The only major political party founded by, for and in Alaska is no more. On Dec. 31, the Alaskan Independence Party (AIP) publicly announced the demise of the state’s third largest political party.

The AIP board convened on Dec. 7 in Fairbanks and voted to “disband the party,” the notice declared. “The Alaskan Independence Party has been dissolved.”

Citing apathetic membership and ongoing confusion about the party’s goals, the AIP statement claimed the party had lost its way in recent years.

April 2024 marked the beginning of the end for the party. That was when the AIP elected a new board of directors to work on member outreach – “something that had been long neglected,” the AIP notice explained. “The board carried out its work and found that the current party membership is either apathetic to the goals of the party, believes that the party is a branch of the Republican party, or is registered to the AIP by mistake.”

Over the past several years, there has been an internal struggle over the direction and leadership of the AIP.

The closing announcement noted that when Walter Hickel won the 1990 election for Alaska governor as a member of the AIP – with Jack Coghill as his running mate – the party seemed to be formidable. That marked the first time since Alaska joined the union that a third-party candidate had been elected governor in the United States.

Less than four years later, however, Hickel rejoined the Republican party with eight months still left in his term.

“The Hickel-Coghill years made the AIP look strong, gaining many registrations and donations,” the AIP statement observed. “However, their influence drifted the AIP away from its mission, and in the aftermath of [AIP founder] Joe Vogler’s death there was nothing to keep the party directed towards its purpose. The party has for some time been legally alive yet spiritually dead.”

Over the past several years, there has been an internal struggle for the direction and leadership of the AIP.

In 2024, a small group of AIP members voted to replace then-Chairman Bob Bird with longtime member Bob Wayne Howe, claiming it was time to expand membership and endorse candidates who were firmly committed to the party’s core goals.

Founded in the early 1980’s, the AIP reported approximately 19,000 members at the time Bird was replaced. He had been leading the party since 2020 and had orchestrated renewed interest across the state.

When he was replaced, party leaders claimed the change in leadership was motivated, in part, from a desire to focus on growing the party’s membership through email and social media outreach, as well as wanting the AIP to put its energy behind AIP-member candidates who fully support the party’s core values.

At the time, Howe noted that there weren’t many AIP party leaders present at the 2024 convention in Fairbanks, but those who attended had enough votes to elect him as the new leader.

“The people wanting change resided more in Fairbanks, so I think had the convention been in Anchorage, it may not have happened as far as change,” Howe admitted, after replacing Bird as chairman.

Howe acknowledged that he wasn’t looking to become chairman at the time, but agreed to take over in an effort to move the party back to the original goals of its founder – Joe Volger.

In founding the party, Vogler wanted Alaska out of the American union, but knew that secession was unlikely.

As Bird explained in a 2021 Alaska Watchman column, Vogler created the AIP by relying upon the “considerable – yet fading – sentiments of the Alaskan pioneer spirit, a spirit that would hopefully awaken Alaskans to the dangers of unconstitutional federal control.”

“Vogler understood that the federal government hypocritically demanded that the states obey the constitutional limits placed upon them, even while it would ignore the far more numerous ones placed upon itself,” Bird wrote at the time. “The AIP has ever warned that federal control of western lands would eventually reach the point where Alaska could not sustain itself economically, and such development was not within Alaska’s power unless the conditions of statehood were to change.”

Vogler disappeared under suspicious circumstances on May 30, 1993, just weeks before he was scheduled to give a speech to the United Nations regarding Alaska’s right to independence from federal overreach and abuse. Before he had a chance to speak on the global stage, he was murdered.

His remains were found in a gravel pit outside of Fairbanks the following year. Convicted thief Manfried West confessed to murdering Vogler over a personal dispute, but AIP leaders have long suspected that the killing was politically motivated.

Despite his untimely death, Vogler’s vision that Alaska should enjoy self-determination of its political future endured.

Upon taking over the chairmanship from Bird in 2024, Howe admitted that under Bird’s leadership the AIP had – once again – become a viable political party after having fallen largely dormant for more than a decade.

After twice running against U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, in 1990 and 2008, the hard-charging Bird was elected AIP party chairman in 2020, organizing a statewide convention and then crisscrossing the state to raise awareness, increase membership and recruit AIP candidates to run for office.

“He has pulled it together to be a party again,” Howe said in 2024. “It was pretty much in disrepair. I would say it was in slumber. He woke it up.”

While Howe said he was committed to growing the party with a renewed focus on state’s rights, private land ownership and individual liberties, that goal never materialized under his leadership.

The AIP’s official platform called for the defense of states’ rights, individual rights, gun ownership, property rights and equal footing with all other states. It also opposed property taxes and favored a direct popular election of the attorney general, all judges and magistrates, while firmly supporting pro-life efforts, parental rights and strong traditional marriages. The party also sought a return to the traditional Permanent Fund Dividend payouts to Alaskans, among many other issues.

Upon being replaced by Howe as party chairman in 2024, Bird expressed hope for the AIP despite his surprising ouster.

“In the ‘No good deed goes unpunished’ department, I was voted out of the AIP chairmanship, despite having saved the party from extinction in 2020,” Bird said in 2024. “I brought together a staff from the individuals who listened to the party’s purpose and history and were willing to serve.”

He added that, while he was planning to step down after another two years, he wished the party leaders had communicated better before replacing him in 2024.

“If the new faction knew me better, I would have told them they needed a little more seasoning, but would have graciously stepped down anyway, earlier than I intended, once they had secured the votes to control the convention,” Bird explained in 2024. “That’s politics, if exercised in an open manner – which it seldom is. But instead, it was a surprise.”

At the time of it’s dissolution, the AIP was Alaska’s third largest political party, behind the Democrat and Republican parties.

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