Anchorage Republican Rep. Tom McKay’s vote to uphold Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of a broadly popular education bill put him at the top of the list of legislative seats that could be flipped, especially considering he was staring down a rematch with Democrat Denny Wells, whom he had beat by just seven votes in 2022.
On Thursday, McKay announced that he was withdrawing from the race for the West Anchorage seat to be replaced by former Republican legislator and current Bronson administration official Mia Costello. Instead, McKay will switch to face Democratic fundraising juggernaut Sen. Matt Claman, an even tougher race that suggests Republicans saw the writing on the wall.
Costello, a conservative who had been more frequently aligned with Mat-Su Republicans in her final years in the Legislature, likely faces a better shot at winning, but then again, it’s not hard to improve on near-zero.
The switch-up is one of the big surprises as the filing window for the 50 legislative races on this year’s ballot closes at 5 p.m. this Saturday. With plenty of rematches of close 2022 races and a handful of competitive open seats, the election could bring major changes in the political direction of the Alaska Legislature, especially on issues that were narrowly decided in the Legislature this year, such as education funding, election reform and public pensions.
Perhaps the biggest surprise of the election season so far is the announcement from pro-labor Sen. Click Bishop that he won’t be running for reelection. A reliably moderate and affable legislator, Bishop has represented a district that spans from the progressive West Fairbanks to Interior villages and the much more conservative corridors along the Alaska and Richardson highways since 2012 with few serious challengers.
His departure opens the door to the unknown, but far-right Tok Republican Rep. Mike Cronk and progressive Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly member Savannah Fletcher, an independent, have both indicated they plan to challenge for the seat. No candidate has yet to file for Cronk’s district.
Interestingly, while other departures are due to legislators stepping away from politics altogether, Bishop’s announcement wasn’t exactly subtle about his future plans.
“The time is right for me to prioritize and focus on family matters over the next two years,” he said. “My parents recently passed on, and there are some gold mining opportunities I need to pursue. It’s also time for me to learn a few things from my grand-kids as we prepare for the next chapter. My family and I are not done with public service. There is still a determination inside me to fix our current path of rising energy costs and the loss of our working-age population. It is clear that addressing those issues requires taking on a bigger role than serving in the Legislature.”
Of course, two years would neatly align with an open shot at the governor’s office, a position that Bishop has long been rumored to be considering. If that’s the case, he will occupy the kind of moderate, centrist lane that, at least on paper, is well-suited to the world of open primaries and ranked-choice voting (which could be repealed in this year’s election, though there’s a lawsuit challenging it for technical reasons).
Other big shake-ups in the race include Ketchikan independent Rep. Dan Ortiz’s announcement that he’s stepping away from politics over health complications from stress.
“I could continue to run, and I can continue to serve,” he told KRBD, noting he would have liked to have seen more progress on education funding and securing the future of the state’s ferry system. “But, you know, with some of the revelations through some blood tests and things like that, there’s a potential for a chronic condition to develop that I don’t want to develop. You’re never going to get everything settled the way you want to see them settled, no matter when you go out of office.”
In that race, Republican Jeremy Bynum and independent Grant Echohawk are currently filed to run for the seat.
The filing deadline for the office is 5 p.m. Saturday, though, candidates will need to get their financial disclosures to the Alaska Public Offices Commission today because that office is closed on Saturdays.
The 2024 election will be the second statewide cycle conducted under the state’s open primary and ranked-choice voting system. In the last cycle, it created several races where multiple candidates from the same party filed, giving deep red or deep blue districts a choice in the style of representation. In many cases, voters opted for the more moderate of the picks. This year, however, far fewer races have attracted crowded fields. At least so far.
Stay tuned.
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.
