Hot off his latest foray into transphobia and hosting of, as his press office put it, “world renown neurosurgeon” Dr. Ben Carson, Gov. Mike Dunleavy has endorsed former President Donald Trump in the presidential race.
The news comes as a Tuesday report from Politico, which cites no named sources and includes no statement explaining the decision. Trump endorsed Dunleavy for governor in 2022 but made his endorsement conditional on the Republican not supporting Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski in her race against Trump-backed Kelly Tshibaka.
Dunleavy courted Trump throughout his time in office on Alaska-specific issues. However, that was nowhere more intense than Dunleavy’s attempts to get federal approval for the profoundly controversial Pebble Mine. That included a visit on Air Force One, which kicked off a concerted effort to greenlight the mine before a coalition of Republican sportsmen, which included Donald Trump Jr., successfully convinced the Trump administration to reverse course.
Earlier this year, the Biden administration delivered a veto of the project. Dunleavy has since appealed that decision directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Following the 2020 election, Dunleavy flirted with Trump’s Big Lie by saying a month after the election that there was an “outside chance” Biden would become president. His administration has since appointed a Trump backer, who has refused to say the 2020 elections were fair, to head the state’s Division of Election.
Trump is now facing 91 criminal charges ranging from election conspiracy to mishandling criminal documents to campaign hush money. Dunleavy has mainly stayed quiet about the charges.
Dunleavy’s endorsement makes him just the third sitting governor to endorse Trump in this election cycle.
Per Politico, “The former president has been aggressively courting the support of prospective endorsees; he recently spoke by phone with Dunleavy. … Trump’s campaign plans to release a video on Tuesday thanking Dunleavy for his backing.”
No such video was posted to Trump’s Truth Social account on Tuesday; instead, it was filled with screenshots of favorable polling for the former president.
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.