Politics here in the Great Land can be convoluted and are sometimes hard to understand, as one might expect from a vast state with much of the population contained in one small metropolitan area. Alaska’s state legislature is bafflingly controlled by a coalition of Democrats and squishy Republicans, but our Governor, Mike Dunleavy, is a solid conservative.
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But Governor Dunleavy faces term limits and can’t run again when his current term expires in 2026. Two Republicans have announced campaigns to replace him, those being Lieutenant Governor Nancy Dahlstrom and former state Senator Click Bishop. Now there’s a third, and she’s something different: Anchorage business owner Bernadette Wilson, long a strong voice in Alaskan politics but until now, never a candidate for the state’s highest office.
She’s a candidate worth consideration.
Wilson, a lifelong Alaskan who was born on the Kenai Peninsula and grew up in Anchorage, is a political outsider. Even so, politics does run in her family. Her great-uncle Wally Hickel served as governor, first in the 1960s as a Republican and again in the early 1990s as a member of the Alaska Independence Party.
She noted she comes from a long line of business people, including her grandfather, who “built a good chunk” of the state’s largest city.
“I myself own a garbage company … and we are celebrating our ninth year in business,” she said. She added that her entrepreneurial experience and knowledge of state politics through her family history and own career in radio and activism is a good mix.
She does indeed own a garbage collection company, Denali Disposal; there is, in the “Gallery” section on her campaign site, a photo of her in the cab of one of her trucks. That experience may serve her well in politics, should she be elected – she’s already accustomed to dealing with… well, the things her company deals with.
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Ms. Wilson has not yet released an official list of policy positions, but we do know a few things, especially her adamant stance against ranked-choice voting.
Wilson opposes ranked choice voting, in which votes are tallied in a hierarchical manner through several rounds. Conservatives in the red state blamed ranked choice voting for the election of former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola. Incumbent Gov. Mike Dunleavy is term-limited.
“Ranked choice voting disenfranchises voters. We see that it is … so confusing to them. We see people who don’t understand the process, and it absolutely has got to go. That is mission-critical,” she said.
Must Read Alaska’s Suzanne Downing has some more on Mr. Wilson’s background:
Bernadette Wilson was recently the executive director of the Alaska Policy Forum, and before that was state director for Americans for Prosperity Alaska. She started her political activism in 2010, working to get the “parental notification” ballot initiative passed, and she worked on several campaigns, including Joe Miller for Senate, winning the primary against Lisa Murkowski; Mead Treadwell for Governor; and Nick Begich for Congress. Currently, she is one of the sponsors of the RepealNow ballot initiative to repeal ranked-choice voting. The initiative aims to gather signatures to revisit the issue after a narrow defeat in 2024.
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This is a pretty good political resume for someone who has never before run for this office.
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The last Democrat governor in Alaska was Tony Knowles, who served two terms, from 1994 to 2002. It’s very likely that whoever emerges from our maligned jungle-primary primary election system in the top two or three spots will be a Republican, and of the three who have announced so far, Bernadette Wilson has some considerable advantages: Name recognition, charisma, a history of conservative activism, and being a lifelong Alaskan. Her background as a small business owner lends her a great deal of conservative credibility as well. In Alaska, as elsewhere, it’s been some time since the GOP was the party of the affluent; that’s the Democrats now. The Republicans are the party of the working class and small business, in Alaska as elsewhere, and the GOP’s candidates should reflect that.
There’s an old saying, “All politics are local.” That’s not always the case, but state governors rank in importance second only to the president, at least where executive authority is concerned. It is in our interests to choose our candidates wisely and to support them enthusiastically. And, you never know; she may be asked to run for vice president one day.
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As for this Alaskan, I’ll be following Bernadette Wilson’s candidacy with great interest. You can follow Ms. Wilson’s campaign on X here.
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