Category: News Feeds

There are five competitive races for the Alaska House and Senate in this year’s primary election, where candidates are vying for the top four places in order to advance to the ranked choice general election in November.

Early voting has begun across Alaska, and ends on Tuesday with polls closing at 8 p.m. Mail-in ballots must be postmarked by Tuesday, Aug. 18. 

All 40 members of the Alaska House are up for election; 10 of the 20 Senate seats are up for election.

[Voter Guide: 2026 Voter Guide Voter Guide: The candidates, the ballot measures, and the tools you need to cast your vote.]

In those races with four or fewer candidates, all are expected to advance to the general election unless they decide to drop out by an Aug. 31 deadline. 

Those competitive primary races include one of the largest Senate districts that extends from Western Alaska to the Aleutian Islands, as well as House districts in Southwest Alaska, Eagle River and  in the eastern and western districts of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough. 

In the Western Alaska Senate District S, longtime incumbent Bethel Democrat Sen. Lyman Hoffman is retiring. The district extends from Western Alaska to Lake Clark and south across the Aleutian Islands, and the Senate seat represents approximately 36,800 Alaskans. 

The candidates are current House Speaker Independent Rep. Bryce Edgmon of Dillingham, Republican Darren Deacon of Aniak, Democrat Wassilie Guy of Napaskiak and Independents Wayne Morgan of Aniak and Rick Robb of Bethel.

The winner of the Senate race in November will serve a four-year term. 

Alaska House seats represent approximately 18,335 Alaskans each, and representatives serve two-year terms. 

Edgmon is vacating a seat representing House District 37, which includes Southwest Alaska communities from Bristol Bay to the Aleutian Islands.

Seven candidates are running for the top four spots this race: Independents Peter Angasan of King Salmon, Kimberly Johnson of Dillingham, Mark Smith of Aleknagik and Cade Woods of Dillingham; Democrats Dennis Robinson of Unalaska and Evelynn Trefon of Newhalen; and Republican Brenda Wilson of King Cove. 

Five candidates are running for House District 23, which encompasses Eagle River, a northern suburb of Anchorage near the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. Incumbent Republican Rep. Jamie Allard is running for re-election, challenged by Republicans Nick Capozzi and Ruby Jones, and Democrats Jim Arlington and Lee Hammermeister.

In the eastern district of the Manatuska-Susitna Borough, House District 29 covers communities in the Palmer-Fishook area eastward to Valdez. Incumbent Republican Rep. Garret Nelson is running for the seat for the first time. He was appointed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy to the seat last year, after former Rep. George Rauscher, R-Sutton, was appointed to the Alaska Senate to fill a seat vacated by Shelley Hughes who is running for governor.

Challenging Nelson are Independents Amber Hansen of Wasilla and Jessica Kusner-Kalarchik of Palmer, Republican Steve Menard of Palmer, Democrat Kimberly Slone of Wasilla and Libertarian Candice Frisby of Palmer. 

In House District 30, in the western region of the Mat-Su Borough from Big Lake to Talkeetna, four candidates are challenging incumbent Republican Rep. Kevin McCabe. He was first elected to the seat in 2020. McCabe will face Democrat Sandra Loomis of Talkeetna and Republicans Mike Alexander of Big Lake, Doyle Holmes of Willow and Doug Massie of Wasilla.

In the House, 36 races are expected to be competitive in the general election. Four incumbents are running unopposed: Rep. Sara Hannan, D-Juneau, in District 4; Rep. Chuck Kopp, R-Anchorage in District 10, Rep. Genevieve Mina, D-Anchorage in District 19; Chuck Kopp, R-Anchorage in District 10, and Rep. Will Stapp, R-Fairbanks in District 32.

In the Senate, seven races are expected to be competitive in the general election. Three Senate incumbents are running unopposed, including Sitka Republican Sen. Bert Stedman, and Anchorage Democrats Bill Wielochowski, and Löki Tobin.

SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE

I was aimlessly scrolling through Instagram when I learned that Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, or JKT, had entered the governor’s race.

My interest was piqued — not so much by the announcement as the photo attached to it. Framed by a majestic Sitka mountainscape, JKT sports a blue flannel button up — classic Alaska campaign-wear. I took a screenshot, zoomed in, and squinted. Did he always have that beard? 

I’d be hard pressed to believe JKT didn’t grow it for the campaign. The timing is at least suspicious. Since entering the race, the long clean-shaven policy nerd has transformed into a robustly-bearded powerlifter. In a campaign video, he’s seen deadlifting a huge rack of weights to “save schools” and “protect our fisheries.”

It’s not enough that JKT was born and raised in Sitka and has spent much of his adult life serving in the state Legislature. In order to be truly worthy of a shot at governor, he must now audition for the title of “Real Alaskan.”

He’s far from the only one.

Every campaign season, like clockwork, candidates across the political spectrum jockey to position themselves as “Real Alaskans.” (Or, in the case of U.S. House hopeful Bill Hill, “the Real Alaska.”)

Over a banjo-string track, a man’s warm, bassy voice booms through my Instagram feed, declaring that incumbent U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan will “fight for Alaskans.”

Meanwhile, the senator’s detractors take shots at his Alaskan bona fides with the derisive nickname “Ohio Dan.”

My mailbox is stuffed with images of congressional hopefuls in Copper River Fleecevests and frontier-esque flannel.

Every candidate wants to prove they’re the most “Real Alaskan,” and therefore most fit for your vote.

But what does it mean to be a “Real Alaskan?” While that’s a hot topic of debate, a 2008 journal article argues that the term is “deeply coded” as white, rural and masculine.

In this paradigm — the one that often dominates public discourse — Real Alaskans hunt, fish and work blue collar jobs. They fight, shoot and defend us from Washington, D.C. lobbyists. They forgo suits for Grundens, bolo ties and of course, flannel. They’re tough, hardy, no-nonsense and raring to stand up to the Washington bureaucrats who think they’re better than us.

Here’s where it gets absurd: The tropes that make up the Real Alaskan ethos didn’t originate here at all. Their forerunner is a much older archetype that dates back over 200 years, to when Kentucky was America’s far-West frontier.

In my podcast The Alaska Myth, I argue that the Real Alaskan is cheap repackaging of what historian Richard Slotkin refers to as hunter-heroes — think Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. As the frontier moved west, so did the stereotype, eventually donning Carhartts and Xtratuffs to birth the modern image of the “Real Alaskan.”

What’s interesting about those memorable images of Western “heroes”, with their guns and coonskin caps, is that they were always political in nature. Boone and Crockett weren’t just frontier icons. They were also politicians who sought to woo rural constituents with their sharpshooting frontier cred.

This 19th Century political innovation remains deeply embedded here in Alaska, in the politics of the “Last Frontier.” Regardless of your party affiliation or identity, performing Real Alaskan-ness has become a prerequisite for entering any high profile race in this state. This is how our feeds become clogged with videos using folksy language about “Alaskans being whipsawed from one generation to the next” or how “in Alaska, we’ve always done things our own way.”

Real talk: I want to know what runs through the mind of a campaign communications staffer when their candidate’s lead in the polls starts to narrow. And whether it’s some version of “Well, we can always make a video about that time the senator took out a Kodiak bear.”

Regardless of political affiliation or personal background, no candidate is immune to this posturing.

Solely by virtue of their identity, any Alaska Native candidate is arguably far more of a “Real Alaskan” than their self-styled settler competitors. And yet they too tend to earnestly perform the tropes associated with the white, rural and masculine-coded “Real Alaskan.”

Bill Hill’s website reminds voters he’s not just Dena’ina Athabaskan but also a lifelong Alaskan, with a resume that includes commercial fishing and chopping wood. Whether these credentials — the basis of an aligned super PAC’s claim that Hill is the “real Alaska” — will translate into votes is more dubious.

On her campaign website, Mary Peltola’s “my story” page puzzlingly makes no mention of her Yup’ik identity — though it does feature images of her in a smokehouse and wearing a traditional kuspuk. It is, however, permeated with colorful, frontier-coded language, from quoting Ted Stevens’ “to hell with politics” to expressing her vision of a congressional delegation that’s “strong and tough.”

It’s not just this year’s campaigns, either. The impulse to prove that one is indeed a “Real Alaskan” has produced some of the cringiest campaigning in recent memory.

If you want to make any Alaskan shudder with secondhand embarrassment, you need only utter two words: Bear Doctor. Despite the backlash the now-infamous videoreceived, former U.S. Senate hopeful Dr. Al Gross was simply drawing from the same toolkit candidates use every campaign season.

To be fair, these representations are often true to the lifestyles that many of these candidates lead. This year’s field is full of contenders who represent various shades of the distinct lifestyles that make up this state: fisherman, mushers and pilots, to name a few.

But I can’t help but be cynical about the requirement to campaign as a Real Alaskan, knowing that it’s rooted in the idea of the frontier.

At the end of the 19th Century, the concept was thought so close to death that historians were eulogizing it. And it’s very much a product of its time. Frontier logic posits that there are endless resources to be exploited, and a glittering economic future awaits those who exploit the right ones. When frontier imagery and frontier logic alike have a chokehold on our politics, they endlessly offer the same tired 19th Century solutions — like developing any resource we can think of — to our 21st Century ills. Just ask the state legislators who are currently debating the gas pipeline that elected leaders have been propping up for the better part of the last 50 years.

I know my view is a minority one. I was reminded of that when I casually ribbed JKT’s frontier glow up at a recent dinner party.  A friend of mine — an outdoorsy transplant who leans progressive — said he’d noticed, and he was a fan. “I’m more likely to vote for a man who’s put some work into himself,” he said approvingly.

Ultimately, candidates lean on this tried and true formula because when candidates can pull it off, it works. Don Young, the longtime bolo-tie wearing Alaska Congressman originally from California, so successfully channeled the frontier spirit that candidates across the political spectrum tout him as an aspirational figure.

As to which candidates’ Real Alaskan antics will win over the electorate this time?

Only the primaries will tell.

This story was originally published in the Anchorage Press. Subscribe here.

SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX.