Kreiss-Tomkins tries to make up ground, launches six-figure ad buy in governor's race

Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins is spending six figures to introduce himself to Alaska — a paid-media push across Meta, YouTube, streaming TV, and radio that his campaign announced Friday, fourteen weeks before a primary in which available polling has yet to place him in the top four.

That polling context is the frame the campaign's announcement omits. Both Alaska Survey Research's public polling and the Dittman survey that circulated this spring have shown the former Sitka legislator outside the top-four cut that determines who advances from the August 18 primary to the ranked-choice general election. For a candidate in that position, paid media this early is less a show of strength than a necessity: name recognition is the binding constraint, and Kreiss-Tomkins — who left the legislature in 2023 after a decade representing Southeast island communities — has never appeared on a statewide ballot.

The campaign has assets to work with. It reports clearing $1.5 million in contributions, endorsements from former Governor Tony Knowles and SEIU 775, and a running mate in Anchorage Assembly member Zac Johnson. The ad itself stays on broadly popular ground — schools, fisheries, everyday costs. "Alaskans agree our government needs a new direction," Kreiss-Tomkins said in the announcement.

The math he's chasing is distinctive to Alaska's system. He doesn't need to win the August primary — he needs to finish fourth or better in a 17-candidate field, where the threshold for advancing could plausibly sit in the low teens. A buy of this size is a visible attempt to consolidate enough name recognition to clear that line. Whether other campaigns have spent comparably on quieter digital channels isn't publicly tallied in real time, but expenditure reports filed with the Alaska Public Offices Commission will eventually show who spent what, and when. Sixteen other campaigns are doing the same arithmetic.