The filing deadline for the 50 legislative seats on this year’s ballot came and went on Saturday, drawing more than 100 candidates for Alaska’s second statewide election cycle to be conducted with open primaries and ranked-choice voting.
The lead-up to the deadline brought a handful of surprises, with seven incumbent legislators bowing out of their seats, a last-minute switch-up and several rematches of close 2022 contests that all have the potential to change the course of politics in the state capitol.
A full list of the candidates can be found here. Candidates have until June 29 to withdraw from the race. The primary election is set for Aug. 20, 2024, and the top four finishers from each race will advance to the Nov. 5 general election, which will be conducted with ranked-choice voting.
Of the 50 races on this year’s ballot, all but eight will be contested. The incumbents who can rest easy are Reps. Rebecca Himschoot (I-Sitka), Sara Hannan (D-Juneau), Zack Fields (D-Anchorage), Dan Saddler (R-Eagle River), DeLena Johnson (R-Palmer) and Cathy Tilton (R-Wasilla) and Sens. Jesse Kiehl (D-Juneau) and Donny Olson (D-Golovin).
The biggest surprise of the filing deadline goes to Fairbanks Sen. Click Bishop, a labor-friendly Republican who announced that he would not be running for reelection. In his announcement, Bishop also made clear that he’s eying a run for higher office with a hint at the open governor’s race in 2026.
His district, which spans from the very progressive West Fairbanks to the Interior villages and out to the Canada border along the much more conservative corridors along the Alaska and Richardson highways, has drawn five challengers. At the top of the list are Tok Republican Rep. Mike Cronk — a former teacher who has spent much of his time in office opposing school funding increases and voted to uphold the governor’s veto — and Fairbanks North Star Borough presiding officer Savannah Fletcher, a progressive independent. Also in the race are Democrat Jason Avery, Republican James Squyres and Alaska Independent Party candidate Bert Williams.
By and large, open seats have drawn the largest fields of candidates.
Rep. Cronk’s open seat has six candidates: Republicans Pamela Goode, Dana Mock, Rebecca Schwanke and Cole Snodgrass, Democrat Brandon “Putuuqti” Kowalski, and Libertarian James Fields.
In South Anchorage, four candidates have filed to replace retiring Republican Rep. Laddie Shaw: Republicans Lee Ellis, Lucy Bauer and Brandy Pennington, as well as independent Ky Holland.
In Ketchikan, independent Rep. Dan Ortiz’s retirement announcement has drawn three candidates: Republican Jeremy Bynum, who lost to Ortiz by five points in 2022, and independents Grant Echohawk and Agnes Moran. While the broader conservative voting trends in this district have put it on the map as a likely Republican pick-up for some observers, things aren’t quite so simple in Southeast Alaska, where both Echohawk and Moran will, like Ortiz, bank on more than partisan voting trends in their campaigns.
Several incumbent Republicans also face crowded races.
In Wasilla, Republican Rep. Jesse Sumner faces a four-way race with Republicans Steve Menard, Elexie Moore and Jessica Wright. Sumner beat Menard in a similarly crowded race in 2022 and has been one of the more moderate Republicans in the House Majority. Sumner was one of the few House Republicans to back an override of the governor’s education veto.
Moderate Republican Sens. Kelly Merrick of Eagle River and Jesse Bjorkman of Nikiski also face crowded fields. Merrick will face former Republican Reps. Ken McCarty and Sharon Jackson, along with Republican Jared Goecker and Lee Hammermeister. Merrick easily sailed to victory in 2022, winning in the first round by nearly 20 points over McCarty. Sen. Bjorkman faces a challenge from extreme-right Republican Rep. Ben Carpenter as well as Democrat Tina Wegener and Alaska Independence Party member Andy Cizek.
Extreme-right Republican Rep. Sarah Vance of Homer also faces a crowded race with Republican Dawson Slaughter and independents Brent Johnson and Alana Greear.
While not quite as crowded, Republican Reps. Craig Johnson of Anchorage and David Eastman of Wasilla have also drawn serious Republican challengers. Johnson will face former Republican Rep. Chuck Kopp, a moderate who has been working on the restoration of a public pension system that Johnson has played a key role in blocking, and independent Greg Magee. Eastman, whose politics are so odious that he has not been invited to caucus with Republicans, faces a Republican challenger in Jubilee Underwood. Underwood is the president of the Mat-Su School Board, a hotbed of right-wing education policy.
Under reforms approved by voters in 2020, Alaska has abandoned the traditional semi-closed partisan primaries in favor of open primaries that allow multiple candidates from the same party to advance to the general election. To avoid spoilers, the general election is then conducted with ranked-choice voting, where voters rank candidates in the event that no candidate crosses the 50% mark of the vote. The votes are then re-tabulated in what is essentially an instant run-off election, with the worst-performing candidates eliminated and the votes divvied up according to voter preference.
The open primaries and ranked-choice voting system make intraparty challenges that much more interesting. Rather than having the races decided in the semi-closed partisan primaries of the past, the broader electorate will get to have a say on their representation. Typically, that has resulted in moderate candidates from a district’s dominant party winning.
The first cycle under those election reforms saw several narrowly decided races, and several of those candidates were staring down a potential rematch heading into the filing deadline.
Rep. Tom McKay, R-Anchorage, ultimately dodged a rematch against Democrat Denny Wells for the West Anchorage seat. McKay beat Wells by fewer than 10 votes in the 2022 primary and was looking down a tough re-election after McKay, among many hard-right votes, voted to uphold the governor’s veto of a broadly popular education bill. Rather than face Wells in what was largely considered a losing race, McKay dropped out of the race and entered the race against Democratic Sen. Matt Claman, a fundraising juggernaut who beat Sen. Mia Costello by four points in 2022.
Costello makes her return to legislative politics following her 2022 loss by replacing McKay in the race against Wells. While it certainly improves the chances that Republicans hold onto the seat in 2024, it’s also not hard to improve on near-zero.
Another incumbent facing a rematch of a narrowly won 2022 race includes South Anchorage Republican Rep. Julie Coulombe, who beat independent candidate Walter Featherly by fewer than 150. Coulombe, like McKay, also voted to uphold the governor’s veto of the education bill, though her politics are somewhat more moderate. Coulombe’s key achievement during her time in office was working on reducing child-care costs.
Not all Republicans in rematches voted to uphold the governor’s veto.
In East Anchorage, Republican Rep. Stanley Wright voted to override the governor’s veto. He will face a rematch with Democrat Ted Eischeid, who came within 100 votes of Wright in 2022. While Wright has mostly stuck with Republicans, he has split on enough issues to be considered a relatively moderate.
Other rematches include Democratic Rep. Neal Foster and Republican Tyler Ivanoff in Nome; Democratic Rep. Maxine Dibert and Republican Bart LeBon in Fairbanks; Republican Rep. Kevin McCabe and Republican Doyle Holmes in Big Lake; Rep. Cliff Groh and Republican David Nelson in East Anchorage and Republican Rep. Justin Ruffridge and Republican Ron Gillham in Soldotna. Foster beat Ivanoff by fewer than 100 votes in 2022, making it the closest rematch of the bunch.
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.
