Commissioner Adam Crum formally confirmed his plans to run for governor, and former state Sen. Tom Begich became the first Democrat to announce a run for the office. Bruce Walden of Palmer, who ran as a write-in candidate in 2022, filed for the office on Wednesday.

In addition to Crum and Walden, seven other Republicans have filed documents for a campaign: former state Sen. Click Bishop of Fairbanks; current state Sen. Shelley Hughes of Palmer, Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom of Eagle River; 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.

No independents have filed for the office, and Begich is the only Democrat who has filed.

While Taylor has not formally stated that he will run for governor, he has participated in a significant number of non-state events that appear to foreshadow a campaign.

Next Thursday, he was scheduled to join other Republican attorneys general in Anchorage at an event hosted by the Anchorage Republican Women’s Club. It wasn’t immediately clear whether that event would still take place.

In a written statement, Dunleavy thanked Taylor for his service and noted that he will end his career as the third-longest-serving attorney general in state history. In the same statement, Taylor thanked the employees of the Department of Law.

During four and a half years as attorney general, Taylor has tended to favor Christian conservative and Republican causes, aligning the state legally with other Republican attorneys general.

In 2022, Taylor helped fundraising efforts for a Republican group that ran ads opposing more moderate members of the state House and Senate in that year’s elections. Taylor’s family has backed efforts that would allow state homeschool funding to be used for tuition at private and religious schools.

Earlier this year, Taylor’s travel itinerary drew scrutiny after it was revealed that a corporate-funded group had paid at least $20,000 for a trip to France for Taylor and his wife.

Taylor’s time in office has corresponded with a drop in violent and sexual crime within the state. Alaska ranks among the worst states in the nation for both categories of crimes.

Dunleavy is expected to appoint an acting attorney general on or before Aug. 29.

Former state senator Tom Begich is running for governor.

Begich, an Anchorage Democrat, is the first Democrat in a field already crowded with Republicans.

The main reason he’s running, he said, is to reverse what he sees as state stagnation. He emphasized the need to boost education funding and wants to raise state revenues — from corporate taxes, trimming oil tax credits and the like. He says $500 million in new state revenue is within easy reach.

“That’s just about agreeing that these things make sense. None of those things cost an individual Alaskan anything,” he said. “What it requires is members of the Legislature and the governor to agree, and I’m not seeing that happen right now.”

Bills to change how the state taxes corporations and grants petroleum tax credits are pending in the Legislature but face an uncertain fate.

The last Democrat to win a statewide race in Alaska was Mary Peltola. She was elected to the U.S. House in 2022, lost in 2024 and hasn’t announced whether she’s running for any office in 2026. If she decides to run for governor, said he would drop out.

“I’ve always told her, and I would say this to you: if she were to get in this race, I wouldn’t need to be in this race. She would be in the race,” he said. “But I am in the race, and that is the difference.”

So far, Begich has only filed a letter of intent to run, but if he wins, he’d be the fourth in his family to hold statewide office. His father, Nick, and brother Mark served in Congress as Democrats. Tom is the uncle of Alaska Congressman Nick Begich III, a Republican.

Former Revenue Commissioner Adam Crum is throwing his hat in the ring for the 2026 Alaska governor’s race as a Republican. Crum filed paperwork on Monday allowing him to begin raising money for the campaign.

He’s running to replace his former boss, Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who is term-limited. Dunleavy first appointed Crum to lead the Department of Health and Social Services when he took office in 2018. He tapped Crum to lead the Department of Revenue in 2022.

In a brief interview, Crum said his experience in senior government roles, as well as in the private sector, gives him an edge in a crowded field.

“I understand the function of government, the function of the Legislature, the important things to the private sector, so I’ll have a functioning government up and running faster than anybody else,” Crum said.

Crum describes himself as a “conservative Christian” but said he’s willing to work across party lines. He said he’d like the state to diversify its economy and that his work as revenue commissioner would help him attract businesses to the state.

“One of the benefits of this role at Revenue is meeting with outside investors and actually talking to them about what are the issues they see, about why they don’t invest in Alaska, and what could be done to improve that,” Crum said.

Echoing Dunleavy, Crum also said he would like to reform the state’s public school system, which has languished near the bottom of national rankings. He said he hopes to work collaboratively with the Legislature on ways to improve education in the state.

“I think it’s very clear that there does need to be a level of investment, but there also has to be some change in policies,” he said.

Crum said he also wanted to work toward a new Permanent Fund dividend formula that’s predictable for residents and affordable for a state struggling with declining resource revenue.

“The reality is right now is there is not enough funds available to pay statutory dividends across the board, and I think we need an honest conversation about what is the dividend going forward, what level is appropriate and what is consistent,” he said.

The Department of Revenue faced criticism from legislative leaders earlier this year as lawmakers struggled to obtain data on oil and gas taxes in a format they could understand. The dispute led lawmakers to pass a bill bolstering the legislative auditor’s authority and override a veto from Dunleavy. Crum says on his last day in office on Friday, he directed department officials to cooperate with legislators’ requests.

“It’s going to be very costly in order to put it in this particular format, but they’re going to do that, and then everybody will see that there is no information that is being lost,” he said.

Crum is the eighth Republican to announce their campaign for governor. No Democrats or independents have formally joined the race. The filing deadline isn’t until next June.

Dunleavy announced Friday that Janelle Earls would take over as acting revenue commissioner. She had been the department’s administrative services director.

Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski isn’t ruling out running for governor.

When asked by a reporter Monday afternoon if she had considered adding her name to a long list of Republican candidates for the seat next year, she gave a short reply.

“Sure,” she said. “Lots of Republicans have.”

Associated Press reporter Becky Bohrer later asked Murkowski if she was being sincere.

“Was that a flippant response or a serious response?” Bohrer asked. “Is that something that you’re seriously considering at this time?”

“Well it was a little bit flippant, I have to admit,” Murkowski said laughing, “because everybody asks me about it. So you know when you’re asked, you’re like, ‘I don’t know. I was thinking about it.'”

Murkowski spoke during a wide-ranging, nearly 90-minute sit-down with reporters in her Anchorage office. Other topics included her displeasure with reductions in staffing for the National Weather Service, the delay in getting judicial nominees confirmed for Alaska’s U.S. District Court vacancies and the zeroing out of funding for the Denali Commission. She also defended her vote on President Trump’s reconciliation bill, also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill, and the carveouts she secured for rural health care.

“I did everything within my power as one lawmaker from Alaska to try to make sure that the most vulnerable in our state would not be negatively impacted,” Murkowski said. “And I had a hard choice to make, and I think I made the right choice for Alaskans.”

Alaska Survey Research released a poll Monday that showed Murkowski’s favorability with progressives and moderates had plummeted after she voted for the president’s bill. Both of those blocs of voters helped her get re-elected in 2022. Murkowski said the bill would have passed without her support.

“What I’m trying to do is not win elections,” Murkowski said. “I am just trying to do the best that I can for Alaskans.”

Murkowski has served as one of Alaska’s two U.S. senators since 2002, when her father Frank Murkowski appointed her to his seat following his successful bid for governor. She did not commit to a re-election bid for her Senate seat either on Monday, saying the election is years away. She’s not up for re-election until 2028.

Last year, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled in a 4-1 decision that Eric Hafner, an imprisoned felon in New York state, could remain on Alaska’s U.S. House ballot despite a lawsuit challenging his eligibility.

On Friday, the court issued a 22-page opinion explaining that its decision came down to the definition of the word “fifth.”

When Alaskans approved 2020’s Ballot Measure 2, they installed an open primary election and a ranked choice general election. The top four vote-getters in the primary election, regardless of party, advance to the general election.

If one of those top four candidates withdraws after the primary, a section of that ballot measure says that the Alaska Division of Elections should replace the withdrawn candidate “with the candidate who received the fifth most votes in the primary election.”

But in 2024, two Republican candidates withdrew after the primary, seeking to consolidate support behind fellow Republican Nick Begich III, the eventual winner.

That meant the sixth-place candidate, Democrat Eric Hafner, was promoted to the top-four general election.

Hafner had never lived in Alaska at the time of his candidacy and, if elected, would have been ineligible to serve in office because he was not a resident of the state at the time of his election, something required by the U.S. Constitution.

Alaska Democrats, fearing a split vote between then-incumbent Rep. Mary Peltola and Hafner, sued, arguing that the ballot measure allowed the Division of Elections to promote the fifth finisher to the top four, but not anything beyond that.

The Division of Elections and the Alaska Republican Party disputed that interpretation. An Anchorage Superior Court judge and the Supreme Court sided with the division, preserving Hafner’s candidacy.

In the end, it didn’t matter — Peltola lost to Begich by a margin that was wider than the number of votes Hafner received. Even if every Hafner voter had gone with Peltola, she still would have lost.

Writing after that result, four of the Supreme Court’s justices concluded that the plain language of the Ballot Measure 2 law “is susceptible to more than one reasonable interpretation” and is “ambiguous” about what happens if more than one winning candidate withdraws after the primary.

Given that, the justices relied on logic, prior case law and their view of voters’ intent when Alaskans approved Ballot Measure 2 in 2020.

Historically, the justices noted, they have issued orders that favor candidates’ access to the ballot.

Additionally, the language and context of Ballot Measure 2 support the idea that voters wanted to have four options in the general election.

“The language and purpose of Ballot Measure 2 favor the division’s interpretation: Allowing successive replacements aligns with the ballot measure’s goal of furnishing greater candidate choices for voters,” wrote Justice Jude Pate, an appointee of Gov. Mike Dunleavy, for the majority.

Under the Alaska Democratic Party’s interpretation of the law, the justices wrote, there could be a situation where three candidates withdraw after the primary election, leaving the remaining candidate unopposed in the general election, even if there were more candidates in the primary.

“We doubt that voters and the drafters would have intended such results,” Pate wrote of that hypothetical.

Writing in dissent was Justice Susan Carney, who said that the other four justices were wrong and that the plain language of the law is clear.

“It is hard for me to imagine plainer language than this statute uses to describe the candidate who will fill a vacancy on the general election ballot,” she wrote.

Carney wrote that “Ballot Measure 2 greatly increased Alaskans’ choices for representation” but that the plain meaning of “fifth” is clear and unambiguous.

Because of that fact, “the lengths to which the court has reached to conclude otherwise are unnecessary and unreasonable.”

Palmer state Sen. Shelley Hughes, a Republican, announced Thursday that she’s running for governor.

Hughes has served in the Legislature for more than a decade and has been a member of the Senate since 2017, including a two-year stint as Senate majority leader.

Hughes is a staunch conservative and is currently a member of the all-Republican Senate minority. At a campaign launch event at a barn in Palmer, Hughes touted her work on a variety of issues, emphasizing energy, education, agriculture and technology.

Hughes said as governor, she would be willing to work with legislators of all stripes. She recounted her work on the Alaska Reads Act, a literacy initiative put forward by Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy and by Democratic Sen. Tom Begich.

“I think the good Lord gave me the gift of being able to build consensus without forsaking my values and my principles,” she said. “That is a skill set that is very, very important for a governor to have, because you’re not always going to be given the legislature that you would maybe hand-pick yourself.”

At the same time, though, Hughes said she was willing to make unpopular decisions to address what she called a “rough patch” in the state’s financial situation driven in part by declining oil and gas revenue. Alaska governors play a key role in determining the state’s budget. Hughes described herself as a “limited government gal” and said artificial intelligence could play a role in streamlining the state’s operations.

“We do have to look at our budget and be very strategic and prioritize, and I am willing to take the heat, and it will take heat,” she said. “Because when you do that, you can have people on all sides not happy with you, but you’ve got to have someone with a vision that will hold the line.”

Hughes said she was concerned by the large number of able-bodied Alaskans who rely on Medicaid, saying she wanted to provide them with job training. She said that would reduce the number of employees that contractors would need to import from Outside to work on megaprojects like the Susitna-Wantana Dam and the Alaska LNG pipeline, which she said was “real” and “closer than it’s ever been.” President Donald Trump has repeatedly touted the 800-mile, $44 billion pipeline as a priority, though the long-dreamed project, now shepherded by developer Glenfarne, has yet to say whether it has the investors and customers needed for it to move forward.

Hughes also said she would continue Dunleavy’s push to expand the state’s role in promoting agriculture by elevating the state Division of Agriculture to a cabinet-level department. Lawmakers narrowly rejected Dunleavy’s proposal to do so earlier this year.

Hughes has in the past supported Dunleavy’s proposals to expand alternatives to traditional neighborhood schools, including homeschool and charter schools, though she did not address school choice in her campaign announcement. In prior interviews, she expressed support for school choice ideas like “backpack funding” and education savings accounts, which parents could use to subsidize private school tuition.

Hughes joins an increasingly crowded, all-Republican field for the 2026 governor’s race. She’s the seventh candidate to join the race. No Democrats have formally joined the race. The deadline to file is June 1, 2026.

Correction:An earlier version of this story misstated Sen. Tom Begich’s title. He served in the state Senate.