I cannot agree with the Alaska GOP’s current approach to state election leadership.

Currently, Alaska’s 2026 governor’s race fields at least 17 candidates, including a large cluster of Republicans, while polls show no dominant consensus candidate and a very large, undecided vote. Sadly, our state house and senate races are overshadowed by this gubernatorial beauty contest.

Don’t get me wrong. I applaud every candidate for having the strength, courage, and endurance to run, but at a time when Alaska needs a true champion as governor, it also needs a legislative majority clearly prepared to support that champion’s reforms.

Are we, as conservatives, forgetting the damage of the Gov. Bill Walker administration, coupled by what the Muskrat coalition did in just four years? Walker’s most lasting damage was normalizing the reduction of the PFD, expanding Medicaid during a fiscal crisis, cutting into education funding under austerity and no reforms, and pursuing energy strategies that increased state exposure without delivering the cheap energy Alaskans were promised.

The deeper problem is that too many candidates seek office without fully understanding the battlefield they are entering.

Add to that, the negative impacts to a Republican governor over the last eight years by a State Legislature, which was numerically Republican-leaning, but operationally a progressive-controlled coalition rather than clearly Republican.

With that history, a 17-candidate Republican gubernatorial slate is not a sign of strength; it is a sign of fragmentation. A crowded field divides money, message, endorsements, and voter attention, while a more coordinated party can narrow its bench, elevate one or two viable contenders early, and enter the decisive stages of the race with far less internal vote-splitting.

Political science literature has long noted that parties often try to influence who runs and to coalesce around candidates before voters make a final choice, precisely because uncontrolled nomination fights can weaken the party’s chances in the general election. The strategic question, then, is not whether voters should decide, but whether a party serious about governing should first decide how not to sabotage itself.

Political parties must realize that an undisciplined nomination fight can weaken the very candidate they need to win.

Alaska is a case study in how a state can retain the shell of democratic choice while losing much of the substance of self-government to bureaucracy, dependency, and organized interests.

Today’s Alaska reflects some of the egregious patterns seen throughout American history. A state government preserved in form but captured in function by organized interests more powerful than ordinary citizens. The problem is not simply spending levels or partisan labels, but a governing structure in which public unions, entrenched bureaucracies, outside federal dependencies, contractors, major economic beneficiaries, and political protection networks exert more practical influence over state policy than the people themselves.

In that environment, elections alone do not guarantee self-government, because whoever is elected is forced to govern within a system already shaped by those who live off it. Alaska’s crisis is not merely fiscal. It is constitutional and civic. If political power truly is inherent in the people, then state leadership must be rebuilt from the bottom up so government once again serves the public instead of the permanent interests that have learned to manage it for themselves.

That is why the central problem in Alaska is not simply ranked choice voting, nor any other single election mechanic. The deeper problem is that too many candidates seek office without fully understanding the battlefield they are entering. A governor may win but then finds him or herself surrounded by a structure designed to absorb, delay, redirect, neutralize, or domesticate reform. In Alaska, the “Deep State” is not some cartoon slogan. It is the practical reality of entrenched administrative power, federal dependency, legal and regulatory choke points, quasi-independent authorities, public employee interests, and outside funding networks that can geld or spay whoever is elected governor if that person is not fully prepared to confront them without a like-minded state legislature.

For that reason, the 2026 governor’s race, by itself, will not save Alaska. Regardless of who is elected, unless the legislature is conservative or at least marginally conservative, the next governor will be severely constrained in addressing the state’s largest structural problems. The Medicaid debacle will remain largely intact. Real education reform will stall or be watered down. Cheap and abundant energy will remain a talking point rather than a governing priority, and the Permanent Fund Dividend will continue to function as the state’s primary political football rather than as one part of a broader strategy of fiscal sovereignty and economic growth. In other words, Alaska’s crisis is not just about who wins office. It is about whether elected officials can govern against the entrenched mechanisms that now control so much of the state’s direction.

So, I cannot agree that Alaska can be presented as the American election model. It is, instead, a case study in how a state can retain the shell of democratic choice while losing much of the substance of self-government to bureaucracy, dependency, and organized interests.

America at its best is a system where voters choose leaders and leaders can govern. Alaska today is a system where voters choose leaders, and then the permanent apparatus decides what is possible. Until that changes, Alaska will remain less an example of political renewal than an example of political capture.

The views expressed here are those of the author.

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