Bill Walker is backing away from his plan to end the PFD, weeks after proposing it

A month ago, Bill Walker opened his campaign for governor with one of the boldest ideas in the race: pay every eligible Alaskan a one-time $10,000 dividend, then end the Permanent Fund dividend for good. On Tuesday, he began backing away from it.

In a video posted on X, Walker said he'd heard Alaskans "loud and clear" and would come back with something different. "We proposed an idea and heard loud and clear that we need to put pencil to paper and find another solution," he said. "That's what we're working on, a proposal that strengthens the future of the dividend." He offered no specifics on timing or structure, saying more would come "in the days ahead."

The original pitch, rolled out in early June with running mate and former Revenue Commissioner Randy Hoffbeck, was to end the annual dividend outright — swapping it for a single $10,000 check, a one-time draw of about $6.5 billion from the Permanent Fund's earnings reserve. Hoffbeck called the yearly dividend fight a "600-pound gorilla" that swallows every attempt at a state fiscal plan. On Tuesday, Walker's stated aim was the reverse: to strengthen the dividend, not end it.

No candidate in the race is more exposed on the PFD than Walker. In 2016 he became the first Alaska governor to veto part of the dividend, cutting it roughly in half — a decision the Alaska Supreme Court upheld, and one that made him deeply unpopular and dogged the rest of his time in office. Opening his fifth run for governor by making the dividend his signature issue put the most politically dangerous subject in Alaska, and his own record on it, at the center of the campaign.

It also put him at the center of the coverage. For weeks the $10,000 figure was the number every other candidate was measured against, and Walker was the one driving the conversation. His 2016 veto showed that a governor can force the dividend down alone. Forcing it up is another matter — and paying a one-time $10,000 check, then ending the program for good, would take the Legislature: a roughly $6.5 billion draw from the earnings reserve and a change in state law. Walker acknowledged as much, saying his plan would move only if Alaskans endorsed it on a survey and lawmakers agreed, not "with a stroke of the pen." As a governing plan, it was always contingent. As a way to seize the campaign's defining debate, it worked.

Now he's letting it go. Whether that looks like a candidate who got the attention he was after and stepped back before the backlash hardened, or one who floated a serious idea that couldn't survive contact with voters, the outcome is the same: Walker spent a month as the loudest voice on the PFD, and the plan that made him that voice is the one he's now taking back.