Groups backing Bill Hill spend more than $400,000 urging Alaskans not to rank Eric Hafner

Two political groups backing independent Bill Hill have reported spending nearly $400,000 on ads, texts and mailers against Eric Hafner, the only registered Democrat in Alaska's U.S. House race. Hafner is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence in New York.

Wheel Dog PAC's ads call him a "fake Dem" and a "Republican plant," according to Meta's Ad Library. A CFFE PAC ad claims "Washington Republicans had backed Hafner." Hill's own campaign has run an ad saying Hafner is "serving a 20-year sentence in New York for threatening to kill police officers and judges."

Hafner has never won more than 4% of the vote in an Alaska race. The ranked-choice count shows what's at stake anyway.

He is the only candidate on the Nov. 3 ballot listed as a Democrat, and he drew 6,175 votes, or 3.79%, in the August primary, according to state results. Republican Rep. Nick Begich took 44.62% and Hill 32.53%.

Under ranked-choice voting, a ballot that ranks Hafner first can still help another candidate, but only if the voter ranked that candidate too. Once Hafner is eliminated, each of his ballots moves to its next choice, if it has one.

In 2024, when Hafner was the first candidate eliminated, only 1,313 of his 3,558 ballots moved to the other Democrat in the race, Mary Peltola, according to the state's tabulation. Another 1,300, more than a third, had no further choice and dropped out of the count. Most of the rest went to Begich or to the Alaskan Independence Party's John Wayne Howe. Begich won by 7,876 votes in the final round.

Most of the money against Hafner this year comes from Wheel Dog PAC, Hill's main outside backer, which has reported about $350,000 in Federal Election Commission notices, including about $51,000 the week of the primary. CFFE PAC, based in Washington, D.C., has reported $35,061 since Oct. 13. Nearly all of its spending this year has supported Democrats or opposed Republicans around the country, and Hafner is the only Democrat it has spent against.

No outside group has reported spending to help Hafner this year. In 2024, when the Alaska Democratic Party sued to keep him off the ballot, the Alaska Republican Party joined the case on the side of the state elections division, which defended listing him. The courts left him on.

Hafner pleaded guilty in federal court in New Jersey in 2022 to making threats with intent to extort, making threatening communications and conveying false information about an explosive device, and was sentenced in December 2023, according to the Justice Department. Prosecutors said his victims, targeted from 2016 to 2018 while he lived outside the United States, were elected officials, judges, police officers, attorneys and their families. The department's announcement does not describe the threats as threats to kill.