Jai Mahtani is running for the Ketchikan council seat he resigned after a state settlement

Jai Mahtani filed on Aug. 25, the last day of the filing period, to run for the one-year seat on the Ketchikan City Council. Two months earlier the State of Alaska filed a proposed consent decree that would have him pay $10,000 over the origins of jewelry sold at his store.

One other candidate is running for the seat. Spencer Strassburg filed a week earlier, on Aug. 18. Across the whole council election, nine candidates are running for four seats, with the other seven contesting three three-year terms. The election is Oct. 6.

State investigators went into Mahtani's store, Gold Rush, twice. On the 2025 visit, according to the Alaska Department of Law, Mahtani greeted an undercover investigator with the line "all our product is locally sourced," pointed to jewelry he called Alaska gold and Alaska gold-bearing quartz, and said the material came from Fairbanks or Anchorage. Reviewing footage from a 2023 visit, the state found he had presented a white stone flecked with gold as naturally occurring quartz mined in Alaska; shown a photograph of it later, he identified it as a German-made imitation. The department says he acknowledged that none of his jewelry was locally sourced.

The proposed decree, filed June 16 in Ketchikan Superior Court, would also put him under a permanent injunction requiring records proving that anything he sells as Alaskan, locally sourced, or containing natural gold quartz or nuggets is what he says it is. State investigators could audit those records.

The Consumer Protection Unit opened an investigation into Southeast tourism retail in May 2025, sending investigators posing as tourists into jewelry stores in Ketchikan, Juneau and Skagway. Mahtani's is the smallest of four jewelry-origin settlements the department has announced since March. Soni Inc., which operates in Ketchikan as Flawless Fine Jewelry, paid $60,000 in March over man-made imitations of gold quartz and nuggets that employees said were mined in Alaska and that the company had bought from a California supplier. Miner's Gems settled June 2 for $20,000, and Jewelry Land settled for $20,000 on Aug. 12.

Voter registration closes Sept. 6. Early and in-person absentee voting runs Sept. 21 through Oct. 5.