The Other Half of the Ticket: Alaska's Next Lieutenant Governor, On the Record

Oh, good. I'm in the right place. All right. And John, you can hear me, correct? I can indeed.

All right. I've just made you co-host. And what I need you to do is click on the more button at the bottom of the screen.

There should be a timer thing here. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, so if you go to Apps, Timer will be one of the apps that you can pick.

Apps, is that under More? I see Polls, Record, Show Captions, Breakout Rooms. Yeah, so it's under More. Right, More. I'm seeing, I click on More, it pops up.

I got Polls, Record, Show Captions, Breakout Rooms, Whiteboard Settings, and Stop Incoming Video.

Did you see one that says Apps?

I don't. Yeah, see it on my—. I can just run a timer on my phone. I know, but this is like super— I did a run-through yesterday and it actually is a cool tool to have. So like, so when you click on more, it doesn't show.

See if I change you to host, I'm going to pause our recordings. We need to Zoom recording. Yes. All right. None of the foibles of the previous 15 minutes are— were recorded.

If you are not one of our speakers, please put yourself on mute, or I will attempt to mute you.

And John, you are welcome to kick things off. Fantastic. Good afternoon and welcome to Commonwealth North. My name is John Bittner. I serve as Vice President of the Commonwealth North Board and President and CEO of AEDC.

I have the privilege of moderating today. Thanks for giving up your lunch hour. We're going to take exactly 1 hour of it if we can stay on schedule here. Alaska elects its lieutenant governor on a ticket, which means most voters never hear the second name on the ballot speak for more than a few seconds. Today we've got 3 of them who are going to get 8 minutes and 5 questions each.

We titled this the other half of the ticket for a reason. Before we begin, a word about the people who make Commonwealth North possible. Several of our board members are on the call today. Thank you for your service, including our president, Kai Binkley-Sims, and our executive director, Ross Johnston. Who's running the Zoom and the slides this afternoon.

A little bit about Commonwealth North. We were founded in 1979 by two former governors, Wally Hickel and Bill Pegan. One was a Republican, one was a Democrat. And they built this organization on the idea that politics shouldn't get in the way of doing what's right for Alaska. We would also be remiss if we didn't thank our cornerstone members, GCI and ConocoPhillips.

Their year-round support makes programs like this possible. And it also depends on our members. If you find value in what you hear this hour or in any of the other Commonwealth North events that you've seen over, over the last year, I really hope you'll join us. Individual memberships are very reasonable. They start at $300.

Corporate memberships are $2,500. Ross Johnston is going to put the link in the chat right now. I really hope you click on it and join us in bringing these great conversations to Alaska. I think they have a lot of value.

Coming up, we've got several events that I want to make sure you are on your radar. Next Thursday, October 29th at 5 p.m. at the Wild Birch Hotel, the Anchorage Security and Defense Dialogue closing reception. This is your chance to rub shoulders with the top brass, diplomats and federal policymakers. On Thursday, November 19th, we're going to recap the True North transition document. This is Commonwealth North's advice to the next administration, whoever that might be.

December 3rd, we're going to be hosting our 19th annual legislator meet and greet at the downtown Marriott in Anchorage. And as always, check out the website for even more events that are coming up. We've got a whole lot of stuff coming down the pipe over the next 6 to 12 months. Well, that's enough about us. Let's talk a little bit about why we're here.

Lieutenant— Lieutenant Governor of Alaska runs the Division of Elections, which means that the winner of this race will administer the very system that voters are deciding on through Ballot Measure 2 on the same ballot. Beyond elections, the job is largely what the governor makes of it. And on the day the governor cannot serve, the lieutenant governor becomes the governor. This has happened twice in state history where the second name on the ticket has finished the first name's term. Keith Miller in 1969 and Sean Parnell in 2009.

This is not a ceremonial job, it's a job interview for the top one. Let's talk a little bit about today's candidates and the format that we're going to engage in. 3 Of the 4 candidates on the November ballot are with us today, and they're going to speak in alphabetical order. That means first up we'll have Josh Church, who's running with Dave Bronson, followed by Candy English running with Treg Taylor, and then wrapping up with Zac Johnson, who's running with Jonathan Christofferson. Mike Schaller, who is running with Bernadette William, is unable to join us today.

Each candidate received the same 3 questions in advance, and they're going to have 8 minutes to answer them. The largest organization or budget they've run, what they would change at the Division of Elections if they were elected, and the assignment they would ask the governor for on day one. I'm going to introduce each candidate before they speak. I'm also going to be keeping the clock. Each candidate gets a 1-minute warning.

So at 7 minutes in, I'm going to let them know they've got 1 minute left to speak. And when the 8 minutes are done, I'm going to step in. We are going to— we have a tight timeline today, so I am going to be a little draconian on stopping these on time. You can finish the sentence, but not the paragraph. After all 3 folks have given their 8-minute presentations, we're going to ask them a few questions.

Every candidate is going to answer every question as it comes, 1 minute each, and the order of who goes first as we get down to the questions is going to rotate. There's not going to be any follow-ups. There's no cross, uh, crosstalk. The point here is to hear 3 answers of the same question side by side. This forum is being recorded for the Commonwealth North YouTube channel, and a written summary is going to go out afterwards to the members as well.

All of the attendees are muted. We're not taking audience questions today due to time constraints, and the chat is really there for Ross Johnston, uh, for you to talk to Ross Johnston if you have any technical problems. With that, let's go ahead and get this show started. Our first candidate comes to us from Fairbanks. Josh Church is a financial advisor with Arbor Capital in Fairbanks.

He served in the United States Marine Corps. He started a construction company, and he studied at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He has 3 children, and this is his first run for elected office. Dave Bronson named him to the ticket in January, saying he wanted a running mate who knows the interior. Mr. Church, if you're ready, you have exactly 8 minutes.

Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you and all Alaskans. It's a real honor to run and potentially serve the state of Alaska. We have in my opinion, the best state in the country. But there's some things that we're not doing well.

And so we need to turn things around and start heading in a new, better direction. And I think Alaskans feel that. So to directly— that's why I'm running. And to directly answer your question about what might qualify me budget-wise, I spent almost a decade in the United States Marine Corps. I was in reconnaissance and then special operations.

So that was not primarily a budgeting job, but I did, I was responsible for the logistics of our team. And so that meant throughout the whole time in the Marine Corps, I was responsible for millions of dollars of equipment, whether that was trucks in Iraq, making sure that they were properly set up, or whether that was deploying my MARSOC team to multiple different continents. Purchasing the and coordinating the logistics of the aircraft, buying the explosives, making sure the gear was accounted for and transporting, going over there with the cash to fund training ranges. So I'm used to budgeting with millions of dollars, which on the state level, that's actually fairly small. But, but my experience was taking it the whole way, overseeing it.

I got the budget, created the budget. Went, purchased the equipment, set out the logistics, and watched it through every step of the process all the way to the end. And so I've been familiar from the planning side all the way down to actually overseeing. We're spending this money in Africa on targets and bullets to help train the local special forces, for example. And so I'm, I'm more than comfortable in, both sides of the house where you plan and where you have to take personal responsibility and oversee that.

At the Division of Elections, there's, there's a lot of things that I think we could be doing better. We see low voter turnout. We see a declining voter turnout. We see increasing distrust in our institutions. So we have to rebuild trust, restore trust.

And when you ask people for trust, you have to earn it. And that comes through transparency. So if I were elected, I would do what I did in special operations. I would do what I did as a real estate developer. I would do what I did as a construction business owner.

I would travel. I'd try and get to all 402 of the voting communities throughout Alaska and work with those small teams to administer and get planned ahead of time, get prepared, because in many ways, the voting system that we have, the Division of Elections, is similar to the responsibilities I had in the Marine Corps. MARSOC is a special operations unit. You have a small team of people. Division of Elections only has about 15 people.

But yet when that mission date happens, when you have to execute, You've got 400 communities across the state with people everywhere at all these different locations. So you have to be prepared with a small team to expand your influence over the entire state and make sure that's run efficiently. That's the same thing that I've done. And so I think my experience both in the military, both with budgets, both with investment management, for the last 6 years I've been an investment advisor, a financial planner. And I help people and businesses think through the consequences, risk mitigation, and how to plan and invest for the future.

So we need new leadership and we've got to start doing things better so we improve people's faith and trust. You know, when I— 20 years ago, when I was first building houses— well, I guess it's even longer than that, more like 26 years ago now— I started building houses in the interior. And young families could afford to buy them and contractors could make a profit selling them. We don't see that anymore. And so we have two— the prices are increasing too much.

It's unaffordable. There's 10,000 to 15,000 people moved out of the interior in the last decade. And what we see is the only thing that's holding the interior together is a little bit of military investment. We need the private sector to grow as well. And so we've got to increase land sales.

There's a lot of things we need to do better as a state.

And I hope to be a part of that. I think the third question here is, what would you do on day one? What would you ask for? Because one of the, the primary role for lieutenant governor is to manage elections. But the secondary thing is what the governor may delegate for you to do.

And so for me, my whole background from a young man at 14 when I started framing houses is hands-on practical experience on growing. We've got to grow the economy. And so that means we've got thousands and thousands of acres of land that should be sold. We used to do homesteader things. We need to attract new people to move here.

We need to sell land cheaply. We need to make it easier, reduce permits and regulations so that people can build. We can cut the cost. This is the most resource-rich place in the world, and yet it takes the federal government coming in to get some of these projects across the line. We've seen this over the last month, multiple different announcements from the federal administration about new money for ports and rail lines and, and rail infrastructure.

We need to start making it so we can build and do it ourselves. Alaskans are entrepreneurial people. And so I would ask for, to be put in as a part of that role. And one of the things, probably the single biggest thing, and not enough people are talking about it, that needs to get fixed in the state besides changing regulation, besides keeping taxes low, besides getting me people hope, we have a huge asset. We have a $90 billion investment fund.

If you manage that in accordance with most other investment funds across the country that are more than a billion dollars, you would pay about a third of a percent in, in fees. That's saving hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, almost three-quarters of a million dollars. Last year we paid over 1%. We paid $890 million in fees. And our performance has been pretty good.

We've gotten 8% over the last 10 and 20 years. However, if you compare that fund's results to the best-in-class funds across the country, we're about a 75th percentile. We're about a C student. If we were an A student, we would bring into the Treasury on average about $3 billion more a year from that fund. It completely closes our fiscal gap.

So we need to not push too much risk, but we need to make sure we have people on that board that have investment experience. And right now we don't have much of that. We need to professionalize that board, and I'd like to be a part of that because we can do better with the resources we have instead of going back to the people and raising their costs and taxing them. And that's what I'd like to be a part of, is taking the outside fresh business entrepreneurial perspective and getting real-world solutions to do better rather than this stagnant decline we've been on for the last decade or two. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Church. Our next candidate built her career on the North Slope.

Uh, Kandi English overcame polio, spent 20 years with ARCO Alaska on the slope, and then founded Northern Solutions, a machine shop in Anchorage and Deadhorse that designs and manufactures tools for oil field work. Craig Taylor named her to the ticket in June, and she is the only one of today's candidates who has run a manufacturing company. Ms. English, you have 8 minutes. Thank you very much. And thanks to Commonwealth North for the decades you've brought Alaskans together to think about the hard issues that our state has in our future.

And I apologize, we've got a little bit of a cold here, so I'll, I'll do the best I can. Alaskans want leaders that understand what it means to be accountable for results. At the kitchen table, every dollar matters, and it should matter also in the government. I'll tell you a little bit about my background, the budgets I've managed, and the 4 lessons that it's taught me. We discussed a little bit about my ARCO experience, 20 years on the North Slope in the drilling and wells group.

I helped develop and support operating and maintenance budgets that grew from roughly $100 million to over $250 million. And it was inside strict unit operating agreements, complex state and federal regulations, and multi-owner oversight. After retiring, I founded Northern Solutions and built it from the ground up into Alaska's largest machine shop. Northern has a facility in Anchorage, Alaska, where we manufacture our patented tools for the world's oil fields and well sites, and we also have a shop in Deadhorse, Alaska, that supports the day-to-day downhole tool and machine shop operational needs for the North Slope.

There's 4 lessons that stuck with me. Every dollar belongs to someone else. Government should respect taxpayers' dollars the way a good business respects its customers. Priorities matter. You can't do everything at once, so you fund what is required and what matters the most and hold people accountable.

People matter more than paperwork. Great organizations hire talented people, empower them, and clear barriers out of their way. And lastly, accountability, accountability matters. Excuses don't sign paychecks. I do.

Government is much bigger than any business I've run, but the principles don't change. You set priorities, you measure results, respect taxpayer dollars, and never forget who you serve. And lastly, when you make mistakes, you own it and you move on.

And then elections. No matter how Alaskans vote, everyone should be able to trust the process. Currently, it's kind of a mess. Confidence in elections isn't a Republican or Democrat issue, it's an Alaskan issue. I'd focus on 4 things: 1, accurate voter rolls; 2, transparent systems; 3, faster counting; and 4, a fair chance to fix ballot mistakes.

Accurate rolls. I'd start with a thorough review of voter rolls and election procedures so Alaskans know registrations are current and maintained properly. Transparency. I'd audit third-party election vendors in every step of the process. Alaskans should know how votes are counted, how systems are certified, and how results are verified.

Speed. Alaskans wait far too long for final results. We should speed up ballot processing without sacrificing accuracy. We also need to verify that the technology we rely on is trustworthy. Ballot curing.

Too many absentee ballots are rejected for correctable signature errors identification information, and ballot completion. Voters should be able to fix those problems as early as possible. Every ballot should count. And on Ballot Measure 2, voters deserve to know exactly what their vote does. A yes vote ends ranked choice voting and brings back party primaries.

A no vote keeps the current system In 2024, the repeal measure failed by 740-ish votes, and many voters said afterwards they weren't even sure which way was which that they had voted. This should never happen. My goal is simple: secure elections, make elections transparent, make faster and trusted elections, And when Alaskans have faith and knowledge in the system, our democracy would be stronger.

And the assignment that I would ask for on day one, I think the largest challenge that Alaskans are facing is retaining our, our population, keeping our families and our workers here. And I'd ask Governor Taylor to put me in charge of a statewide competitiveness and economic opportunity initiative with the goal of making Alaska the best place in America to build a business and to live. And that includes all aspects of— it's like running a business. You, you make sure that all of the concerns are managed in creating jobs, competing in tough markets, and I've lived with, with what employers, workers, and families face every day. So understanding that does help.

The initiative would focus on 4 things: affordable, reliable energy, stronger infrastructure, more housing, workforce development. The things that Alaskans, young, old, and disabled will give them a reason to stay. Economic growth isn't abstract. It's whether a family can afford groceries. It's whether a high school graduate sees a future or a community has jobs that let people stay close to home.

And my mission is simple: remove barriers, create opportunities, and make Alaska the most competitive state in America.

Thank you.

Oh, excellent. Thank you very much, Miss English. Our final candidate, Zach Johnson, represents South Anchorage and the Hillside on the Anchorage Assembly, elected in 2023 and reelected this past spring. He was born in Anchorage, enlisted in the Marine Corps at 19, and deployed twice, including the 2003 invasion of Iraq. And then joined the Alaska State Troopers in 2013, serving as a trooper and pilot in rural Alaska.

He is a registered independent, and Jonathan Christopkins named him to the ticket in June. Mr. Johnston, you have 8 minutes. Yeah, thanks, John. Appreciate you moderating. Thank you to Commonwealth North and Ross for putting this event together.

And especially thank you for all of you who are giving up your lunch hour to spend this time with us. I'll let you know when to advance the slides, if that's okay. So my name is Zac Johnson. I am the candidate for Lieutenant Governor running with Jonathan Christ Tompkins, also known as JKT. I'm sorry, can I get the little timer up there?

And if it's too late, then don't worry about it. But so running with JKT, and just to give a little bit more about my story. So I found my way back to Alaska 20 years ago after I got out of the United States Marine Corps, not to be confused with the other Marine veteran here. I'm glad that there's two of us making a strong showing. But when I arrived here, you know, I found that it was easy easy for me to find an affordable place to live.

There were great education options both for myself as a university student as well as people my age who were thinking about starting families and were looking to put their kids through public education. And there was a functional state government that was making meaningful investments to make sure Alaskans had great services and also investing in our state's future through capital projects. And so it was an easy yes for me 20 years ago to decide to make Alaska my home, and it was one of the best decisions I've ever made. But it's sad looking around today and seeing how things have gone in the wrong direction these last 8 years and feeling like we need to take bold actions today to get our state back on the right track. Are the slides up, John?

I'm not seeing them. Oh, there they are. All right. Well, if we do, let's advance to the next slide. Okay.

So when it comes to budgets, so as was mentioned, I am a current member of the Anchorage Assembly, and we manage the second largest budget governmental budget in the state of Alaska right now. I'm in my second term and this year is a $660— $656 million budget. To give you a sense of scale and the role of the Assembly, we are the legislative branch of government. So a little different than the executive branch, but it's important that these two branches work together to collaborate. So as the Assembly, much as legislature at the state level, we are responsible for reviewing the budget, working in collaboration with the administration, to put it together, propose amendments to it, and then ultimately we're responsible for voting on it and putting it into practice.

And that is a very tricky and delicate balancing effort. You know, we are fiscally constrained at the local level, much as we are at the state level, and figuring out how to do the best we can with what we have is one of the most core responsibilities we have as elected officials. So let's go to the next slide, please.

So this is, uh, when it comes up, is just a snapshot of what the municipal budget looks like in Anchorage, Alaska.

And the state budget is going to break down a little differently, but you'll notice there's some parallels there in terms of where we focus our energies. So here in Anchorage, about 60% of our budget goes towards police, fire, and then, uh, maintenance and operations. So think snow plowing, things like that. Again, the state's going to be a little different, but this really is what government is focused on doing. And what we believe our primary focus should be is just how to deliver on those key services people rely on.

And at the state level, it's fairly similar in terms of how we go about that process. But it's just to say that having experienced how to achieve results within the budget you have is a, um, something that comes through experience and practice and professionalism. And we've made some significant improvements, I would say, in Anchorage, uh, in recent years. In my time on the body, the tax cap— we were basically operating with the same budget as we were 40 years ago, once you account for inflation. But we've still managed, uh, with those constraints to improve services.

We are back towards having a fully staffed police department, a musical prosecutor's office. We've expanded our ability to respond and prepare for wildfire hazards and other disasters, and we are just frankly doing a better job plowing our roads, and we have fewer people sleeping on our streets. Like, that is the work we have done in government here at the local level these last few years, working with the, uh, the budget we have. And it's that kind of focus and attention to detail that certainly look to bring to state level as well. Can we roll over to the next slide?

So again, how do we deliver the best services we can with the budget we have? And that is what a lot of my energy has gone into these last few years. It's also about figuring out how to work with these different departments at the local level and the state level as well, as well as our colleagues in other offices to figure out how we manage these resources effectively. One example of the work I've done that I'm proud of is back in 2024, I sponsored a budget amendment that added the funding necessary to pay for an already approved raise for the Anchorage Police Department. We, we needed to make our wages more competitive.

We negotiated a contract. I think it was a good one, but we hadn't programmed the money into the budget, and I was able to catch that and fix it to make sure that we're able to take care of it.

On to the next slide, please.

So elections, what, what would we be doing different? First and foremost, I want to highlight the work that happened this year that the legislature did with Senate Bill 64. This was a bipartisan piece of legislation that passed the legislature but was ultimately vetoed by the current governor. And to be clear, if that bill had hit JKT's desk, he would have signed it into law. And it includes just some frankly common sense things: ballot tracking, so that when you vote, you can know where your vote is in the system and make sure that it gets counted.

And if there is a technical error that needs to be fixed, it is flagged for you and are you given the opportunity to cure your ballot. It also improves rural access by creating a dedicated rural liaison. So this is somebody who's ultimately responsible for working with rural communities to make sure that they have the tools and resources they need so that everyone in Alaska has the opportunity to participate. It also includes some reasonable efforts to clean up our voter roll to make sure everyone who can vote is able to and those that shouldn't aren't. And I think these are just some basic steps that I frankly should have been put in place already, but we certainly would support moving forward.

We also recognize we need to do better to improve rural access. So this means expanding language access so that even if English is not your first language, that you are able to learn what's on the ballot and make an informed choice. We need to make sure that our polling places are adequately staffed so that people can show up on Election Day and participate. And then finally, we need to rebuild public faith and trust in Alaska's elections. So that means as lieutenant governor, it is my job not to impart my views or my partisan lens on any sort of decisions, but to empower the department to make good decisions, to respect the determinations that the commission makes, and ultimately to also make sure that we are protecting Alaska's right to privacy that is enshrined in our Constitution and certainly something I take very seriously.

Next slide, please.

So day one, what am I interested in taking on as a responsibility? I was an Alaska State Trooper for 8 years. I recognize that public safety is the core responsibility of any level of government, and we have room for improvement at the state level. I was hired in 2013. I was a trooper for 8 years.

When I left the department, two-thirds of the guys I was hired with were already gone. We have suffered from massive turnover and just chronic vacancy rates. In 2013, we had around 50 empty trooper positions, and we still have around 50 empty trooper positions today. That is frankly unacceptable. It affects our ability to respond to calls in a timely manner, to conduct thorough investigations, and it also just affects the quality of life for the officers doing the work when they're spread thin.

And there are meaningful consequences to this in our community. And one of the things that we should take, I think, as a basic step to try and fix that problem is we should just go back to having defined benefit. Pension as we had years ago. And I think again, the legislature came up with a fiscally sound way to address this that would help us fill some of those gaps and hold on to people once we hire them. We also need to adequately fund the VPSO program.

As a trooper working in rural Alaska, I work closely with VPSOs. They were definitely a force multiplier for us. They were close to the community. They were able to make timely response to calls, and they also did a lot of great work to help us in the work we were doing at DPS. And we need to restore those partnerships.

For victims of sexual assault, you know, as we know, unfortunately, in Alaska, we have very high rates of sexual assault and domestic violence. So we need to make sure that we have the teams in place so that victims are treated with dignity and also that we're able to conduct investigations that ensure there is accountability. And finally, we just need to make sure that there is good cooperation across the different agencies, the prosecutors, the courts, so that everyone is pulling in the same direction. And that's what we need to do to, to, I think, get things back on track here. So thanks, John.

Thank you, Mr. Johnson. All right. And thanks to all three of you for staying within the 8-minute time limit. That was amazing. I wasn't sure that was going to work, but here we are on track.

Next up, we have 5 questions. The candidates have seen these questions in advance. Each of them is going to answer each one, 1 minute apiece for their responses. And I'm going to rotate who goes first each time. I am going to step in at the 1-minute mark and let you know that you have time to finish your sentence and then stop there.

There's no follow-ups and no responses to each other. 5 Questions, 15 answers, 20 minutes. Here we go. The order of the first question is going to be Mr. Church, Ms. English, and Mr. Johnson. Question 1: Ballot Measure 2 is on the same ballot as you are.

If it passes, your division unwinds ranked choice voting before the 2028 election cycle. If it fails, you administer it. What's your plan for each outcome? Mr. Church. Thank you.

This is a really easy one. The lieutenant governor, just like Zach said, their job is to be bipartisan and just enforce the law in a transparent, accountable way to the people. I've spent my life in the military. Politics didn't matter. You did the job.

As an investment advisor, I have clients of all kinds. That's easy. So what I'd like to do is take the rest of the time and say whether it passes or not, I'll administer it. But I want to commend my two fellow lieutenant governors here, and really the whole slate of lieutenant governor candidates this time, in my opinion, is excellent. They're all reasonable people with a lot of experience.

I agree with so much of what the two other ones on here have said, and I think the, the choice for lieutenant governors that Alaska has is, is challenging because these are great people. In fact, I like this slate of lieutenant governors better than I do the governor candidates. So thank you all for coming. I'm just honored to be amongst you.

Thank you. Next up we have Ms. English. One minute.

Ms. English?

Oh, you're muted. I'm sorry.

Oh, Candy, can you hear me? You're still muted.

Sorry, my apologies. I was trying not to make you hear me cough. Um, if Ballot Measure 2 passes, I'll make sure the transition is done professionally with transparency before the 2028 election. If it doesn't pass, it's my place to help educate people, make it so that it's more understood across more sectors of people and hopefully it would be a little bit more successful. But either way, the law must be administered fairly, impartially, and transparently.

My job isn't to pick winners. It will be to make sure Alaskans can trust the process.

Thank you very much. And last up, Mr. Johnson. Yeah, thanks. So I guess first off, I will say I am a fan of ranked choice voting and especially as an independent, open primaries. It's a system that allows me to fully participate, and I am grateful for that.

So I will be a no on Prop 2. But as Lieutenant Governor, it is ultimately my job, my obligation to respect the will of the voters. And I appreciate the answer that Josh and Candy gave to this as well. And I hope it gives everyone confidence in our system of voting. If Prop 2 fails, then we have the system in place and we can continue to make improvements on it.

Like I talked a little bit about in the, in the presentation part of this. However, if the voters ultimately decide to support Prop 2 and it passes, then it is the obligation of Lieutenant Governor to, to respect the will of voters and implement it with good faith. And so yes, that means kind of rolling our system back to where it was some years ago. But again, you staff a department with professionals, you make sure that you do the work early in a way that is accountable and transparent, such that when it comes around to vote again in 2 years, voters have confidence in how the system is enacted and we are able to administer our elections without any to-do or drama.

Excellent. Question 2. The order here is going to be Ms. English and then Mr. Johnson and Mr. Church. Question 2: Rural voters deal with closed precincts, mail delays, and language access requirements. Which one of those would you fix first and how?

Miss English, one more.

Oops, sorry, Candy, you're muted again. I'd like to work on mail reliability because it hits rural Alaskans the hardest. In-person voting is the surest way to make sure your vote counts. But when you vote by mail, we need to start the process sooner. We need to process the ballots faster, and we need to let voters cure correctable mistakes before Election Day.

That way, all Alaskans get to assure that their ballot counts.

Next up, uh, Mr. Johnson, one minute.

So these three issues, I would say, are closely interrelated, and we need to address all three. And I like to believe that we will have an administration that can walk and chew gum at the same time. We mentioned earlier, I mentioned earlier in the presentation about that rural community liaison, and I think that would be pretty important in making sure that we are able to fix these issues. With closed precincts, it's making sure that we have enough people to do the work, right? Such that if somebody, there's an emergency and they're unable to show up in time, that we have redundancies in place such that the polls open.

We can see this year in places like Napa, Chuck, where the polls didn't open until 5 PM. And that ultimately disenfranchises voters and is not acceptable. With mail delays, we had somebody who cast their ballot in a timely manner in Natnek, about made it down to Anchorage and then had to go back to Nome to be counted and ultimately wasn't, didn't make it in time through no fault of the voter. And so we need to make sure that we are counting the votes closer to where they're cast as much as we can. And finally, with language access, as I mentioned before, making sure that we have people available there as a resource such that everyone can get the help they need to understand the ballot.

Thank you, Mr. Johnson. And last up, we have Mr. Church. Well, I've been the, uh, rural community engagement officer, so to speak. Uh, that's part of what special operations do. We travel and we connect with other cultures.

I've been to over, uh, about two dozen countries. I grew up, spent four years in the Philippines. I, I know what it's like to work with other cultures, and I couldn't agree with Zac more. We need to treat ballots with the same level of care and trust as Zach would with evidence, right? We should have a chain of custody from the point that vote happens all the way till it's counted.

We should know exactly where it is, and everyone should have complete confidence. And so that will be the primary job, and it should be, of the lieutenant governor, is to restore confidence and help people to vote, exercise their most important fundamental right. So we're going to work with every community to make that happen.

Well, thank you very much. Question 3, the order this time will be Mr. Johnson, then Mr. Church, then Ms. English. Question 3, if you had to assume the governorship midterm, what is the most significant decision you would like to make and how would you approach it? Mr. Johnson, one minute. So Jonathan and I, we approach this work in a very collaborative way, both in the campaign and also in terms of how we would establish this administration.

So decisions we're making today, you know, in terms of one, how we do things here in the campaign, but also as we start to contemplate some of these decisions about what sort of policies do we want to pursue, who do we put in these key positions. We're working the problem together such that it will be an administration that I'm very familiar with and comfortable with and I've been an intimate part of since the beginning, such that if, God forbid, I had to step into that role, I think it would be a fairly seamless transition because I would have already been participating in a very meaningful way on the inside. In terms of what we need to take care of first, I, I think first and foremost we need to repair the relationship between the legislative and the executive branch. The reality is, is if we want to pursue any of these big goals, tackle the big challenges we're facing, requires collaboration between the two co-equal branches of government in a way that we just haven't seen these last 8 years. And I think having a partner who has done the work in the legislature, and as someone who's worked in the legislative branch, the local level, we recognize and respect that, uh, these different roles.

Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. Next up is Mr. Church. You have 1 minute. Well, I've spent my career solving hard problems that other can't— others haven't been able to figure out.

I take foreclosures, I fix them up and make them work, figure out a way in your budget to make this work, find the value in the investment. And that's what I'd like to do for the state, help use our resources. And I've helped write the majority of the policies and plans for Dave Bronson for governor. So if, if there was a transition, I'd be able to step right in and the administration would continue. I think one of the most important things is what Zac just said.

You have to work across the aisle. You've got to work with both bodies. And that was one of the things I was looking for when I eventually said yes after saying no like a reasonable person a few times to Mr. Bronson. He learned that you need an assembly to work with you as mayor. He's the most experienced, but you need a legislature as governor.

He learned that, and he also learned that you've got to know what you don't know. And, and so he's got a lot of leadership experience as a colonel in the Air Force and also the mayor of the largest city, but he's not a business guy. So he brought me on, and I've been helping to write these policies on economic development. Thank you, Mr. Church. And last up, we have Ms. English.

One minute, please. If I were to become governor midterm, I think the most important component is continuity and stability. Treg and I are running as a team. We've worked together on all aspects of the campaign. We have one agenda that Alaskans voted for.

And if I were to be called on, I would keep that agenda moving forward. And it's affordability, energy, education, economic growth, and opportunity for Alaskan families. And we want to make sure that everybody's moving in the same direction. And the most important way to do that is to— for us to move in the same direction as the executive team.

Thank you very much. Question 4. If you became governor and had to close a major budget gap in one session, what would your process be for deciding where to look first? The order this time is going to be Mr. Church, then Ms. English, then Mr. Johnston. Mr. Church, you have 1 minute.

Yes. So Dave and I sat around the kitchen table after hearing from thousands of Alaskans, and we came up with a plan. We're going to do a zero-based budget. Alaska has never done one. We all do this with our families, with our own personal finances, with our businesses.

And so we're going to sit down, we're going to audit, we're going to look at every department and we're going to go through and say, you've been doing this and funding these line items and these positions for the last 50 years. Do you need more funding or less in these areas? We're going to spend the first year going through that budget in detail and we're going to do the first ever real comprehensive budget that Alaska's had. And so whether I'm governor or whether I'm lieutenant governor, that is going to be the priority. Go through everything, line item, and work with the legislature once we've done that to come to a solution for all Alaskans.

Alaskans have to do this. They have to tighten their belt sometimes and they have to invest more in other areas sometimes. And we need to look at where we need to invest and where we need to tighten our belt. So we can't just continue to do things the way we've always done them.

Thank you very much. Next up we have Ms. English. You have 1 minute. Well, we would start with spending, uh, the— and not taxes. We want to identify what's constitutionally required and what's essential to public safety and education, and then build a balanced budget, zero-based, activity-based.

If if you will, and go from there, because we all need to know exactly where the money is going. Budgets should never start with last year's spending and grow automatically. It should— we should justify the budget, show results, find efficiencies before we ever ask taxpayers for more money.

Thank you. And then last but not least, we have Mr. Johnson. You have one minute. So, so Jonathan and I have been very outspoken on the fact that we consider ourselves very pro-math kind of guys, and we believe that first and foremost we need to deliver a balanced budget to the legislature this year, which would be a first in nearly a decade. And that means making some, some tough choices, to be clear.

But I think there are a couple of common steps common sense steps we could take to help move us in the right direction. First, I think updating our modern corporate taxation system, you know, the work that the legislature did with Senate Bill 113, which was vetoed by this governor, would have allowed us to capture revenues from large online retailers like Amazon, fees that they're already collecting, but just make sure that these revenues stay in Alaska for our benefit. We'd also look at the oil and gas industry and just say, you know what, everyone should compete on a level playing field, which is to say All should pay their share and S-corps included should also be contributing revenues. And so I think those are two basic steps we could take, but we're fully committed to making sure that it is a balanced budget that we are prepared to deliver on the deadline.

Thank you very much. And that brings us to our fifth and final question. Well done on staying on time. We're going to get through all five here. The order this time will be Ms. English first, then Mr. Johnson, then Mr. Church.

Question 5: Which former Alaska Lieutenant Governor do you most admire and what did they get right? Ms. English, you have 1 minute.

Sorry, Candy, you're muted again.

That was a fun one to research. I found that Keith Harvey Miller served at a pivotal point in Alaska in our natural resource development. And he came out on top for me. He served as Secretary of State, the office which is now Lieutenant Governor, under Wally Hickel, and Hickel left to become the Interior Secretary in the late '60s, and Miller had to step up. And then on his watch, he held the first Prudhoe Bay lease, which brought in 900 million, and he also proposed the State Investment Fund for oil royalties that eventually turned into the PFD.

What I admire the most about him is that he was— when he was called on, he thought about the next generation, not the next election, which I find a pretty amazing attribute.

Thank you very much. Next up we have Mr. Johnson. You have 1 minute. So as an independent who finds people I can respect and admire across the political spectrum, I'm gonna highlight 2. For a Democrat, I would point to Fran Ulmer and the work she did to modernize our election system in the '90s and bring us, adopt the system that we are using today.

When we were talking about hanging chads back in 2000, Alaska had already fixed that problem. But it is no small thing to modernize a system of that scale and to do so in a way that is transparent and gives the public confidence and is implemented effectively, I think is something that we should admire and respect about that work. And again, that's what we're using today and it works well. Another person I would highlight is Jack Coghill, a fairly conservative lieutenant governor, but did great work as part of the constitutional delegation. And I expect everyone in this room is a big fan of that document and the protections it has put in place for us as Alaskans.

I also really loved the credit and commitment he made to working with the minority. He was very outspoken on that. And I think creating that sort of Big Ten attitude is really something that resonates deeply with me.

Excellent. Thank you very much. And last up, we have Mr. Church. You have one minute. Well, you saved the hardest one for last.

I struggled with this. There's been a lot of really great lieutenant governors. You know, Sean Parnell had to step up to be the governor. I think he did a good job. He helped the oil industry start to come back and put investment in.

Loren Lehman, an honorable man who's worked with people for years, a friend of mine that I've known for years who's given me advice. And honestly, I'm surprised. There's another thing Zach and I agree on. Jack Coghill. He was, as Zach said, he was one of the original ones to sign the Constitution.

And he's from the interior like I am. I'm a big fan of his. I was so pleased when his son, who's also a former legislator, John Coghill, endorsed me and Dave Bronson. So there are so many great lieutenant governors in our past, and we need to get back to that era of government where we do big things again, where we work for the people, we work across party lines, we have the right demeanor and experience and energy to get things done for Alaska and get us growing again. So thank you all and please get out and vote.

We can make our future bright again. Thank you.

Thank all of you for participating today. You did phenomenally staying on time and we appreciated your frankness and the depth of the questions, the answers you gave to the questions. That is our hour. I want to give a huge thank you specifically to Josh Church, Candy English, and Zac Johnson. 15 Answers in 20 minutes plus an 8-minute spiel at the beginning.

That is no easy task to do that and stay on time. The recording of today's event will be on Commonwealth North's YouTube channel and a written summary will go out to our members. If this hour was useful, I really hope you'll join us next Thursday, October 29th, at the Wild Birch Hotel for the Anchorage Security and Defense Dialogue and on November 19th for the True North Transition Recap. Even more importantly, As, as Mr. Church mentioned, Election Day is Tuesday, November 3rd, and the early voting polls are open now. Whoever you vote for, we don't care.

Just get out and vote. You need to participate in a democracy to keep it healthy, and that's what this whole organization is all about.

Thank you so much for joining us today, and please enjoy the rest of the afternoon.

Thanks, guys. Thank you. Thank you guys very much.