Kreiss-Tomkins wins Alaska gubernatorial election as Republican opponents concede

This article has been updated.

Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins is expected to win election as Alaska’s 13th governor, becoming the first Democrat to win the office since Tony Knowles’ re-election in 1998.

In results published Friday evening According to the Alaska Division of Elections, Kreiss-Tomkins received 50.8% of the first-choice votes for governor in this year’s election, putting him over the threshold for a second round ranked pick and giving him a mathematically insurmountable lead.

CNN declared him the winner against three Republican challengers Thursday evening. The Associated Press followed suit Friday evening. TThe Alaska Division of Elections is not expected to certify the results until November 25. Preliminary final results are expected on November 18.

“It was a team effort every step of the way, and we always believed we could (win),” Kreiss-Tomkins said on Friday. “So it’s really, really gratifying to have that official call from the race, or whatever CNN calls it, to kind of put a little bit of punctuation on the phrase.”

Kreiss-Tomkins was the only Democrat among four candidates seeking to replace term-limited Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who was unable to run for reelection this year. Dunleavy could run again in four years.

Even before Thursday, preliminary results pointed to Kreiss-Tomkins would win the race if it went to a ranked-choice runoff. Now, with more than 50% of the first-choice votes, no runoff is necessary.

Kreiss-Tomkins’ closest opponent in the election was Republican Bernadette Wilson, who held 28.1 percent of the 279,127 first-choice votes counted as of late Friday.

Republican candidate Dave Bronson was third, with 13.6 percent, and Republican candidate Treg Taylor was fourth with 7.2 percent.

“Congratulations to Governor-elect Kreiss-Tomkins for winning the Alaska gubernatorial race with a majority of the vote,” Bronson said in a statement. a declaration posted on his campaign’s Facebook page Friday. “Alaskans made their choice and I respect their decision. It was a pleasure campaigning against him. I wish him every success.”

By phone Friday morning, Wilson said that while she was disappointed in the outcome and hoped for a different outcome as more ballots were counted, the trajectory since Election Day was not a surprise.

“JKT was leading on election night, leading in the first round. He will be your governor,” she said.

Wilson and Kreiss-Tomkins were both born in Alaska, and Wilson said that while they disagree on policy, she is happy to have someone from the state leading it.

“I know he genuinely cares about the state. We disagree a lot on what (caring for the state) looks like and how to get there, but I don’t look at him and think, ‘Oh my God, you’re a foreigner who just moved here 10 years ago and now thinks you should be governor.’ So he will only be the third governor born here,” Wilson said.

Kreiss-Tomkins, 37, will also be the youngest governor in state history and the first Democrat since 2002, when Tony Knowles left office after an eight-year term.

No announcement on the transition plan yet

Kreiss-Tomkins said he plans to announce the members of his transition team — the people who will help organize Alaska’s new government — early next week.

“Next week we’ll start to have a pretty regular cadence of updates and announcements from us,” he said.

Alaska’s constitution requires the new governor to be sworn in on Dec. 7 at noon. Kreiss-Tomkins said he has not yet decided on the location of this event. He declined to say whether he was thinking of Anchorage, Juneau or Sitka, his hometown.

December 15 is the statutory deadline for the new governor to present a proposed budget. In 2018, when Dunleavy took over from former Governor Bill Walker, he introduced a slightly modified version of a proposal by Walkerthen revealed a major budgetary austerity plan in Februarydeadline for the governor to submit budget amendments.

“There is a lot to do and we are excited to get to work with obsessive problem-solving energy,” Kreiss-Tomkins said Friday.

“We’re thinking about next year’s budget, we’re thinking about building an administration, and we’re thinking about a program for government, and all three of those things are big things, and we’re tackling them all at a pace now that there’s a little more clarity,” he said.

Kreiss-Tomkins will work with majority-Democratic coalitions in the House of Representatives and Senate. The parliamentary coalition will have at least 24 members and could have as many as 27, depending on the outcome of the close election where vote counting continues.

The senatorial coalition should have a minimum of 11 members, including 8 Democrats, 2 Republicans and 1 independent.

Wilson explains why Republicans lost the election

Seventeen candidates registered in the primary elections, including two Democrats, three independents and 12 Republicans.

In the primary, Kreiss-Tomkins finished with the most votes, followed by fellow Democrats Tom Begich, Wilson and Bronson.

Begich withdrew from the race in order to consolidate his support behind Kreiss-Tomkins, who promoted fifth-place Treg Taylor into the top four.

Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom disqualified Taylor, citing her failure to properly fill out a financial disclosure form on time, but she reversed her decision days later.

The brief disqualification saw Taylor’s wife replace him on the ballot; she was removed from office once her candidacy was reinstated.

Wilson received the highest vote total among Republicans in the primary election. Before the primaries, she said that, in order to shore up her support, she would leave the race if she didn’t get the top votes.

Other Republicans made similar pledges, but Bronson and Taylor remained in the race, emphasizing that even if they withdrew, they would simply have been replaced by other Republicans who finished worse in the primaries.

With three Republicans on the ballot, the Alaska Republican Party and senior Republican officials — including Dunleavy — generally declined to support one candidate or another and instead urged Republican candidates to “rank red” by choosing Wilson, Taylor and Bronson in any order.

Wilson, by phone Friday, said that was not an effective strategy.

“The reality is that the Republican Party, the donors, you know, all the conservative groups, had the ability to suck the oxygen out of the room, even if other candidates didn’t want to step down,” Wilson said.

With three options to choose from, Republican donors stayed away or limited their financial assistance, Wilson said. Independent spending groups also did not participate in elections to the extent they did in 2022 or 2018.

While Kreiss-Tomkins is on pace to win the majority of first-choice votes for governor, Wilson believes it could have been different with more financial and organizational support from Republicans.

“That’s why I say that even if JKT wins in the first round, there’s no doubt in my mind that that’s a very direct result of the inability to consolidate and collaborate, and that’s something that on the conservative side we really need to look in the mirror and figure out what we’re going to do here,” she said.

Wilson said she intends to remain active in Alaska politics — she has campaigned for conservative causes for nearly two decades — but is not yet sure of her next steps.

Statewide, she urged Alaska conservatives to immediately start thinking about 2028, when incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, is up for re-election.

According to historical primary election results, most registered Alaska Republicans oppose Murkowski and prefer a more conservative Republican, but Murkowski has been able to remain in office with support from Democrats, moderate Republicans and independents.

Wilson, who opposes Murkowski, said that unless Republican organizations — including the state party — organize and support a single candidate in 2028, they risk a repeat of the vote dilution that occurred this year.