Former Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor leaned on his record in Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration in his pitch to voters on the program “Talk of Alaska” Tuesday.
“I think people know me. They know I walk the talk, and they know I've accomplished great things on behalf of Alaska,” Taylor said.
Taylor’s tenure as attorney general included a wide range of court challenges to Biden-era federal actions. He defended ConocoPhillips’ Willow project on the North Slope, challenged restrictions on what are known as ghost guns, and opposed vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Taylor said he’d also had success during his four and a half years in office reducing crime. Alaska’s overall crime rate was unchanged and violent crime rates fell roughly 4% during his tenure in line with national trends, according to the Department of Public Safety. Alaska’s rape rate fell by 21% during Taylor’s time in office, outpacing a national trend.
Taylor said he’d like to build on that progress by “unleashing” resource development like mining, timber and oil and gas drilling.
“Look at the communities surrounding Red Dog Mine. What immediately happens when there's economic opportunity?” he said. “Crime rates plummet, domestic violence plummets, suicide rates plummet in those communities. And that's what motivates me, right? Because we need to provide that economic opportunity for families so that they can move forward, so they don’t feel trapped, so they don’t feel hopeless.”
Most of Taylor’s experience in government came as a member of Dunleavy’s administration, and he declined to directly criticize his former boss. But Taylor did draw some subtle distinctions, saying he’d bring “new energy” to the governor’s office and that he has his “own style.” He said he’d prioritize communicating with the Legislature and with constituents and said he’d work across party lines.
“I am a communicator. I'm probably an overcommunicator, and I think a lot of what's missing right now is that communication,” Taylor said.
Taylor also discussed the chaotic series of events in recent weeks that led him to take the fourth spot on the general election ballot. That’s after Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom first said she would disqualify him over missing financial disclosure information, then reversed herself, citing widespread errors on candidates’ financial disclosures found by a Department of Law analysis. (The accuracy of that analysis is in question.)
Ethics laws require officials and candidates to disclose their income, and Taylor said a broken website and a busy campaign schedule led him to miss a deadline to list tenants at an Anchorage apartment tower he and his wife own. When he did finally update his disclosure, he only listed tenants by first name and sometimes last initial, rather than sharing their full names as other public officials do.
Taylor faulted the state’s campaign regulator, the Alaska Public Offices Commission, and said it should be more “helpful.”
“We're going to disagree about whether the full names of our tenants should be disclosed. I think that's a privacy issue, and I feel strongly that we made the right call with that,” he said. “But it is an interesting — it is an interesting thing that happened, and I hope it doesn't happen to any other candidates.”
Taylor is one of three Republicans in the four-way ranked choice race. He didn’t directly criticize his GOP competitors and instead encouraged supporters of Republicans Dave Bronson and Bernadette Wilson to rank him on their ballots.
Alaska Public Media has invited all four gubernatorial hopefuls to appear on Talk of Alaska, with at least two more currently scheduled for October.
