Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, a former state representative from the small island community of Sitka, won the race for Alaska governor, according to a race call by the Associated Press.
At 37, he’ll be the youngest governor in state history.
Kreiss-Tomkins will replace outgoing Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a term-limited Republican who has been governor since 2018. The state’s last Democratic governor was Tony Knowles, who left office in 2002.
Kreiss-Tomkins, known by his initials JKT, made his “high-energy, bipartisan, problem-solving approach” a centerpiece of his campaign.
He’s said he plans to build an administration of Democrats, Republicans and independents and described himself at a debate as a “man of the middle.” He was endorsed by three former governors — a Democrat, a Republican and an independent — along with Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
“Alaskans want change,” Kreiss-Tomkins said in an interview Friday. “They want (a) bipartisan problem-solving approach in their elected officials, and that's what they're going to get with me as governor.”
Kreiss-Tomkins is on track to win more than 50% of the first-choice vote, meaning the race would not be determined by ranked choice tabulation. The results remain unofficial until they’re certified; election officials plan to do so Nov. 25.
The AP race call came after 10 days of counting votes, including those coming in by mail and from remote parts of the state. In the ranked-choice system the state uses, he faced three Republican candidates, including one, business owner Bernadette Wilson, backed by President Trump.
Wilson acknowledged her loss in a phone interview with the Alaska Beacon Friday morning. She told the Beacon that despite deep disagreements on the best way forward for the state, she was glad someone born in the state had been elected to lead it. Neither Wilson nor her campaign has not responded to calls, texts or emails from Alaska Public Media since Election Day.
Another Republican in the race, Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson, congratulated Kreiss-Tomkins on social media Friday.
“Alaskans have made their choice, and I respect their decision,” he said.
With Kreiss-Tomkins’ win and others in the midterms, Democrats will hold 30 governors’ offices across the country, up from 24 now.
Kreiss-Tomkins will take office in a state where voters have loudly complained that things aren’t working as they should.
Rising costs and relatively flat state funding have forced schools to close and class sizes to rise. Already-high costs for food, fuel and housing have risen sharply, and a looming shortage of easily accessible natural gas near the state’s population centers is threatening to push prices higher. And Alaskans have been migrating out of the state for more than a decade.
Plans to focus on ‘making government work’
Kreiss-Tomkins has offered glimpses of what his administration will bring in interviews and speeches since Election Day.
Speaking to the Resource Development Development Council in Anchorage on Wednesday, Kreiss-Tomkins listed his first priority as solving nuts-and-bolts problems — what he called “unsexy and non-glamorous” issues like wait times for state permits and government benefits like Medicaid. He said he hoped to “cultivate a culture of constant improvement in state government.”
“I really want to focus on making government work … making sure the basic processes and services that government is responsible for, that industry and others rely on, is working in the best possible way,” he said.
Kreiss-Tomkins has yet to announce any possible appointees to his administration, but hinted Wednesday that he might keep some Dunleavy administration commissioners. In an interview Friday, he declined to give specifics and said he expected to start naming appointees next week.
“It was probably pretty clear with our campaign what areas we felt Alaska needed to go in a different direction from the Dunleavy administration, and I think in those areas, correspondingly, you know, we will have new leadership,” he said.
The next governor is set to take office amid a war-driven boom in oil prices that could leave the state budget with a surplus in the hundreds of millions of dollars. An updated revenue forecast is due out next month.
Even so, Kreiss-Tomkins said he expects to propose a “moderate” Permanent Fund dividend and exercise what he described as “responsibility and restraint.”
Alaska’s dependence on oil revenue lends itself to a feast-or-famine dynamic, he said.
“I know what the famine cycle looks like because that basically described all 10 years I happened to be in the Legislature,” he said. “But I have seen the history of what the feast cycle looks like, and I really don't want the pendulum to swing too hard the other direction.”
In that vein, Kreiss-Tomkins said he’s planning to pursue an amendment to the state Constitution to place stricter limits on how much the state can withdraw from the Permanent Fund each year. And he said he wants to deposit some of the coming year’s possible surplus into the state’s rainy-day fund.
But as Kreiss-Tomkins said numerous times on the campaign trail, there’s one area where he says he would like to see more spending: education.
“I think the state does need to make a course correction in terms of the degree we invest in public education,” he said.
Democrats won big nationwide on Election Day. Kreiss-Tomkins is set to take office with a friendly Legislature with both houses controlled by Democrat-heavy coalitions.
Even so, Kreiss-Tomkins said he’s still planning to look for ways to work together with Alaskans across the ideological spectrum.
“If we run from one extreme to the other, I think if you zoom out and you look at the big picture, much less gets accomplished, and sometimes you actually move backwards,” he said.
Kreiss-Tomkins will take the oath of office at noon Dec. 7.
“We can’t wait to get to work,” he said.
