In 2022, Alaska saw several close legislative races decided by margins as narrow as seven votes. The results paved the way for Republicans to take a slim majority in the House and a moderate bipartisan supermajority to run the Senate, which went a long way to dictating what the 33rd Alaska Legislature could and couldn’t accomplish.
This year, more than a handful of votes were decided by a single vote, including the Legislature’s failure to override Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of a widely popular public school funding bill. Others — such as election reform, public pensions, abortion access or trans youth in sports — were stopped by who was in control of the chamber.
As the filing deadline approaches this Saturday, the Alaska Legislature could be on the cusp of significant changes. These shifts could either pave the way for more progress on issues like school funding, public pensions, election reform and the state’s financial situation or open the door to the right-wing culture wars that have been simmering in the most conservative corners of the Alaska Legislature.
Following the 2020 round of redistricting, Alaska elected one of the largest classes of first-time legislators in recent memory. Twenty of the state’s 60 legislators were new faces, thanks in large part to a large number of open seats. That won’t be the case this time, with many legislators expected to seek re-election and, as of writing, only four legislators have announced plans not to run for their seats — Anchorage Reps. Jennie Armstrong (D) and Laddie Shaw (R), Ketchikan independent Rep. Dan Ortiz and Nikiski Republican Rep. Ben Carpenter, who is running for Senate.
About a third of the 50 seats on this year’s ballot are currently uncontested.
If we’re looking for seats with a high potential to be flipped, Anchorage has a bevy of races that are shaping up to be rematches of close 2022 contests.
In South Anchorage, Republican Rep. Tom McKay is set to face Democrat Denny Wells. After the ranked-choice tabulation and recounts were completed, Wells came within seven votes of beating McKay in 2022. Republican Rep. Julie Coulombe is also facing a rematch of her narrow 2022 victory over non-partisan candidate Walter Featherly, whom she beat by 112 votes.
East Anchorage also had close races set to be repeated this year. Republican Rep. Stanley Wright beat Democrat Ted Eischeid by 72 votes and will face a rematch this year. Democratic Rep. Cliff Groh faces a rematch with Republican David Nelson, who fell 77 votes short of Groh in 2022.
Anchorage doesn’t have a total monopoly on rematches, though, with Nome Democratic Rep. Neal Foster set to rematch with Republican Tyler Ivanoff, whom he beat by 92 votes in 2022. The electoral slate includes several other rematches, but most were decided in 2022 by several hundred votes or more.
A full list of the official filings can be found here.
Why it matters
The Legislature’s failure to override Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto by a single vote is likely to loom large over several of the races. Reps. McKay and Coulombe both voted in favor of upholding the veto, insisting that a make-up bill that contained the funding and “reforms” demanded by conservatives was achievable in the session. House Republicans even took an unusual step of handing off the job of shepherding the replacement bill through the process to Rep. McKay in his capacity as the chair of the House Resources Committee rather than the House Education Committee.
McKay’s much-softened rhetoric on school funding, going from questioning any increases to professing his support for an increase, didn’t translate into any material success. Instead, the bill floundered in the final weeks of the legislative session and never even made it to a vote in the House, let alone in the Senate.
In Homer, extreme-right Republican Rep. Sarah Vance — who has been a lightning rod for culture war issues and voted to uphold the education bill override — will face several challengers this year, including Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly President Brent Johnson. He told the Anchorage Daily News that he had first considered running for the Legislature more than a decade ago but was happy to stay in his community and work locally until he saw the impact of the education bill veto.
“I didn’t want to change any of that. And I held that position consistent, even though people asked me to run several times, until the failure to override the governor’s veto of education funding,” Johnson told the paper.
Other outcomes of this session weren’t quite as stark as falling a single vote short of a veto override. Instead, the outcome of many issues was decided by who was in control of the chamber and committees. The House refused to meaningfully consider a public pension bill or election reforms approved by the Senate, narrowly defeating attempts to advance both through procedural votes.
While those issues could change with a Democrat-led or bipartisan-led House, things could shift dramatically to the right if the Senate’s 17-member bipartisan majority were to give way to conservative Republicans. The bipartisan majority eschewed culture war issues this session, making it clear that they were not at all interested in taking up abortion restrictions or the House’s trans sports ban bill that consumed more than a day of the House’s time in the final days of the legislative session.
The filing deadline is 5 p.m. on Saturday, June 1. The general election is on Nov. 5.
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.
