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Alaska’s two leading Democratic candidates for governor have quietly been discussing whether one of them should quit the race if both are among the top four vote-getters in Tuesday’s primary election. 

Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins and Tom Begich each said by phone on Thursday that they’ve been discussing different scenarios about what could happen when the final votes are counted.

Republicans have been talking about similar maneuvers for months, with one prominent Republican group going so far as to run ads urging lower-finishing candidates to withdraw in order to consolidate the vote in November.

“Both sides are trying to figure out: What does the top four look like? And how are we best positioned for success?” said Bernadette Wilson, one of the leading Republican candidates for governor in Alaska’s 17-person race.

Under Alaska’s election system, the top four vote-getters — regardless of political party — advance to the November general election. That may mean multiple Republicans or Democrats on the same ballot, competing for the same votes.

In November, voters in the general election will be asked to rank those four candidates in order of preference. 

After all the votes are in, the candidate with the fewest number of first-choice preferences is eliminated. Any voters who ranked that candidate first will have their votes go to their second choice.

The process repeats until only two candidates are left. 

In theory, that means no vote splitting. Anyone whose favorite candidate is eliminated can instead vote for someone else.

In practice, some Alaska voters ranked only one or two candidates in the 2022 and 2024 statewide elections, leading to an unusual number of “exhausted” ballots whose votes went to neither of the final two candidates. 

Two years ago, that led to large amounts of post-primary maneuvering as lower-finishing candidates withdrew from races in order to force unfavorable matchups for one top finisher or another.

In the U.S. House race, two top Republican finishers withdrew after the primary, which put imprisoned Democratic U.S. House candidate Eric Hafner into the final four.

That November, Hafner was eliminated first, and fewer than half his votes transferred to the other Democrat, then-incumbent Rep. Mary Peltola. 

That was less than Peltola’s margin of defeat — Peltola was defeated by current Rep. Nick Begich III, R-Alaska — but in a closer race, it could have been decisive.

Now, as Peltola runs for U.S. Senate against incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, a similar strategy is playing out. 

National groups have spent more than $2 million in an attempt to boost lesser-known candidates into the final four and potentially split the field. 

Dan J. Sullivan, unrelated to the incumbent senator, is on the ballot but told the Chicago Tribune that he’s uncertain whether he will remain in the race if he makes the top four. 

In the 17-person race to replace Gov. Mike Dunleavy — who is term-limited and unable to run this year — candidates have been talking for over a year about whether or not they will be willing to bow out after the primary.

Wilson entered the race in May 2025 and promptly pledged to withdraw after the primary if she finished behind another Republican. It’s a pledge she’s renewed since then.

“I don’t think that it’s smart to carry on. … I don’t think that we need any more division as we head into November. I don’t think that it’s smart to split up the voting base, the volunteers that help, I don’t think it’s smart to split up the finances,” she said.

Wilson also said that having multiple candidates from the same party risks denying the eventual winner a mandate — a margin of victory so large that it gives the winner political backing to implement their platform.

“I think it’s important that a governor win by a strong strongest margin as possible, because I think that it’s important for the stability and the unity of the state past November,” she said.

Wilson has also been campaigning hard to repeal Alaska’s current elections system with Ballot Measure 2, which will come in front of voters in November.

Post-primary juggling is evidence that ranked choice voting doesn’t work, she said.

Supporters of the state’s elections system and some detractors have said that it dilutes the influence of the Republican and Democratic parties. Wilson doesn’t see it that way. 

“I think it’s just made it worse,” Wilson said. “I think it’s handed more power to backroom conversations, and I just don’t think the public’s gonna like it.”

Jenny-Marie Stryker, executive director of the Alaska Democratic Party, was traveling on Friday and unavailable for an interview, a spokesman said. Carmela Warfield, chair of the Alaska Republican Party, did not respond to an email.

The Valley Republican Women, an influential group based in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, has an ongoing ad campaign that urges Republicans to “vote the primary, consolidate the vote” and “don’t split the field.” 

Julia Anastos, campaign manager for the group opposing Ballot Measure 2, said by email that gamesmanship isn’t new in Alaska.

“Parties and political insiders will always strategize about who should run and who should drop out. These kinds of maneuvers happen under a partisan primary as well, like in the 2014 and 2018 gubernatorial races, when would-be spoiler candidates dropped out to clear the lane for a stronger candidate,” she said. “Under our system now, ranked choice voting addresses that spoiler effect and ensures the winning candidate has earned majority support.”

The issue of what to do after the primary was a key issue at a forum earlier this month in Soldotna, when five candidates were directly asked about the issue.

“I would stay in,” nonpartisan candidate Meda DeWitt told forum attendees. 

As a nonpartisan, she sees herself able to attract second-choice votes from both Republicans and Democrats.

“I actually appreciate ranked choice voting because your vote is not lost if your top pick doesn’t get in,” she said.

Adam Crum, a Republican candidate and former Dunleavy cabinet official, said he thinks there’s an advantage to having multiple Republicans in the general election.

“It actually does make more sense for more conservatives to stay in it, because you actually work together,” he said. 

In the 2022 special election to replace Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, Republican candidates Sarah Palin and Nick Begich III frequently fought each other on the campaign trail. That turned off Republican voters, Crum noted. 

During the current primary election campaign, he said, “We have actually done a very good job … of actually working together and pushing forward ideas.”

A cordial campaign keeps voters involved and going to the polls, he said.

“You actually increase the ceiling, and the math actually works out. I’m a numbers guy. Over time, it does work,” Crum said.

Matt Heilala, a podiatrist and Republican who has put more than $1.5 million of his own money into a campaign for governor, said that last year, “I had the thought that I would immediately withdraw because we saw what happened with Sarah and Nick.”

Now, he’s not as sure. What if there’s “an indictment, an October surprise, some kind of a shenanigan that the opposing party is going to play on the person that is 10 votes ahead of me, and they’re just waiting for me to leave?” he asked. 

In that case, having another Republican would be helpful, he suggested.

Dave Bronson, the former Anchorage mayor and Republican candidate for governor, said he intends to reserve his options until he sees what happens in the primary.

“The notion that I would stand up and say at this point in time I’ll absolutely get out if I’m No. 2 on the Republican side — that’s foolishness,” he said.

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Former Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor, a Republican candidate for governor, violated state campaign finance laws by donating more than 60 times the maximum amount of money to his own campaign, according to disclosure documents filed this week.

Those documents show his lieutenant governor candidate, Candice English, also violating the same limit. 

Under state law, primary election candidates cannot give or loan their campaigns more than $5,000 after July 17. 

In a campaign finance disclosure report due Tuesday, Taylor says he donated $260,000 to his campaign on Aug. 3. He also reported buying plane tickets worth more than $3,400 with his own money. 

English and her husband, Stanley, reported donating $100,000 to the campaign on July 28, according to the same report.

Evan Lee, Taylor’s campaign manager, did not return emails on Thursday or Friday asking if the report was accurate and whether Taylor intended to return the contribution. Lee also did not return a text message or a call to his cellphone on Friday.

A separate disclosure report showed Taylor donated another $40,000 to his own campaign on Monday, for a total of $300,000 in cash contributions past the deadline in state law. 

Heather Hebdon is the executive director of the Alaska Public Offices Commission, which regulates campaign financial disclosures. She said on Friday that she was unaware of any complaints against the Taylor-English campaign and had not reviewed their filing herself.

In an article published Thursday by the Anchorage Daily News, Lee said Taylor views the donation limit as unconstitutional.

By email Friday, Lee reiterated the statement he gave the Daily News.

“The Ninth Circuit struck down Alaska’s unconstitutional contribution limits years ago. This overlooked relic in our statutes is no different, and no less unconstitutional,” he said.

Neither state nor federal court records show any lawsuit by Taylor challenging the law in question. 

In 2021, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals overturned Alaska’s limits on donations by non-candidates to candidates, but that decision did not touch the limit on donations by candidates to their own campaigns.

This week’s report by Taylor shows he has raised more than $1.58 million during his campaign to become one of the four finalists in the race to replace incumbent Gov. Mike Dunleavy. 

Dunleavy is term-limited and cannot run again this year.

Among the 17 candidates vying to replace Dunleavy, Taylor’s campaign is one of the best-funded. Among Republicans, only Matt Heilala has raised more — $1.59 million, according to this week’s filings. Most of Heilala’s campaign has been self-funded.

Among Democrats, former state Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins has raised almost $2.3 million and former state Sen. Tom Begich has raised more than $1.2 million. 

Under Alaska’s current elections system, the top four vote-getters for a particular office — regardless of political party — advance from the primary to the general election.

Alaska’s primary election is Aug. 18, and final results are expected Aug. 28. The deadline for any of the top finishers to withdraw is Aug. 31.

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For decades, dogs have been verboten on the Pribilof Islands under a rule imposed by the federal government to protect the world’s largest concentration of northern fur seals.

Now, dogs are welcome — with important caveats.

Under a new interim rule enacted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, dogs may be brought to the islands, but only for the specific purpose of hunting for rats. Dogs allowed on St. Paul Island or any other part of the five-island archipelago must be trained and certified as rat-detectors and catchers, and their stays are limited to 180 days. The general ban on dogs, in place since the 1980s, remains intact, but the new rule creates an exception for dogs enlisted in the anti-rat work.

The Pribilofs have managed to stay rat-free even as other Alaska islands and coastal areas have become infested with the non-native rodents.

Rat-sniffing dogs would help keep things that way, according to the residents of St. Paul Island, site of the main community in the archipelago.

“We work very, very hard to keep this a rat-free island. And we also recognize that shipping lanes are opening up right in the Arctic and there’s just potentially, if not already, going to be more vessel traffic in this part of the world,” said Chelsea Campbell, marine mammal programs manager for the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island, the local tribal government.

Allowing dogs to help is a bit of “forward thinking,” she said. The idea is that “maybe we should have some ability to get a rat sniffing dog out here, just in case,” she said.

Rats are not native to any part of Alaska. But, introduced by ships, they have infested several coastal regions and become one of the most destructive invasive species in the state.

Once established, they can devastate natural ecosystems, especially on islands where bird populations have evolved without exposure to or defenses against any land-based predators. It is a longstanding problem for islands around the world. Invasive rats are even believed to be partly to blame for the extinction of the Dodo.

On St. Paul, there have been a few isolated cases of rats escaping ships, but almost all of those were caught immediately in traps set up at the harbor. One rat escaped that gauntlet in 2018; it was found dead 10 months later.

A reported but unconfirmed rat sighting in 2024 was the main impetus for the new rule, said Mike Williams, NOAA’s Pribilof Islands program manager. No rat was ever found, so if there had been one that escaped from a ship, it apparently died, he said.

Another impetus, Campbell said, was a visit in recent years by a cruise ship that underreported its rat-infestation problem.

Compared to other vulnerable Alaska islands, the Pribilofs have some advantages in their fight against rats.

Community members have been vigilant in the anti-rat program, in coordination with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and other entities and organizations.

Additionally, ship traffic through the Pribilofs is not quite as heavy as that through the Aleutians, Wiliams said. And a “saving grace” for the archipelago, he said, is the native population of Arctic foxes.

The Pribilof foxes make up a genetically distinct population known for the blue tint that shows up in the animals’ fur. Williams said they do not bother the fur seals.

They have a varied diet that includes birds, eggs, marine resources and berries. And they are on hand to hunt and eat rats, Williams said.

One of the first rats ever seen on St. Paul, an event in the 1990s, was actually in the mouth of a passing fox, he said.

The new rule went into effect on Aug. 6. For now, Williams and Campbell said, there is no particular dog or dog trainer yet identified as a candidate for Pribilof work.  

Williams said that if a rat-catching dog is sent to St. Paul, it might make the most sense to have it there in the winter, when any rats on the island would be concentrated in town rather than across a wider area where they may not be able to find food.

“You want a small, focused area to search rather than the whole entire island,” he said.

On the other hand, having a rat-sniffing dog on duty during the summer might be useful to ensure that ships that come to the island are safe, Campbell said.

Rat eradication

Although it is difficult to eject rats once they are established, it is not impossible.

Rat eradication has been successful at some islands, and possibly most famously at an Alaska site formerly called Rat Island. It got the name because it was the first place in Alaska to be invaded by rats; it is believed that the rodents swam ashore from a wrecked Japanese sailing ship in the late 1700s.

A cooperative effort between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and two nonprofits, Island Conservation and the Nature Conservancy.

By 2012, the bird populations there had recovered, and the island was officially bestowed with its Unangan name: Hawadax.

The Fish and Wildlife Service is now planning for similar rat eradications on four other Aleutian islands: Kiska, Attu, Amchitka and Great Sitkin. Like Hawadax, all four islands are part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. Different types of rat poison are being considered, along with genetic biocontrol technology, which is a process that uses genetic engineering to limit reproduction.

Kiska and Attu were occupied by the Japanese during World War II, and a brutal battle occurred on Attu in 1943. The rats there are war legacies. The threat is particularly ominous in Kiska because that rugged volcanic island is home to what is considered a “superflock” of seabirds, particularly auklets, but also an ever-expanding population of rats using the same rocky crevices to kill and stash their prey. Since Kiska is much bigger than the island now called Hawadax, rat eradication there would be more challenging, the Fish and Wildlife Service notes.

The rat eradication proposals for the four Aleutian sites are moving forward, though gradually.

Scoping, the initial phase that leads to an environmental impact statement, was conducted in 2024. A draft environmental impact statement is expected to be released later this year. A draft environmental impact statement is expected this fall, to be followed by a final EIS and a decision on action next year, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

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