The five candidates most likely to be on the short list of progressive and moderate voters in the 2026 race for Alaska’s next governor shared a stage this week for a forum with a decidedly progressive message.
“The goal is to give voters clear and comparable information on how each candidate will protect and strengthen access to care,” said Joelle Hall, the president of the Alaska AFL-CIO, one of the event’s organizers. “Medicaid touches every part of Alaska’s health system, so decisions made at the state level will have immediate and real consequences for the families, providers and communities. So we’re here tonight to make sure those stakes are understood, and the candidates are speaking directly to them.”
The forum was hosted by the Alaska Medicaid Coalition, the Alaska Caregivers Union SEIU775 and progressive-leaning organizations and labor groups at the Anchorage Loussac Library on Wednesday. Hall noted that only candidates who replied to a survey saying they would work to “protect Medicaid” — a key source of medical coverage for a vast swath of children, mothers and working-class Alaskans, which is routinely targeted for cuts by conservatives — if elected.
Those candidates were Democrat Tom Begich, a former Anchorage state senator; Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, a former Sitka state representative; Anchorage Democratic Sen. Matt Claman; Anchorage independent candidate Meda DeWitt; and moderate pro-labor Republican Click Bishop, a former Fairbanks state senator.
The quintet shared broadly the same vision for protecting and improving the state’s Medicaid program, with several making nods to the importance of paying health care workers better. DeWitt, who chaired the effort to recall Dunleavy, was the sharpest in directly criticizing the governor, but none seemed to have much positive to say about the Republican’s legacy on health care and the management of state social programs. Bishop, the lone Republican on the stage, honed in on the importance of job training in the state, reflecting his time as labor commissioner. Begich, Kreiss-Tomkins and Claman — the three Democrats — often delved into technical details of their plans, largely mirroring their detail-oriented time as legislators.
Here are each candidate’s response to the governor’s role in health care:
Bishop: As Governor, I won’t be silent when federal decisions threaten our health care access in Alaska. Medicaid is a state-federal partnership, and I want to reiterate that it’s a state-federal partnership. We’re joined at the hip, and Alaska needs a governor who’s fully engaged in this partnership. I will go to Washington, DC, if needed to advocate for Alaska. I will also fully staff with an individual in the governor’s office in Washington, DC, who will also advocate for Alaska’s needs, and specifically in respect to Medicaid.
DeWitt: As governor, you are employed to represent the people and what the people want and what they need, and that is something that we have not seen for eight years. And so as governor, you are my governing body to tell me, what do you want, and we have heard loud and clear that Alaskans want health care. They want what is rightfully theirs that is paid into the system and as a civil society, that we are fiduciary responsibility to take care of our people. Part of Alaska is that we have had an austerity policy that has cut corners and cut dollars without actually realizing or or researching the impact that is on Alaskans.
Kreiss-Tomkins: I would take inspiration from the Seattle Seahawks. They’ve got the 12th man in the Seattle Seahawks, which some of you might be familiar with. And I would like to see the governor be the fourth member of the congressional delegation when it comes to standing up for Alaska when we’re getting shortchanged in DC for programs that really make a difference to the state. And that’s what happened this last go-around with Medicaid, and unfortunately, there was absolutely nothing coming out of the governor’s office when it came to standing up for Alaska’s best interests. So exact opposite of that approach.
Claman: A focus of my administration is going to be more affordable health care, and how do we improve the health for all Alaskans? … And there’s a part of me that wants to say, Well, I’m very, very disappointed with some of the stuff that President Trump has done with Medicaid, but I’m reminded that as governor, my job is to work with whoever is the president and be fully engaged in Medicaid at a very a lot of detailed policy level areas to keep making sure we get maximum benefit for Medicaid dollars, to get maximum coverage for Medicaid dollars.
Begich: “The idea of the governor being an advocate, of course, is critical in all of these efforts, but the bottom line can’t rely fully on the federal government anymore, in particular, that it wasn’t just Congress that drove this agenda, it was the president that drove this agenda. So we have the ability in Alaska to begin to plan for a future that may be without government funds coming from the federal government.”
In the big picture
While they all shared similar positions on the social safety net program — they broadly supported protecting it as part of larger plans to make health care more accessible and affordable for everyone — the five are vying for four of the open primary seats against a nearly 20-person field where a vast majority are far- to extreme-right Republicans with varying connections to the increasingly unpopular lame-duck Gov. Mike Dunleavy.
While Alaska’s ranked-choice voting in the general election means voters don’t have to pick a single candidate — allowing several like-minded candidates to compete in the general election without automatically playing spoiler — that doesn’t apply to the open primary system.
In the Aug. 18 open primary, voters will pick only one candidate on the ballot, with the top four finishers advancing to the general, so early and focused forums like this give candidates an opportunity to stand out and build momentum heading into the primary.
Bishop’s good-natured, work-with-everyone folksiness and DeWitt’s feisty moral outrage at the status quo seemed to resonate most with the audience, with their answers frequently eliciting applause.
That said, no one got any negative reaction from the audience. After the event, one attendee commented that they still hadn’t made up their mind, but felt all five would make a far better alternative to whoever emerges from the conservative field.
The only person who was booed during the event was Gov. Mike Dunleavy.
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.
