4 Special Coverage

Two proposed ballot initiatives received enough public support to appear in Juneau’s municipal election this fall. Voters will be asked whether to place a limit on the city’s property tax rate and remove local sales tax on food and utilities. 

Angela Rodell is a member of the advocacy group behind the ballot initiatives called the Affordable Juneau Coalition. She said the goal of the two propositions is to lower the cost of living for residents in Alaska’s capital. 

“I look at it as ‘How do we get some money back to people so that they can feel like they’re getting a little bit of relief?’” she said. 

The advocacy group gathered more than 2,700 signatures for each proposition within the city clerk’s office’s extended deadline. It also sought signatures for a third petition to make in-person voting the default again in Juneau’s local elections. Rodell said it didn’t quite get enough signatures.

The city’s current local sales tax on food and utilities brings in a combined $10 to $12 million in revenue each year. If the ballot proposition to remove those taxes is approved by voters, city leaders say the city would likely have to reduce its spending or slash some services to make up the gap. 

The proposed cap on the city’s property tax rate would also significantly reduce the city’s income. Property taxes make up roughly 40% of the city’s general fund revenue.

Rodell, who unsuccessfully ran for mayor last election, said she hopes the proposed property tax limit will push Assembly members to make tough decisions and focus city spending on community needs versus wants.  

“What we’re asking the city to do is to continue to be really thoughtful about how and where and when they collect tax and spend that tax to keep Juneau affordable,” she said. 

The Assembly is also currently considering a separate proposal that would exempt food and utilities from sales tax by putting into place a new seasonal sales tax system. Members have until later this month to take public testimony and decide whether to put that question on the ballot for voters.

Voting in this year’s municipal election ends on Tuesday, Oct. 7.

After 22 years in the Alaska Senate, Senate President Gary Stevens is retiring.

Stevens’ decision has been discussed in the Alaska Capitol for more than a year, but on Tuesday, it became official as Kodiak Republican Rep. Louise Stutes became the first person to announce that she will run for Stevens’ seat.

“I certainly will endorse Louise any way I can to help her out,” Stevens said on Wednesday. “She should be a really fine senator. She’s had a lot of experience in the House, and I think she’d do a great job, and I’d be glad to help her out in any way I can.”

Stutes filed a letter of intent with the Alaska Public Offices Commission shortly after the Alaska Legislature adjourned its regular session for the year.

Legislators are forbidden from campaigning during the session, and the day after the first year of the legislative session typically marks the informal opening of the candidate filing period.

Campaigning typically doesn’t begin in earnest until after the second year of the legislative session.

Stutes’ early start may be a foreshadowing of things to come in the district: Stevens has represented the area covering Kodiak and the southern Kenai Peninsula since being appointed to the seat in 2003, making next year’s election a generational shift for the district.

Stutes said on Wednesday that fundraising doesn’t come naturally to her, “so I thought that I’d better get a jump start on it. You can’t get a jump start on it until you file your letter.”

Stutes said she doesn’t know whether there will be many candidates in the race.

Each of Alaska’s Senate districts includes two House districts. Rep. Sarah Vance, R-Homer, represents the other half of Stevens’ district and hasn’t filed a letter of intent for next year’s elections. She did not return a phone call seeking comment on Wednesday afternoon.

Stutes noted that her husband, commercial fisherman Stormy Stutes, grew up in Anchor Point, and they still have family members who live in Vance’s district, so she has connections to that part of Alaska.

This isn’t the first time that Stevens has said he will retire, but it’s certain this time.

“I’m 83 now. I’ll be 85 when I retire, and I think that’s just enough,” he said by phone. “I have other plans, things I want to do. I wrote a play about Ted Stevens that was successful in Anchorage; I want to do another one. I’m a bit of a painter, and I want to go on and do painting and writing and concentrate on those things, as well as spend time with my grandkids.”

Stutes said she’s been interested in running to replace Stevens since that first abortive retirement.

“I’m really lucky. Gary and I get along really well. … He’s been wonderful to work with. I’ll really miss him, of course, because we have such a great working relationship,” she said.

Voters elected Stutes to replace longtime Kodiak lawmaker Alan Austerman in 2014 and reelected her five times since then. She has governed as a moderate Republican, frequently joining the House’s predominantly Democratic coalition and once served a term as speaker of the House.

“I’m like every legislator. I really feel like I’m helping my district and Alaskans. Right or wrong, I feel like I’ve been able to make a difference with the Marine Highway System. I believe I’ve been able to help bring fisheries to the forefront,” Stutes said. “When I first got elected years ago, I told Stormy that the one thing I want to do is take fisheries from the back burner and put them on the front burner. And I think that I’ve been somewhat successful in moving it forward.”

The Alaska Senate is currently controlled by a 14-person bipartisan coalition that includes nine Democrats and five Republicans. Three of those Republicans are up for reelection next year, and all are in potential swing districts.

Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka, and Senate Majority Leader Cathy Giessel, R-Anchorage, said they will run for office again. Stevens is the third.

Among the coalition’s Democrats, Sens. Elvi Gray-Jackson, D-Anchorage, and Löki Tobin, D-Anchorage, both confirmed that they will run for reelection.

Sens. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, and Lyman Hoffman, D-Bethel, have not yet filed letters of intent. Hoffman has been in the Legislature since 1987 and in the Senate since 1991, making him the longest-serving legislator in state history.

Senate Minority Leader Mike Shower, R-Wasilla, said on Wednesday that he hasn’t yet decided whether he will run for reelection.

Sens. Shelley Hughes, R-Palmer, and Rob Myers, R-North Pole, also face reelection next year. Neither returned a text message seeking comment on Wednesday.

Among incumbent members of the state House, Reps. Maxine Dibert, D-Anchorage, Carolyn Hall, D-Anchorage, and Donna Mears, D-Anchorage, have all filed letters of intent for reelection.

Former Rep. Cliff Groh, D-Anchorage, announced that he will again seek to challenge Rep. David Nelson, R-Anchorage, in 2026. Nelson had been elected in 2020, lost to Groh in 2022 and defeated Groh in 2024.Through Wednesday afternoon, Groh was the only nonincumbent to file with the Public Offices Commission.

The local advocates who filed a petition with the City and Borough of Juneau last month to put harder limits on cruise ship tourism have withdrawn it. 

That means voters won’t see the question on the municipal ballot this fall. According to Karla Hart, one of the advocates who filed the petition, they weren’t able to gather the minimum of 2,720 signatures before Monday’s deadline. 

Hart said she still thinks there is a lot of community support for limiting the growth of cruise ship tourism, but there just wasn’t for this particular ballot measure. 

“In the conversations that I had with people, I don’t think that it’s the right initiative,” she said. “I think that we need to regroup and refocus and take on the myriad of different pieces that are really adversely impacting our lives.” 

The proposed initiative sought to impose a five-ship daily limit, cap the annual number of cruise ship visitors at 1.5 million a year, and limit daily cruise visitors to 16,000 people on most days and 12,000 on Saturdays. It also sought to shorten the season.

Those mirror agreements that the city has already signed with cruise lines. The difference is that those agreements are non-binding and voluntary, while the petitioners sought to make them law. 

The petition saw legal pushback from a tour company. The company’s attorney Scott Collins called the proposed initiative poorly drafted and “wholly inadequate in attempting to address the complexity of limiting, permitting, and penalizing cruise ship visitation.”

Hart said she may revive an iteration of last election’s failed Ship-free Saturday in a future election. But, in the meantime, she said she and other advocates plan to keep pushing for city officials and Assembly members to take action.

“I think that these efforts are important for keeping pressure on and showing that if things don’t improve for the citizens, we do have options and we are willing to exercise them,” she said. 

There are three other proposed ballot propositions currently still in the signature gathering phase. Those petitioners seek to cap the property tax rate, to remove sales tax on food and utilities and to make in-person voting the default again.

Conservative activist Bernadette Wilson announced on the steps of the Alaska State Capitol in Juneau on Tuesday that she’s entering the race for governor.

Wilson, a business owner who has also led conservative policy groups, pitched herself as a political outsider in an interview.

“I think it’s time that we take someone with a business background and entrepreneurial spirit, someone that hasn’t been jaded, you know, within the halls of this building, and we get infrastructure done,” she said. “We’ve got to sit down and have a serious conversation about how we’re going to get education in this state. There’s no reason Alaska shouldn’t be No. 1.”

Wilson says she has deep roots in the state as the great-niece of former Alaska Gov. Wally Hickel and a member of the Naknek Native Village Council. She is the majority owner of the nine-year-old Anchorage garbage company Denali Disposal, according to state records.

Wilson has also been active in conservative politics. She’s a sponsor of the latest ballot initiative seeking to ask voters in 2026 to repeal Alaska’s open primaries and ranked choice voting. Until recently, she was the interim executive director of the Alaska Policy Forum, a conservative think tank. Prior to that, she was the state director for the Alaska arm of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative advocacy group affiliated with brothers Charles and David Koch. Wilson was the top choice in a straw poll of readers conducted by the conservative site Must Read Alaska.

In her announcement, broadcast on social media by Must Read Alaska, Wilson said her lack of experience in elected office was an asset.

“Current leaders like President Donald Trump and Congressman Nick Begich, previous leaders like Governor Hickel have all gone and done wonderful things for our state and for our country, but they all have one thing in common,” she said. “None of them had a government bureaucrat background when they started. Indeed, even when President Ronald Reagan first ran for governor of California, he had not been in government.”

Wilson also lamented the state’s failure to pay Permanent Fund dividends in line with a formula in state law that lawmakers have essentially ignored since the mid-2010s, when oil prices crashed and the state started relying on an annual draw from the Permanent Fund to pay for state services. The Permanent Fund draw has replaced oil revenue as the top source of the state’s unrestricted cash, which pays for everything from state troopers and schools to roads, bridges and ferries.

As oil prices drop on weakening global demand and growing supply from abroad, the state faces a grim fiscal future. Senators recently approved an austere budget while warning of even tougher times to come. Legislators in the predominantly Democratic bipartisan coalition in the Senate have pushed to expand taxes on out-of-state corporations and oil and gas companies to help close the gap, but they have run into resistance from Gov. Mike Dunleavy and the narrowly divided House.

Asked how she would address the state’s looming budget crunch, Wilson said she would reduce the state workforce.

“We have one of the highest rates of public employees, government employees per capita than any other state,” she said. “It’s time for us to look at the bloat. Is it going to be painful? Absolutely, it is. But we need to take a strong look at that budget and figure out, what are we going to do?

Though she holds a number of traditionally conservative positions on resource extraction and development, Wilson breaks from Gov. Mike Dunleavy on one key issue: She said she would like to see a significant increase in education funding in an effort to improve student performance.

“I am tired of hearing an arbitrary number on education continually get thrown out, whether it’s $1,000, $1,200, $700. I want to support a (basic school funding) increase that’s the number that the education bureaucrats can look at me and say, Bernadette, that’s the number that’s going to make us number one in the country,” she said. “That’s the number that I want to know. That’s the number that we should be supporting.”

Dunleavy has repeatedly said funding alone would not improve the state’s school system. Education advocates have pushed for a more than $1,800 increase in basic funding to restore schools’ buying power to what it was in 2011, though lawmakers and the governor have said the decline in oil prices has made such a move unaffordable. A bipartisan bill that would, among other reforms, boost basic per-student funding by $700 is pending on Dunleavy’s desk, and he told superintendents on Thursday he plans to veto it unless lawmakers pass additional education policy changes.

But Wilson shares some positions with Dunleavy and other conservative Republicans on public education, including support for so-called education savings accounts, a voucher-like system that allows students to use government funds to attend private schools.

That’s an issue in a high-profile constitutional case working its way through Alaska’s court system challenging the use of state homeschool funds on private school tuition. The Alaska Constitution prohibits the use of public funds “for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution.”

Wilson lives in Anchorage, but she said she kicked off her campaign in Juneau to illustrate her willingness to go “right into the belly of the beast.”

Wilson joins an all-Republican field for the 2026 race alongside Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom and former Fairbanks Sen. Click Bishop.

President Donald Trump has endorsed incumbent Rep. Nick Begich III, R-Alaska, for reelection.

In a social media post Thursday afternoon, Trump said Begich “is doing an incredible job representing the Great People of Alaska, a State I love, and WON BIG THREE TIMES, in 2016, 2020, and 2024!”

Begich responded by posting a social media message of his own, thanking Trump for his support.

“Together we are working to Unlock Alaska’s FULL potential!” Begich wrote.

In the 2024 U.S. House election, Begich was Trump’s second choice. He initially supported Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, but when Dahlstrom withdrew from the race after finishing third in the primary election, Trump switched to Begich.

In 2024, Begich defeated incumbent Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, by 7,876 votes out of 321,846 counted, or 2.44 percentage points.

Begich is the only candidate who has formally indicated his intent to run for Alaska’s seat in the 2026 election so far.

The national Democratic Party has named Alaska as one of its top targets for the 2026 election, but no candidates have yet signed up to challenge Begich.

Campaign finance documents published by the Federal Elections Commission show Peltola as a candidate, but that is incorrect; Peltola has $20,794.30 remaining from her 2024 election run.

Begich raised more than $800,000 during the first quarter of 2025 for his reelection campaign, with much of the money coming from Republican-aligned political committees. Jeffery Hildebrand, the billionaire owner of oil and gas firm Hilcorp, also was a major contributor.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, which is supporting Begich’s reelection, said in a statement that the Trump endorsement and Begich’s fundraising shows his “growing momentum” for 2026.

Under Alaska’s elections system, all candidates run in the same primary election, and the top four vote-getters advance to the general election, where a winner is chosen by ranked choice voting.

Former Republican state Sen. Click Bishop of Fairbanks and Republican Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom are running for governor.

On Monday, Bishop filed a letter of intent with the Alaska Public Offices Commission, an act that signals his readiness to begin raising money for the 2026 election. Hours later, Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom filed a similar letter of intent.

Incumbent Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy is term-limited and unable to run for reelection in 2026. Bishop was the first person to formally launch a campaign in next year’s governor’s race.

“I got bib No. 1 coming out of the starting chute,” Bishop said. “I just hope that we can maintain that through to the election.”

Dahlstrom did not answer a call on her listed number or immediately respond to a voicemail message seeking comment.

Dahlstrom, 67, has been Alaska’s lieutenant governor since replacing Kevin Meyer in 2022. A resident of Eagle River, she ran for Alaska’s lone U.S. House seat in 2024 but withdrew from that race after finishing third in the primary election. That decision helped consolidate Republican support behind the eventual winner, Republican Nick Begich.

Bishop, who served 11 years in the Alaska Senate, often as a member of a bipartisan coalition, declined to run for reelection in 2024. At the time, he said he was not done with public service, a comment that was widely interpreted to mean that Bishop was taking a break before running for statewide office.

“People have mentioned it over — about the last eight years, ‘Man, we think you’d make a great governor.’ And of course, your friends are going to tell you that, and they’re sincere. I don’t mean that in a flippant way. And, I got to thinking … (I’m) going to be 68 in July, and I think that if I’m going to do it, now is the time to do it,” he said.

Alaska’s next governor is likely to face immense challenges. The state’s budget is expected to be in deficit, and lawmakers are predicting that they will seek to tap the state’s main savings account next year, possibly leaving the incoming governor with few financial levers.

The state’s public schools are performing poorly by national testing standards, its population has plateaued for more than a decade, its violent crime rate is among the worst in the nation, and it has a large problem with homelessness.

In the Senate, Bishop governed as a moderate, willing to work across party lines while representing his district.

Asked if he governs like U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, he said, “I think that’s it. I don’t get mad and take all my toys home because I don’t get my way. I mean, you have to continue to work with people. … If somebody’s wanting an incendiary bomb-thrower, I’m not that person.”

While in the Senate, he proposed a per-person tax to benefit schools and an increase in the state’s lowest-in-the-nation gas tax. Neither proposal became law. He was able to create a statewide education lottery system based around the Permanent Fund dividend.

Monday’s filings are unusually early by historical standards. When Dunleavy applied for the 2018 governor’s race, he filed a letter of intent in July 2017. Ahead of the 2022 election, the three leading candidates all filed letters of intent in August 2021.

The 2026 governor’s race is expected to feature a crowded field of candidates. It will be the first time since 2002 that an incumbent governor is not on the ballot.

“I don’t know — you might see a dozen (candidates),” Bishop said when asked how many people he expects to enter the race.

Under Alaska’s election system, governor and lieutenant governor candidates run together, on a single ticket.

Bishop said he’s thought about some names for his lieutenant governor, but he isn’t ready to make a decision.

“I will not commit to anything as far as lieutenant governor at this point; we’re a long ways off, but we’ll see how it goes,” he said.

He added that a bellwether for his campaign will be his ability to raise money.

Alaska currently has no limit on the amount of money that an individual can donate to a political campaign. In the 2022 governor’s race, the top two candidates each reported raising more than $2 million. The third raised more than $1.5 million.

“I know a lot of little people and big people, but we’ll see,” he said. “We’ll give ‘er our best shot. Now we’re going to see who was serious about me running or not serious about me running.”

Bishop owns a small gold mine in Interior Alaska and when reached on Monday said he plans to spend the next week working there before fully launching his campaign.

“We’re going to mine this summer, but we’ve got strategic events — listening sessions — over the course of the summer, but they will ramp up after freezeup,” he said.

“I’m just looking forward to seeing and meeting with the people of Alaska to hear them.”