By: James Brooks, Alaska Beacon
An Anchorage doctor and his wife have put almost $1.3 million of their own money into his campaign for Alaska governor, an extraordinary act that puts him atop early fundraising totals in figures published this week by the Alaska Public Offices Commission.
With more than $1 million remaining in the bank after early spending, Republican candidate Matt Heilala stands out among a field of candidates that expanded to 17 this week with the entry of community organizer Meda DeWitt.
State law requires political candidates to disclose their financial support on an irregular basis; the next report isn’t due until July, so this week’s figures represent an early look at who might be a competitive candidate.
Campaign fundraising doesn’t guarantee success at the polls, experts say, but it can act like gas in a car’s tank: Even a campaign with a high-powered engine can fall short if it doesn’t have enough gas in the tank.
‘Zero chance’ of getting elected without money
“Money is the mother’s milk of politics,” said Jim Lottsfeldt, an experienced Alaska campaign consultant. “I didn’t coin that phrase, but it is true. If you’re not raising sufficient money to float an organization, you have zero chance of getting elected.”
Lottsfeldt hasn’t signed a contract with any candidate in the race but was planning to personally host a fundraiser for Democratic candidate Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins.
Former Alaska attorney general Treg Taylor, another Republican candidate, reported having more than $724,000 in his campaign accounts as of Feb. 1, the reporting deadline for the information published this week. He also made a significant contribution to his own campaign — records show a $250,000 donation from Taylor to his campaign.
Both he and Kreiss-Tomkins stood out from the field in terms of dollars available to spend: The only other candidates who reported having more than $226,201 available were Heilala and Democratic candidate and current state Sen. Matt Claman.
Kreiss-Tomkins said in a news release that his campaign had raised more than $750,000 since entering the race this month; because he entered the race after Feb. 1, those figures were not included in this week’s APOC reports.
It also wasn’t clear how much of that total he has already spent. Several candidates reported that they had already spent much of the money they raised since starting their campaigns.
Republican businesswoman Bernadette Wilson has raised almost $306,000 since becoming the third candidate to enter the governor’s race, but she has spent more than two-thirds of that total. Similarly, former state Sen. Click Bishop has spent more than half of the $283,605 he reported raising since he started his campaign last summer.
Anchorage doctor seeks to fill a niche
Heilala, the self-funded candidate, spent more than any other candidate in the early going but still has the largest stockpile of campaign cash.
By phone on Wednesday, he said he hopes to fill a niche on the ballot.
“A lot of people claim they want a non-politician, non-bureaucrat, but how do you raise funds if nobody knows who you are?” he asked.
He said he and his wife have “worked our tail off” in their lives and have enough financial freedom to afford their spending.
He said that while he is a podiatrist, he also is “a fairly diverse business guy.”
“And that’s where my success has come from — investing and property developing and a lot of other things,” he said.
Self-funding the campaign to such a large degree means they can’t be swayed as much by donors, he said.
Heilala is a member of the state medical board but hasn’t served in public office before. At a candidate forum in Juneau, he praised President Donald Trump and said that he and his wife are golfing buddies with the president.
That they’re willing to spend so much of their own money shows they’re serious about their campaign, he said.
“From this point forward, it will be a little easier to get larger donors,” he predicted.
Matt Larkin is president of Dittman Research, which conducts polls and advises candidates in Alaska. Early fundraising figures can “serve sort of the same function as a primary” election, he said.
“When you have this many candidates … it’s really hard for donors to make a decision on who they’re going to support. And what you’ll typically see is donors will kind of support maybe multiple candidates at this stage in small amounts, but they’re really kind of waiting to see who emerges,” he said. “And so, this first fundraising update, I think will probably narrow the field some.”
Among well-known candidates, incumbent Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, a Republican, reported having just $4,880 in cash on hand, less than Matanuska-Susitna Borough Mayor Edna DeVries, another Republican candidate.
Former state Sen. Click Bishop reported $130,258 in cash on hand, putting him in the bottom half of candidates, but his list of donors was an unusually multipartisan list that included former state Sen. John Coghill, a conservative Republican from Nenana, and current state Sen. Jesse Kiehl, a progressive Democrat from Juneau, among others.
Former state Rep. Joe Hayes, a Democrat, was a donor, as was Leslie Hajdukovich, a Republican who unsuccessfully challenged Hayes’ current employer — Democratic state Sen. Scott Kawasaki — in a 2024 Fairbanks Senate race.
In Alaska, there are no limits on donations — for now
Alaska has no limits on the amount of money an individual can donate to a political campaign. The state’s prior limits were eliminated by the U.S. 9th Circuit of Appeals in 2021, and the state declined to appeal the decision.
The Alaska Legislature has not passed a bill to reimpose limits, but voters will be asked in August whether they want to approve a ballot measure that reimposes them.
Those new limits would take effect after the November general election.
Several third-party groups registered with the public offices commission last month to support various candidates, but none have reported significant spending or donations.
In the 2022 race for governor, Republican Mike Dunleavy’s campaign spent more than $2 million. A supporting campaign backed by the Republican Governors Association, added almost $3 million in a parallel effort.
Independent Bill Walker’s campaign spent more than $2.4 million, and Democratic candidate Les Gara’s campaign spent almost $1.6 million. Republican Charlie Pierce, the fourth candidate, spent less than $150,000.
Gara said that with early fundraising numbers, “you can get a sense for how hard somebody’s working, and I think that’s the most important thing.”
In general, Lottsfeldt said, “the reason you want this money is you need to spend it mostly when people are paying attention and are going to cast a ballot. And so that is really, mid-July through the third week in August.”
“Unfortunately for all the guys and women running for governor,” he said, “there’s this U.S. Senate iceberg floating in the middle of the channel.”
Lottsfeldt expects that the U.S. Senate race between Democrat Mary Peltola and Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan will take up most of the available TV and radio ad slots because those candidates will have more money and be able to outbid governor candidates.
For that reason, he thinks a successful governor candidate will invest in things like yard signs, supporters going door-to-door, and other parts of a “field game.”
“It’s funny: Yard signs don’t win campaigns, but it is a marker of, ‘oh, that campaign is active. There’s people behind that. There’s enthusiasm. … Whether it’s a door stop, a yard sign, word of mouth, that is going to be huge when we have 16 people who are running.”
Even as Lottsfeldt talked, that number had already increased by one.
The deadline to sign up as a candidate is June 1. Candidates may drop out of the race as late as June 27.
In Alaska, the top four finishers in the August primary, regardless of political affiliation, advance to the November general election, where voters use ranked choice voting to sort the candidates in order of preference and pick a winner.
Larkin, of Dittman Research, doesn’t have a contract with any candidate but has done polling on the governor’s race. While money is important, he said, “how you use that money is more important.”
“Increasingly, it’s the message that these candidates will go with will end up being the difference,” he said. “… I think the candidate with the best ideas is going to win this race, bottom line.”
