Category: Alaska News

Hospitals, fire stations and clinics in Alaska may soon have ‘baby boxes’ able to safely and anonymously accept infants surrendered by parents who may be unable to care for them. 

In a 35-5 vote Monday, the Alaska House of Representatives approved Senate Bill 9, amending the state’s safe-surrender law for infants to permit the construction of unmanned drop-off locations at public facilities. The Senate initially approved the bill in April.

SB 9, from Rep. Robb Myers, R-North Pole, is similar to legislation that has already been enacted by 22 other states.

“Safe surrender laws are a tool to help save lives,” Myers said in a prepared statement after the bill passed. “SB 9 puts another tool in the kit to help parents in crisis and keep babies in safe environments instead of the side of the road.”

The Senate voted 20-0 on Tuesday to accept the amended version of SB 9 passed by the House on Monday, an act that will send the bill to Gov. Mike Dunleavy for enactment or veto.

Rep. Frank Tomaszewski, R-Fairbanks, sponsored the bill in the House and explained that it offers an alternative to Alaska’s existing safe-surrender law, which already permits someone to surrender an infant less than 21 days old to a responsible person.

Rep. Zack Fields, D-Anchorage, was one of a handful of legislators who voted against the bill. He said he was concerned about the implications for surrendering an infant who may have been kidnapped.

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy said Tuesday he is ordering state lawmakers into a special session to force a new decision on his top priority: property tax breaks for the company proposing to build a massive pipeline system to ship natural gas from the North Slope to tidewater.

Dunleavy outlined his plan during a news conference at the Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference in Anchorage. 

The special session, to start 10 a.m. Thursday morning, “will go on as long as they need to come up with a decision,” he said at the news conference.

The Legislature’s ongoing regular session ends at 11:59 p.m. Wednesday night, and legislators will enter special session the following morning.

The governor has characterized property tax-relief for the project as his top priority, and at the news conference he accused lawmakers of risking Alaska’s future by rejecting his plan.

The bill would replace state and local petroleum property taxes with an “alternative volumetric tax” on natural gas that would eventually flow through the pipeline.  That gives Glenfarne Group, the company developing the pipeline in conjunction with the state, a tax break that its leaders have said is necessary to attract investors.

Negotiations to pass the governor’s preferred legislation fell apart on Monday, and Dunleavy blamed lawmakers for that outcome.

“This is a decision on the part of a handful of folks in Juneau who wish, for whatever reason I don’t understand, (to) play with the future of Alaska,” he said at the news conference.

Legislative critics of Dunleavy’s approach said Glenfarne had provided too little information on its cost estimates, thus making it impossible for them to determine whether the proposed tax break was appropriate. Some argued that the process had been too rushed. Dunleavy introduced his proposal in March, with the regular session half over.

But the governor had harsh words for those lawmakers. He said they were focused on the wrong things after an extremely cold winter that strained energy supplies in the populated Railbelt corridor.

“Last night there was time to shove a spay and neuter bill into an invasive species bill in (House) Finance,” he said at Tuesday’s news conference. “So Rome is burning and we’re shoving a spay and neuter bill into an invasive species bill.”

Dunleavy was referring to a popular bill to establish a statewide spay and neuter fund, House Bill 258, which was combined during Monday’s House Finance Committee meeting with another bill related to animals, Senate Bill 174, that would establish a state invasive species council. It has since been removed from the bill.

U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, a featured speaker at the conference, also nudged lawmakers to accept Dunleavy’s plan.

As a former governor of North Dakota, Burgum said he considered it “inappropriate” for him to insert himself into Alaska legislative business. However, he said lawmakers should focus on getting the gas pipeline built before worrying about how the revenues from it would be allocated.

“The key thing for when we’re competing (for) capital that can go anywhere around the world, the key thing for Alaska is: Get the project,” he said at the news conference. Alaskans should not worry about the revenue distributions until after a project is built and providing its promised myriad economic benefits, he said.

Burgum’s comments at the news conference echoed comments he made about the gas pipeline during his address at the conference.

“That project has to happen. And I would just invite Alaska to not get in your own way if you’re worrying about, ‘How do we divide up the pie,’ and the pie hasn’t even been baked yet,” he said. He called the gasline “a generational, transformational project that’s going to affect the state, the communities, the prosperity, the universities. I mean, the benefits of this thing are unbelievable.”

But lawmakers say those benefits have not been made clear to them, and neither have the cost tradeoffs.

Senate President Cathy Giessel, R-Anchorage, did not mince words in a newsletter she issued Tuesday morning that said the governor has demanded that lawmakers “pass his version of a gas pipeline bill that no one is allowed to know much about.”

“His version of a gas pipeline defies our Constitution – ignoring resource development for benefit of Alaskans (benefit for a private company), surrenders our taxing authority (removes local taxation authority, forbids financial transparency, logical financial assessment),” Giessel’s newsletter said.

Dunleavy’s decision to veto a pension-overhaul bill that had been two years in the making after lawmakers rejected this gas pipeline bill was a “transactional” decision that is “the worst possible way to make public policy,” she said.

The post Dunleavy calls special session Thursday on Alaska gasline tax break appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.

The rising cost of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel is forcing companies that move people and goods to recoup some of the additional expense, including adding fuel surcharges to ticket prices and freight rates, with the surcharge changing as often as every week.

The U.S. Postal Service is doing the same thing. Its temporary price increase which went into effect in late April is 8% on Priority Mail Express, Priority Mail, USPS Ground Advantage and Parcel Select.

Though the surcharge is set to remain in place until Jan. 17, 2027, the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors and the Postal Regulatory Commission could raise or lower it at any time — or vote to extend the add-on.

In addition to mailing packages, Alaskans will pay the high cost of fuel when they fly or ship goods into or out of the state. As of last week, the surcharges ranged 6% to more than 30%.

The U.S. war on Iran, along with the Persian Gulf nation’s retaliatory response to close off the Strait of Hormuz to oil tanker traffic, have sent global oil prices up 75% since the start of the year, driving up the price at the pump for gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other refined products.

The average price for gasoline across the United States is up 40% from a year ago, with diesel and jet fuel up 60% to 70%, according to companies that track commodity prices.

The national average for gasoline last week was over $4.50 a gallon, up from $3.19 a year ago, according to AAA. Last week’s average was over $5.25 in Alaska, and more than $6 in California, the highest in the nation, AAA reported.

Airlines nationwide have raised baggage fees and other charges, in addition to higher air fares, rather than impose fuel-specific passenger ticket surcharges.

Alaska Airlines last month raised its checked-bag fees $5 for the first bag (now $45) and $10 for a second bag (now $55).

There is no change to the free bags allowed for Alaska residents who sign up for the airline’s Club 49 program, which allows three free checked bags for in-state travel and two bags for out-of-state flights. 

The airline’s jet fuel costs in the first three months of this year averaged $2.98 a gallon, according to its first-quarter financial report. But the company was expecting April’s bills to average around $4.75 a gallon.

The higher price anticipated for April, May and June “adds approximately $600 million of expense to the second quarter,” the company announced. “We expect to consume approximately 297 million gallons of fuel in the quarter based on our current capacity plan.”

Juneau-based Alaska Seaplanes and its partner Island Air Express based on Prince of Wales Island operate about 20 aircraft serving scheduled routes in Southeast. They imposed a 6% surcharge on all fares in mid-March.

The company cites a nearly 40% increase in fuel costs. 

“We just are not able to absorb that,” said company spokesman Andy Kline. “We didn’t want to roll that cost into our fares, because we want it to be temporary,” he said. “We want it to reflect directly the cost that we’re taking on with the fuel.”

The company buys Jet A fuel for its turbine-powered aircraft, and aviation gas for its piston-driven planes.

Alaska Marines Lines, which provides weekly freight barge service from Seattle to Southeast Alaska, as of last week was adding an 18.5% surcharge on all shipments. The rate was 11% in March. It was 9.5% in March 2025.

This spring’s higher rate “reflects the escalation in fuel costs resulting from the continued disruption to global energy markets,” Ryan Dixon, director of marketing and media for the Seattle-based company, said in an email.

“Fuel is a significant component of freight operations, and this volatility is having an impact on transportation costs throughout the industry.”

AML’s surcharge is higher for longer routes that burn more fuel, including its barge service to Cordova, Valdez, Dutch Harbor, the Aleutian Islands, Western Alaska, the Arctic and Hawaii.

TOTE, which operates twice-a-week cargo ships from Tacoma, Washington, to Anchorage, set its surcharge at 29.5% effective May 17. It ties its weekly adjustments to the average U.S. West Coast diesel fuel price, as posted by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Matson, which operates twice-a-week cargo ships from Tacoma to Anchorage and Kodiak, announced its surcharge will increase to 31% as of June 7.

National and international freight haulers are doing the same thing: The surcharge on all services at FedEx will go up to 27.25% on May 24. UPS was adding 31.25% to all air shipments as of last week.

This story originally published in the Wrangell Sentinel.

The post Freight haulers, air carriers, even post office adds fuel surcharges appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.

A vote pending on the last day of the Alaska Legislature’s regular session could end up canceling a long-planned ballot measure that would restrict financial donations to political candidates in the state.

Late Tuesday night, the Alaska Senate voted 12-8 to approve House Bill 16, which would impose limits on the amount of money that individuals and groups can donate to political candidates. 

That action sends the bill to the House for a simple up-or-down concurrence vote. Success would send it to Gov. Mike Dunleavy for enactment or veto.

HB 16 is substantially similar to a ballot measure scheduled for a vote during the August primary election. Under the Alaska Constitution, if lawmakers enact a substantially similar law to a ballot measure scheduled for a vote, the ballot measure vote is canceled. 

Both methods would change state law, but there’s one key difference: A ballot measure cannot be repealed for two years after voters approve it. A law may be repealed the following year if legislators and the governor approve.

In 2018, a scheduled ballot measure dealing with legislators’ conflicts of interest was removed from the ballot after legislators passed a substantially similar law. In 2019, they rolled back that law.

Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, arranged Tuesday night’s vote on HB 16. He has previously sought to impose campaign finance limits.

“I think (the ballot measure) is going to pass overwhelmingly, and this would save a little bit of money,” he said of the decision to advance HB 16. 

State law requires ballot measure information be published in a pamphlet that is sent to voters. In addition, the Division of Elections is required to hold in-person presentations at locations across the state to explain each ballot measure.

Rep. Calvin Schrage, I-Anchorage, helped orchestrate the ballot measure and House Bill 16.

Late Tuesday, he said he was surprised by the Senate’s action and was not informed until shortly before it took place.

“To see them pass it relatively unchanged was quite surprising, and a pleasant surprise,” he said, noting that he and his colleagues have been seeking new campaign finance limits in Alaska for five years.

In 2021, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Alaska’s then-existing campaign finance limits were unconstitutional.

The Alaska Department of Law declined to appeal that ruling. Speaking to reporter Nat Herz months later, Dunleavy said, “You know me: I’m the guy that wants people to be able to drive four wheelers on the road. I’m a freedom guy,” he said. “My tendency is to just let people do what they want in campaign finance law, as long as it’s disclosed and it’s accurate.”

As a result, the state’s 2022, 2024 and 2026 elections have operated with no restrictions on the amount of money a person can give to a candidate.

The Alaska House passed Schrage’s bill in April 2025, but the Senate took no action before adjourning that year. That inaction meant the 2026 election cycle opened without limits. 

“We took it up last year, and there just wasn’t the support to do it at that time,” Wielechowski said.

What changed?

“I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, people just — honestly, it just kind of got buried in everything else, and just going through bills, we saw it was there, and we said, ‘Well, I have a chance to maybe take it off the ballot and pass it.’”

Neither Wielechowski or Schrage have talked to Dunleavy about whether he would veto the measure or allow it to become law.

If HB 16 becomes law, or if the proposed ballot measure is adopted by voters, new limits would be in place for the 2028 election. 

The new individual limits would be $2,000 in donations per candidate in each two-year election cycle. For the governor’s race, where a lieutenant governor candidate and governor candidate run together on a single ticket, the limit would be $4,000. The limit for donations from one person to a political party or group would be $5,000.

If a group wants to donate to a candidate, the limit is $4,000, or $8,000 for the governor’s race.

Those limits would be adjusted for inflation every 10 years.

Schrage said he’s open to either HB 16 or the ballot measure.

“It is very widely popular, and so — one way or another, I just want to see this taken and taken up and put back into law,” he said.

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Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy said Tuesday he is ordering state lawmakers into a special session to force a new decision on his top priority: property tax breaks for the company proposing to build a massive pipeline system to ship natural gas from the North Slope to tidewater.

Dunleavy outlined his plan during a news conference at the Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference in Anchorage. 

The special session, to start 10 a.m. Thursday morning, “will go on as long as they need to come up with a decision,” he said at the news conference.

The Legislature’s ongoing regular session ends at 11:59 p.m. Wednesday night, and legislators will enter special session the following morning.

The governor has characterized property tax-relief for the project as his top priority, and at the news conference he accused lawmakers of risking Alaska’s future by rejecting his plan.

The bill would replace state and local petroleum property taxes with an “alternative volumetric tax” on natural gas that would eventually flow through the pipeline.  That gives Glenfarne Group, the company developing the pipeline in conjunction with the state, a tax break that its leaders have said is necessary to attract investors.

Negotiations to pass the governor’s preferred legislation fell apart on Monday, and Dunleavy blamed lawmakers for that outcome.

“This is a decision on the part of a handful of folks in Juneau who wish, for whatever reason I don’t understand, (to) play with the future of Alaska,” he said at the news conference.

Legislative critics of Dunleavy’s approach said Glenfarne had provided too little information on its cost estimates, thus making it impossible for them to determine whether the proposed tax break was appropriate. Some argued that the process had been too rushed. Dunleavy introduced his proposal in March, with the regular session half over.

But the governor had harsh words for those lawmakers. He said they were focused on the wrong things after an extremely cold winter that strained energy supplies in the populated Railbelt corridor.

“Last night there was time to shove a spay and neuter bill into an invasive species bill in (House) Finance,” he said at Tuesday’s news conference. “So Rome is burning and we’re shoving a spay and neuter bill into an invasive species bill.”

Dunleavy was referring to a popular bill to establish a statewide spay and neuter fund, House Bill 258, which was combined during Monday’s House Finance Committee meeting with another bill related to animals, Senate Bill 174, that would establish a state invasive species council. It has since been removed from the bill.

U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, a featured speaker at the conference, also nudged lawmakers to accept Dunleavy’s plan.

As a former governor of North Dakota, Burgum said he considered it “inappropriate” for him to insert himself into Alaska legislative business. However, he said lawmakers should focus on getting the gas pipeline built before worrying about how the revenues from it would be allocated.

“The key thing for when we’re competing (for) capital that can go anywhere around the world, the key thing for Alaska is: Get the project,” he said at the news conference. Alaskans should not worry about the revenue distributions until after a project is built and providing its promised myriad economic benefits, he said.

Burgum’s comments at the news conference echoed comments he made about the gas pipeline during his address at the conference.

“That project has to happen. And I would just invite Alaska to not get in your own way if you’re worrying about, ‘How do we divide up the pie,’ and the pie hasn’t even been baked yet,” he said. He called the gasline “a generational, transformational project that’s going to affect the state, the communities, the prosperity, the universities. I mean, the benefits of this thing are unbelievable.”

But lawmakers say those benefits have not been made clear to them, and neither have the cost tradeoffs.

Senate President Cathy Giessel, R-Anchorage, did not mince words in a newsletter she issued Tuesday morning that said the governor has demanded that lawmakers “pass his version of a gas pipeline bill that no one is allowed to know much about.”

“His version of a gas pipeline defies our Constitution – ignoring resource development for benefit of Alaskans (benefit for a private company), surrenders our taxing authority (removes local taxation authority, forbids financial transparency, logical financial assessment),” Giessel’s newsletter said.

Dunleavy’s decision to veto a pension-overhaul bill that had been two years in the making after lawmakers rejected this gas pipeline bill was a “transactional” decision that is “the worst possible way to make public policy,” she said.

SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE

Alaska’s public employees and public school teachers will not have access to pensions this year.

In a 33-27 vote Tuesday, the Alaska Legislature failed to override Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of a bill that would have created a new pension system for teachers, municipal employees and state employees in Alaska. Forty votes were needed for an override.

The failure was expected. Lawmakers had passed the pension bill, House Bill 78, by a combined vote total of 33-27 last month, and there was no sign that any legislator had changed his or her position since that vote. 

Alaska has been without a pension for new public employees since 2006, when lawmakers closed the existing pension plan to new applicants and mandated a 401(k)-style retirement system.

Though Dunleavy himself receives a public pension, he is opposed to opening a new system for current employees. In a veto message to lawmakers on Monday night, he expressed concerns about potential long-term costs and risks to the state.

“Pension obligations extend for decades, and the full cost of this bill may not be apparent until years after its enactment,” his veto message stated in part.

Despite the governor’s concerns, he was willing to allow the bill to become law as part of a grand compromise: If legislators approved a gas pipeline tax relief bill he supports, he would not veto the bill.

That arrangement fell apart on Monday afternoon after the House failed to advance the governor’s preferred proposal. The governor issued his veto about 10:39 p.m. that night.

Under the Alaska Legislature’s current interpretation of the state constitution, lawmakers are required to meet in joint session within five days to consider a veto override.

Under previous interpretations, legislators frequently skipped holding joint sessions if they either didn’t want to discuss an override or knew they lacked the votes to do so.

On Tuesday afternoon, though legislators knew an override was not in the cards, advocates and opponents spoke for a combined two hours before the final vote.

Rep. Chuck Kopp, R-Anchorage and the pension bill’s most vocal proponent, said the bill is intended to reduce the amount of staff turnover in the state. While the bill was expected to cost $73 million per year to implement, Kopp expected it would save over $240 million in training costs for new employees and overtime needed to cover positions left vacant by staff who had resigned.

“House Bill 78 is not a retirement bill. … It is a workforce bill, and it’s a resource development bill. We cannot build a gasline through this state unless we can retain our engineers. We cannot permit a mine when the permitting office turns over in 18 months. We can’t drill on the North Slope when the Haul Road isn’t being maintained,” he said.

Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka, gave a 25-minute speech rejecting Kopp’s argument, saying in part that the lack of a pension system is not causing the vacancy problem. If the state’s Supplemental Benefit System — not used by some municipalities — is included with the state’s 401(k)-like public employee retirement system, Alaska has generous retirement benefits, he said.

Stedman suggested that higher salaries may be part of the answer to the state’s vacancy issues. Alaska used to be No. 1 in the country for teacher salaries. It’s now ranked below Washington state, he said.

Rep. Jeremy Bynum, R-Ketchikan, said that in his experience as an employer, higher salaries helped but weren’t a complete solution.

“That still didn’t solve the problem of retention, because people still cannot live in our communities affordably, so we’ve got a lot of challenges ahead of us,” he said.

Stedman also warned that the bill is based upon actuarial estimates that may or may not be accurate. The state’s prior pension plan was left only partially funded because of an actuarial error that led to a years-long lawsuit and left a multibillion-dollar shortfall.

Sens. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, and Jesse Kiehl, D-Juneau, each suggested that the proof of the need for the bill is in the state’s lived experience. Alaska has experienced 13 consecutive years of negative migration, and state and municipal governments continue to struggle to fill positions.

“This will make a tremendous difference if we override this veto and put back the option of a modest defined benefit pension for Alaska’s public servants,” Kiehl said.

The legislature’s regular session ends Wednesday night. 

Any new pension bill would have to restart from scratch in January, when the 35th Alaska Legislature convenes for its first year.

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Matt Heilala, a Republican and a podiatrist, says he’s running to be the next governor of Alaska, and he’s put up real cash to back it up: He’s invested more than $1 million of his own money in his campaign.

But officially, Heilala isn’t a candidate. And he won’t be until he’s found someone to join his ticket as a candidate for lieutenant governor. That’s because state law requires a running mate before filing an official declaration of candidacy for governor.

With the June 1 filing deadline looming, Heilala is not alone. Of 18 candidates who say they’re seeking to succeed GOP Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who is termed out, just five have announced running mates — leaving more than a dozen candidates with just two more weeks to find one.

Heilala said that at one point, he’d secured a “high-profile” Republican who initially agreed to join the ticket before backing out weeks later, just before an announcement. Others have volunteered who just haven’t been the right fit — one who, Heilala said, was “kind of lazy,” and another with “kind of a sordid background as a politician.”

Heilala, who’s never held elected office, said he’s looking for a running mate with “new and young energy.” But, he added, it’s been hard to find someone who will settle for the $140,000 lieutenant governor salary, when people in their 30s and 40s are in their “prime earning years.”

“They come back and say, ‘You know what? This would be a $50,000 to $70,000 pay cut for me,’” Heilala said. “You don’t want someone as a running mate where the worst-case scenario is that we win.”

The job of Alaska’s lieutenant governor involves supervising the agency that runs state elections and regulating use of the state seal; they also finish out a four-year term if a governor resigns or dies.

The current matchmaking process is a relatively new development in Alaska politics. It’s an artifact of a successful 2020 citizens initiative that redesigned state-level elections to include a nonpartisan primary, plus the use of ranked choice voting in the general election.

Prior to that initiative, gubernatorial and lieutenant governor candidates ran in separate party primaries, with the winners merging their campaigns for the general. The 2022 gubernatorial election was the first in which candidates paired up before the primary — but with Dunleavy seeking re-election, the field was far smaller, without much jockeying for running mates.

This time, 12 Republican candidates have said they’re running, plus three Democrats and three independents.

None of the Democratic candidates — former state Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, former state Sen. Tom Begich and current state Sen. Matt Claman — have announced a running mate.

On the Republican side, longtime political operative and activist Bernadette Wilson, one of the party’s frontrunners, picked former state Sen. Mike Shower as her running mate in September.

Former state Sen. Click Bishop recently announced that he’s running with Greta Schuerch, an independent who works in a leadership position for the company that runs Red Dog, one of Alaska’s largest mines. Former state Sen. Shelley Hughes last month said that she’d picked a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general, Blake Gettys, as her running mate.

But several other top GOP candidates, like former attorney general Treg Taylor, former revenue commissioner Adam Crum and current Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, have yet to announce their selections.

At this point, with so many candidates in the race, recruiting is “tricky,” said Suzanne Downing, a conservative political writer who’s highlighted the running mate-less candidates on her website.

“Anybody who’s qualified for that job and smart enough is probably going to say, ‘Gee, 18 people in the race,’” Downing said. “It’s a big risk for anybody to put their name in the hat.”

One Republican who found himself on the end of multiple recruiting efforts was Rick Whitbeck, a former vice chairman of the state party who recently left a job as state director for U.S. Rep. Nick Begich III.

“I got three calls in less than three weeks,” Whitbeck said in a phone interview. By calling him, he quipped, the gubernatorial hopefuls were “going deep into their bag of candidates.”

The calls were exploratory more than they were outright job offers, Whitbeck said.

“You know, ‘What do you think my chances are? What do you think you could add to the ticket?’” he said. “They were good conversations — I would say they were serious, but I don’t think they were looking for an answer or offering the position outright.”

Whitbeck ended up taking a job with a trawl fisheries nonprofit, leaving the GOP lieutenant governor recruiting pool even smaller.

With two weeks to go, political observers say that one logical outcome is for some of the running mate-less candidates to combine their campaigns.

“In both parties there are credible, capable candidates who, if they pair up before June 1, can probably strengthen their ticket,” said Mead Treadwell, who served as lieutenant governor under Republican Sean Parnell between 2010 and 2014. “I would say that’s the race right now, for combinations that can consolidate votes.”

Meda DeWitt, a traditional Tlingit healer who’s running for governor as an independent, said she’s been asked by “a few of the other candidates” to be their running mate. DeWitt says she’s amenable to the idea, but her allies don’t want her to take a back seat, she said.

“People who are around me, who are advising me, who are supporters and have their ears to the ground say there’s a good buzz around me being an Alaska Native person at the top of the ticket,” DeWitt said. “They would not have the same excitement if it was same old, same old at the top of the ticket.”

DeWitt said her own recruitment process is ongoing.

Her “shining star” pick for a running mate had work commitments they couldn’t abandon, she said. In a meeting with her advisors last week, they together picked three other top options whom DeWitt now plans to ask.

“What I’m looking for isn’t just an appendage,” she said. “What I’m looking for is someone who can actually be a teammate who can dig in, because there’s so much work to do.”

Heilala acknowledged having his own conversations about merging his campaign with other gubernatorial candidates — including one he said he had with Taylor, the former attorney general. But after a discussion about becoming Taylor’s lieutenant governor running mate, Heilala’s own advisors thought he would make the better gubernatorial candidate, he said.

“I hate to use phraseology, but I’m the change agent. I’m not the status quo guy. And I bring a very different skill set,” Heilala said. “I can’t be coaching them along from the backseat with things that I bring to the table.”

A spokesman for Taylor, Evan Lee, responded to an interview request about lieutenant governor recruitment and Heilala’s comments with a prepared statement saying that “we’re excited about the momentum behind the campaign and the team coming together for the fall.”

“We’ll share more on the ticket in due course,” Lee said. “Right now, Treg is focused on the fundamentals of winning a statewide race: communicating a clear message, raising the resources to compete, and earning voters’ trust across Alaska.”

Begich, one of the leading Democrats in the race, said he’s also been asked by another candidate about his interest in merging tickets and running as lieutenant governor. His answer: “I’m not looking for any job. I’m looking for this job.”

Begich said that after direct conversations with five different people, he’s chosen a running mate. He’ll reveal their identity, he added, in an announcement May 27th.

Nathaniel Herz welcomes tips at natherz@gmail.com or (907) 793-0312. This article was originally published in Northern Journal, a newsletter from Herz. Subscribe at this link.