The Democrat running for Alaska’s US House seat didn’t make an appearance at last week’s Debate for the State alongside Republican US Rep. Nick Begich III and independent candidate Bill Hill.
That’s because he couldn’t.
Eric Hafner, who made his first appearance on the Alaska general election ballot in 2024, is currently serving a 20-year sentence in a New York federal prison for what federal prosecutors described as a “campaign of terror” against local officials in New Jersey. He has never stepped foot in Alaska.
Hafner is on the ballot because the Alaska Supreme Court ruled in 2024 that the US Constitution’s residency requirements, which requires members of Congressto be “an inhabitant of the state,” only applies when they’re elected, not when they’re put on the ballot. The courts ruled that because anything could happen between the election and inauguration day, Hafner and any other Outside candidates could run in Alaska.
And he’s become a headache for Democrats, who worry that voters who use the party label as a shortcut to decide their vote may end up choosing Hafner and costing Hill, a commercial fisherman who the Alaska Democratic Party and several labor groups back, critical votes in his race against Begich.
The issue has become a focus of PACs heading into the final stretch of the race, with the progressive-leaning Wheel Dog PAC running an ad informing voters that Hill’s the preferred candidate of groups like the Alaska Democratic Party and organized labor.
And even those ads, with photoshopped pictures of Hafner behind bars, undersell his record.
Hafner has a history of running for Congress in states with open primaries, including a campaign for a 2018 Oregon congressional race that he claimed to be running while in hiding over drug charges. That was a year before he was arrested by federal prosecutors on charges of sending threatening messages to several local officials, including threats to shoot a police officer’s wife and child, to feed a prosecutor to dogs, and several detailed bomb threats.
While Hafner pled guilty to several counts, landing him with 20 years in prison, he maintained his innocence and cast himself as a victim of an unfair criminal justice system.
For his part, Hafner has previously said that he thinks he’ll be let out on compassionate grounds if he wins.
“Ultimately, if I’m elected, I expect to be released immediately at that point,” he told KRBD in 2024. “There’s a federal statute under compassionate release that says you could be released for extraordinary compelling reasons. And, by golly, if I’m going to DC to represent the people of Alaska, I think that’s a very extraordinary and compelling reason.”
But polling says that his presence in the race could ultimately stymie Democrats hopes of unseating Begich.
While Hill has lagged behind Begich in most polling, he has started to close in on the Republican in recent polling. However, much of that polling has shown Hafner with steady support of about 5-10% of the vote, enough to put Hill into contention if all of those voters were to rank him behind Hafner.
Other polling suggests that is unlikely, with as much as 20% of Hafner’s voters saying they wouldn’t rank anyone else.
Alaska-based pollster Ivan Moore warned part of the problem is that some Democratic voters may look past Hill’s non-partisan label to Hafner’s Democratic label and not think to rank Hill second, ultimately exhausting their vote. He said it’s a part of the challenge of running as an independent.
“It’s an indication of one of the negative aspects of running as an independent outside of the cover of the two main parties – while you open yourself to perhaps being able to court votes across the ideological spectrum, you lose some appeal back in the tribe,” Moore said.
Others hope Hill’s independent label will outweigh any lingering confusion about Hafner.
“We’ve seen independents overperform prodigiously in Alaska when running head to head against a Republican,” said John-Henry Heckendorn, a Democratic strategist in Anchorage, told Politico. “I think the fact that he doesn’t have a ‘D’ next to his name on the ballot will net him more votes from center-right voters.”
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 newsletter on the Alaska Legislature, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Bluesky.
