Anchorage's police union endorsed Kreiss-Tomkins and Johnson for governor

The Anchorage Police Department Employees Association PAC endorsed Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins and running mate Zac Johnson for governor and lieutenant governor on Wednesday. The group cited Johnson's eight years as an Alaska State Trooper, including service as a state pilot and tactical flight officer. Johnson is a former member of the Public Safety Employees Association, the troopers' union, and a graduate of the Alaska AFL-CIO's Arthur A. Almon Labor Candidate School. He won an Anchorage Assembly seat as an independent in 2023, and the PAC endorsed him in that race as well.

APDEA says it represents more than 500 professionals at the Anchorage Police Department, the state's largest municipal police force.

"This is the only ticket in the race with actual law enforcement experience, and it shows," said Dennis Lasley, whom the campaign called APDEA vice president and PAC chair. The association's website lists Lasley as secretary, and its state PAC registration names Darrell Evans as chair.

On the Assembly, Johnson has voted on several police matters. In October 2023 he voted against a resolution on the release of body camera footage. In July 2024, after five officer-involved shootings in two months, he cast the lone no vote on a 9-1 resolution proposing changes to the footage policy, and voted the same night to confirm Sean Case as police chief. This July he co-sponsored an amendment requiring that two seats on the city's new public safety commission go to current or former police officers or their immediate family. He has also voted twice for the department's Real Time Crime Center: in September 2025 for the $11.8 million, five-year Axon contract that created it, and on Sept. 2 of this year, with the 8-4 majority, for a $598,998 upgrade.

Kreiss-Tomkins, who represented a Sitka-area district in the House for ten years, said in the release that Alaska needs leaders who will "work across the aisle to restore a decent pension for public servants, and lower costs so all working Alaskans can afford to stay here." He is the only candidate in the race who has publicly said he supports restoring a defined-benefit pension for public employees, which Alaska eliminated in 2006 and which Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed a bill to bring back this spring. The APDEA endorsement joins others the campaign lists from the Alaska AFL-CIO, the Teamsters, IBEW, the Alaska Professional Fire Fighters Association, NEA-Alaska, the Alaska State Employees Association and SEIU 775.

The other three tickets certified for the Nov. 3 ballot are Dave Bronson and Josh Church, Treg Taylor and Candi English, and Bernadette Wilson and Michael Shower, all Republicans. Taylor is a former Alaska attorney general. None of their campaigns has responded to the endorsement.