The road to November

A look at the state of the race.

Good morning, Alaska!

In this edition: The filing deadline for this year’s legislative races closed on Saturday, drawing more than 100 candidates for the 50 seats on this year’s ballot. In this edition, let’s look at some of the broad trends in the filings, some of the key races and the ongoing impact of open primaries and ranked-choice voting on Alaska’s elections. Also, the reading list.

Current mood: 😎

The road to November

Denali National Park (Marek/Adobe Stock)

The lead-up to this year’s legislative candidate filing 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, particularly on closely decided issues like school funding, the return of public pensions and election reforms. Of the 50 races on this year’s ballot, all but eight will be contested, and about a third of the contested races will effectively be intraparty contests.

While there’s plenty of prognosticating to be done on the traditional head-to-head matchups between Republicans and Democrats, those account for fewer than half the seats on this year’s ballot. Only 18 of the 42 contested seats have both a Democrat and a Republican in the race, and fewer will actually be competitive. What’s particularly interesting to me are the races that are or will essentially be intraparty matchups between a field of Republicans or a field of Democrats. By my count, about 13 will come down to a choice between candidates from the same party.

Under reforms approved by voters in 2020, Alaska has abandoned the traditional semi-closed partisan primaries in favor of open primaries that send the top four finishers to the general election regardless of political affiliation. To avoid spoilers, the general election is conducted with ranked-choice voting, where voters rank candidates in the event that no candidate crosses the 50% mark of the vote. When that happens, votes are re-tabulated in what is essentially an instant run-off, with the worst-performing candidates eliminated and the votes divvied up according to voter preference.

In the 2022 cycle, when the latest redistricting cycle opened up many seats, several seats attracted multiple serious candidates from the same party who advanced to the general election. In most of those cases, voters opted for the more moderate of the candidates. In races with multiple candidates from the same party and competitive candidates from the opposing party, we also saw votes largely unite behind a leading candidate through ranked-choice voting, with several Republicans and Democrats who won thanks to the re-tabulation process.

In a way, that’s the true goal of Alaska’s election reforms. This combination of open primaries and ranked-choice voting means that the broader electorate will get a say on their representation rather than how it worked in the past, where races in highly partisan districts were decided in the primary by a smaller subset of the electorate. In the past, that meant more partisan candidates typically prevailed, while the new system has, in broad terms, seen more moderate candidates prevail.

On that front, here are some of the most notable intraparty races on this year’s ballot:

• Nikiski Republican Sen. Jesse Bjorkman, a pro-school moderate who prevailed over Dunleavy ally Tuckerman Babcock in 2022 by about seven points, is now facing a challenge from extreme-right Republican Rep. Ben Carpenter (along with Democrat Tina Wagner and Alaska Independence candidate Andy Cizek). Carpenter, whose main legislative proposal was a corporate income tax cut that would be paid for by a sales tax, spent much of this session angling for this race against Bjorkman, outlining several issues that would endear him with a far-right base of the partisan primaries of the past but don’t exactly have the kind of broad appeal needed to win under the new system.

• In West Anchorage, conservative Republican Rep. Craig Johnson, who voted to uphold the governor’s veto of the education bill and played a crucial role in blocking a pension bill from advancing, will face former Republican Rep. Chuck Kopp, a relative moderate who has spent much of his time out of office advocating for a change in the pension system, as well as independent Greg Magee. While this isn’t a traditional Republican versus Democrat race, a Kopp win would change the balance on critical issues like pensions and school funding.

• Rep. David Eastman, the extreme-right Wasilla Republican who doesn’t play well with others, faces what’s likely his most formidable challenge yet in Mat-Su School Board president Jubilee Underwood. This isn’t exactly a race that will greatly tip the ideological bend of the seat, given that the Mat-Su School Board has been a hotbed of the right-wing culture wars. Still, Underwood would at least likely get along better with Republicans and help shore up an unreliable seat.

• Eagle River Republican Sen. Kelly Merrick, a pro-labor moderate, faces three Republican challengers—former Rep. Ken McCarty (whom she beat by nearly 20 points in 2022), former Rep. Sharon Jackson and Jared Goecker—as well as Democrat Lee Hammermeister. Given her trouncing of McCarty in 2022, it’s unlikely that Merrick is in any real trouble. That, however, would likely change under a return to the semi-closed partisan primaries.

• Wasilla Republican Rep. Jesse Sumner, a moderate-by-comparison member of the House Majority, faces three Republicans: Steve Menard, Elexie Moore and Jessica Wright. Sumner’s 2022 race was a good example of how the new election system works. He finished second in the primaries to Menard, but when the general election rolled around, he did a strong job consolidating the vote around him. He not only finished first in the general election’s initial round but won a majority of votes from the third- and fourth-place fishers.

• Republicans don’t have a complete monopoly on intraparty contests. Bethel Democratic Rep. CJ McCormick faces two Democratic challengers, Victoria Sosa and Nellie “Unangiq” Jimmie, and Veteran’s Party candidate Willy Keppel. That marks just one of two races with multiple serious Democratic candidates.

• Republican-turned-independent Rep. Thomas Baker’s time in the Legislature is likely coming to a quick end after a session spent bucking his community’s interests in favor of Gov. Mike Dunleavy, with notable votes such as upholding the governor’s education bill veto and against election reforms. While he’s still in the race, most see it as a contest between Democrats Robyn “Niayuq” Burke and Saima “Ikrik” Chase.

Other intraparty contests include: GOP Rep. Justin Ruffridge in a rematch against former Rep. Ron Gillham for Soldotna; Republicans Bill Elam and John Hillyer competing to replace Rep. Ben Carpenter in Nikiski; Republicans Lee Ellis, Lucy Bauder and Brandy Pennington and independent Ky Holland to replace Rep. Laddie Shaw in South Anchorage; Rep. Kevin McCabe in a rematch against Doyle Holmes in Big Lake; Republican Rep. Mike Prax and Michael Welch in North Pole; Republican Rep. Frank Tomaszewski against Joy Beth Cottle in Fairbanks; and Republican Sen. David Wilson against Stephen Wright and Robert Yundt in Wasilla.

The surprises

(Galyna Andrushko/Adobe Stock)