Republican former Attorney General Treg Taylor is back in the race to be Alaska’s next governor despite refusing to disclose the details behind more than $1 million in rental income. Republican election officials decided at the last-minute that Taylor should qualify for the ballot after all because the rules can’t be enforced.
That’s the claim that Republican Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, Gov. Mike Dunleavy, and former interim Attorney General Stephen Cox made at a press conference on Monday, where they argued that an eleventh-hour analysis by the Department of Law showed as many as 91 of 121 statewide candidates had “some sort of inaccuracy.” They argued that the review shows that the financial disclosure law hasn’t been applied fairly, so, essentially, it shouldn’t be applied at all.
The fast-tracked review salvages the candidacy of Taylor—a close Dunleavy ally—after he was disqualified last week after the Alaska Public Offices Commission (APOC) ruled that he never complied with the financial disclosure requirements to run for office. At the heart of the issue is a 234-unit apartment building in Anchorage that Taylor owns. He has refused to disclose his renters, as required by state law, and even ignored a ruling last year that required him to do so.
News of the review was only disclosed after 10 p.m. Friday, when Dahlstrom announced she was putting Taylor back on the ballot. While Dahlstrom relied on the APOC recommendation with her initial decision to disqualify Taylor, she argued that the Department of Law’s latest “preliminary, independent review” supported reversing course.
As of Tuesday, APOC commissioners had not changed their position on Taylor’s ineligibility.
While the main message from Dahlstrom, Dunleavy, and Cox at Monday’s press conference was that financial disclosures may be broadly inaccurate to the point that the law can’t be fairly enforced, they didn’t point to anything nearly as significant as concealing $1 million in rental income from a 234-unit apartment building.
“Now it could have been a comma left out, or a number turned around, or something more,” Dahlstrom said. “That review was preliminary, and it was not determined that any individual candidate had violated a law. But it raised the important question for me, and that is: Were the standards that were applied underlying the recommendation that APOC had given to me? Was it applied consistently across all candidates? That’s a pretty serious question to deal with.”
Few seem to agree that the Department of Law-initiated review—which appears to be a first in state history—is as innocent as it seems.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Dave Bronson wrote in a social media post that the Department of Law seems to be intentionally confusing the issue. He noted that the law recognizes a difference between “substantial non-compliance,” which would be something like intentionally refusing to disclose the source of $1 million in rental income from an apartment building, and something like the missing commas that the state held up as examples of why the state won’t enforce the rules for Taylor.
He went on to accuse the Department of Law and the Division of Elections of looking for problems, noting that many of the alleged inaccuracies flagged for the 91 candidates appear to be based on quick database searches aimed at finding old associations rather than actual violations.
He noted that both he and his running mate, Josh Church, are among the 91 candidates flagged by the state, but the issues include things like claiming that Bronson may have had an unreported financial benefit from his volunteer work or that Church got a financial benefit from a Homeowners Association board he says he never served on. The review also flagged that Bronson may have been hiding real estate when he co-signed on his son’s house and later removed his name from the property.
“There is a significant difference between a database associating someone with a former property or board position and a candidate failing to disclose significant income, substantial business interests, or financial assets,” he said. “None of the issues being raised involve hiding income, clients or receiving an undisclosed financial benefit.”
The optics of the news conference—with Dunleavy and Cox being present—are fueling further criticism of the reversal. Under the Alaska Constitution and state law, elections are under the purview of the lieutenant governor, not the governor. At the news conference, Dunleavy never clearly explained why he was involved in the issue, but insisted that issues around the election are best left to the voters.
“We think people need to get on with campaigning,” he said. “The people of Alaska need to get on with understanding what the candidates want, what they intend to do while they’re in office so they can vote for them, and we just have to be able to navigate through our election system here in November.”
The news conference also raises questions about Cox’s continued involvement in directing the Department of Law’s activities, even though lawmakers voted against confirming him as attorney general earlier this year. Cox’s brief tenure as interim Attorney General, which ended in May, also overlapped with some of the state’s most questionable election activities, including handing over confidential voter information to the federal government, signing a memorandum of understanding with the feds inviting them to decide who can vote, and the unprecedented attempts to block Republican US Senate candidate Dan J. Sullivan from running against US Sen. Dan Sullivan.
Interim Attorney General Cori Mills, a longtime state attorney, was not present at Monday’s news conference.
Several reporters at Monday’s news conference asked what, if anything, the officials could say to give voters confidence that this year’s elections will be conducted fairly. Several questioned the outsized role that Cox—who lawmakers accused of being more interested in national political issues than in upholding Alaska’s laws—appears to have played from his position in the governor’s office.
“There’s going to be a lot of people that think there were nefarious things going on,” said Gov. Mike Dunleavy, recognized, before adding, “We don’t think so.”
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 Bluesky.
