Alaska Right to Life Action has endorsed Bernadette Wilson for governor, noting that she is the only gubernatorial candidate who engaged with the group on key pro-life priorities, while being the conservative with the clearest path to electoral victory on Nov. 3.
Pat Martin of Alaska Right to Life announced the endorsement in an Oct. 20 statement.
“We are often overly cautious in our endorsement processes to ensure that the candidates we support are committed to protecting innocent human lives within the limits they must operate once elected,” Martin’s announcement noted. “This endorsement reflects the strict standard and overabundance of caution that is typical of every endorsement.”
Martin noted that Alaska Right to Life “did not ask – nor did Bernadette offer – to accomplish the impossible.”
“The Alaska Governor is among the most powerful in the nation,” the group noted. “But the Governor must work within the limits of the Alaska Constitution’s Article 3 powers. Appointments must be confirmed. Budgets must be passed by the Legislature. Executive actions must survive legislative and judicial review – and in the case of abortion, even judicial activism.”
The organization invited all three GOP candidates for governor – Wilson, Dave Bronson, and Treg Taylor – to discussions focused on ending abortion and transgender surgery funding, while also seeking commitments that, should related measures pass the State Legislature, the candidates would sign pro-life bills including defining “privacy” so that it does not include abortion rights, defunding state-financed abortion, banning abortion pills, and passing a Life at Conception Act that recognizes the right to life of the preborn.
While all three GOP candidates have articulated pro-life priorities, only Wilson responded to Alaska Right to Life.
Martin said Wilson is guided by values and principles aligned with the organization and she has committed to protecting children at every stage of development within the limits of her constitutional powers.
The formal endorsement statement emphasizes that the issue is deeply personal for Wilson, noting that, as a young single mother, her faith gave her the courage to choose life for her preborn baby. Alaska Right to Life Action stated that its support rests not only on her beliefs but on her commitment to carry those beliefs into public policy and the exercise of governmental authority for the protection and flourishing of human life in Alaska.
The endorsement highlighted what it called a profound legal contradiction in the state: children in the womb are recognized and protected under law in many circumstances, yet those same protections are stripped away when abortion is involved. With Roe v. Wade no longer controlling the states, Alaska has both the opportunity and responsibility to confront that contradiction, the statement said.
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Activist judges and indifferent lawmakers continue to deny unborn children equal protection, according to the group, and it invited all Alaskans to join efforts to protect every child from conception onward, regardless of circumstances of conception, expected quality or length of life, or diagnosis, and regardless of who threatens the child’s life.
In an email to the Watchman, Martin expressed growing concern about the governor’s race, citing a lack of specific endorsements and what he described as failed leadership by many organizations to coalesce around the conservative with the best chance to win.
Martin concluded that if the three GOP candidates are truly the same on the core issues but only one has a viable electoral path, then conservative groups are running out of time to consolidate behind the Republican with the clearest path to victory.
