The Final Four Candidate Forum: Alaska's Next Governor, On the Record 9/17/2026

All right, how's the audio, guys? 1, 2, 3. Raucous humans on the left, let's keep it down. Thank you. All right, good evening everyone.

Let's get started. Welcome to the Final Four. I'm Moira Smith, a member of the Commonwealth North Board of Directors, and I will be your host tonight. We are grateful to have you join us this evening. Both here in the room and online for this important conversation about Alaska's future.

For anyone that's new to Commonwealth North, the organization has been the leader in Alaska's civic conversation for 45 years. It was founded in 1979 by two former governors, Wally Hickel and Bill Egan, one Republican and one Democrat, around a simple idea that still feels relevant today. We get better answers to Alaska's hard questions when we set aside the politics, when we set aside the personalities, and we focus on the problems, and when we always put Alaska first. That has always been Commonwealth North's goal, to bring people together across sectors, across communities, and across points of view for serious conversations about the issues that shape our state. And in that spirit, I want to say at the outset that Commonwealth North does not endorse.

We will not be endorsing any candidates now or at any time between now and November. This forum is for you, not us. And our role is to create a setting for a fair, substantive conversation and then give Alaskans time to decide, consider, and listen. And it's worth taking just a second to consider how we got here, because this has not been a normal election. There were 17 candidates on the primary ballot, including a dozen Republicans.

The top 4 was not final until September 4th, a full 17 days after the primary election, after a withdrawal, a disqualification, and a reversal. And of course, legal disputes continue. So if you lost track somewhere along the way, you're in good company. But tonight is simpler: 3 people, 3 questions, 12 minutes each, and then a conversation. Now, the reason for tonight's format came directly from Commonwealth North's July forum, which was rated by 91% of respondents as the most valuable one that they had attended.

That feedback mattered, and tonight we're building on it. This is not a debate. It is an interview-style forum. The candidates have had all of the questions for just shy of a week, so there is no ambush at foot. The point is to give each person the opportunity to offer a considered answer.

Now before we begin, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the organizations and people who made tonight possible. Tonight's event is presented by GCI, and on behalf of GCI, I am honored to welcome the candidates and all of you here. I know there are several GCI employees here in the audience and online, and I want to thank all of you for taking the time to attend. I also want to offer a special thank you to the team that put this together— my GCI team, the Angelas, Amandas, Meghans, Lindseys, all of you who have worked so hard to put this together, thank you. GCI and ConocoPhillips are also Commonwealth North's cornerstone sponsors, providing the year-round support so that Commonwealth North can put on its programming.

And you'll see this sponsor slide here. Please take a moment to thank these sponsors for the work that they do.

Almost last, I would like to recognize Commonwealth North's board members. If you are a board member here, please stand. I know several are here. Oh my goodness.

I want to give special recognition to our board president, Kai Binkley-Sims, who has volunteered countless hours to the organization. We depend on the people who dedicate their time, and we are thankful to them. Now, we have several upcoming opportunities to continue these conversations. On Monday, September 28th, at the Petroleum Club, we will have a debate on Ballot Measure 2, Prop 2 on the Record, the Ranked Choice Repeal Debate. It will feature attorneys Craig Richards and Scott Kendall and will be moderated by Commonwealth North's own John Katchen.

We also warmly welcome you to the Hickel and Egan Gala on November 5th at the museum. We'll be honoring Karl Mars as a recipient of the Hickel Award. And Senators Stevens and Hoffman as the recipients of the Egan Award. We cannot wait to enjoy that. And I think 2 days after the election, it might be a nice opportunity to take a deep breath and come together as Alaskans.

And finally, if tonight is useful to you, I hope you will consider becoming a member of Commonwealth North. Membership is what helps us sustain this work, and we need you to make that happen. The QR code on the screen will take you directly to membership information. If it was working, this QR code here would be a hit, um, but the website includes everything you need. So, all right, let's get down to business.

Let's talk about the format. Each candidate, following my spiel up here, will come up to the front and talk for 12 minutes on the 3 questions that were both publicly issued and that they received in advance of the debate. Same questions, same clock. And here are the 3 questions. On fiscal policy: With no long-term fiscal plan and a budget more volatile than any state in the nation, how do we pay for the Alaska we want?

On energy: From Cook Inlet gas to the rail belt's future, what is your plan to keep the lights on? And costs down for Alaskans? And on outmigration, working families are leaving Alaska. What will you do to make this a state where they want to stay, work, and raise their kids? The 3 questions will stay on the screen.

The order will be the reverse order of the primary finish, so the top vote getter speaks last. So we will begin with, uh, Craig Taylor, and then Dave Bronson, and then Jonathan Christ Tompkins. Austin, our esteemed timekeeper, will hold up cards at 2 minutes, 1 minute, and 30 seconds. At time, I will cut in politely, and I will do it to everyone. Now, this is an interview, not a debate.

No one responds to anyone else tonight. Each candidate speaks for themselves on the same questions to the same room. After the fourth block, all candidates will sit in the chairs for a moderated Q&A. Those questions were also sent in advance. At 5:30, the candidates will move to, to stations around the room, and the last half hour belongs to you so you can interact with them and have conversations directly.

The last item for you is a housekeeping matter. This forum is being recorded, and a written summary will go out to Commonwealth North's email list, so please make sure your phones are on silent. And finally, restrooms are just outside. Those doors across the hall. So I am going to call up Craig Taylor, and as he makes his way up, I will let you know that he is the former Attorney General of the State of Alaska, and his running mate is Candace English.

Thank you, Mr. Taylor.

I'm going to remove this so I don't have to bend down the whole time. You know, 12 minutes is a long time, so there is a really good chance said after the end of 12 minutes I might not be on the ballot again. So hold on, hold on.

Clicker. Okay, I want to talk about some sad realities. Right now we have some broken systems in state government that, that are not serving the people of Alaska as designed. And this is just one example of this, right? When, when I am out of order here.

Ah, there you go.

This is just one example, right? NICU parents are stressed out, wondering how they're going to afford this, praying for their baby, wondering if their baby is going to be okay, file for Medicaid, which they qualify for, and yet over 5 months transpire, no phone call, no nothing back, no coverage. And this is just one out of many. In the past 3 years, we've had over 23,000 kids fall off Medicaid. And that doesn't reflect— because we've come out of poverty, right?

We have had some job growth, right? We have 2%— we're 2% down in that same time period for unemployment rates. But the child population has only dropped by less than 1% over that same period. So that tells me that these children dropped off not because of eligibility requirements, but because of paperwork issues. And that's unacceptable, right?

One of the state's biggest jobs is to look after those that can't look after themselves. And so this is just problematic. And this is just epidemic in a lot of different instances. And unfortunately, in a lot of different instances that affect our children. Look at OCS.

Look at our— the performance of our schools. And this also I think shows a big need for modernization. Technology, bringing in technology to help monitor this, putting in places tickers where you see the McDonald's tickers. McDonald's is a great service because they care about the service, right? And they have the tickers in there and they get you through quickly.

Here's the next slide. And what you don't know is during the 4.5 years that I was the Attorney General, I was basically fighting a silent battle against business leaving the state. And this was all done in the name of ESG. And if you don't know what ESG is, it's Environmental Social Governance. And there was a big push while I was the Attorney General for those 4.5 years.

And what we did to push back on there, partly, well, we filed some lawsuits, we filed some opinions, to rule changes the federal government was proposing. But we came up with Alaska's ESG. We showed that, hey, where Alaska has economic development, we have success. People come out of poverty. Look at the Red Dog Mine region, 75% to 21% poverty rate.

That's huge. Think about the hope that all of those families received, right? Because there was opportunity. North Slope poverty rate, 50 to 12%. And then life expectancy, we've seen the life expectancy grow by 12 years since, since we had the developments in the 1980s on the North Slope.

This is Alaska's ESG. This is why Alaska has a duty to develop its resources on behalf of its people. And this is what opportunity does. And by the way, as the chief prosecutor for the state, as the Attorney General, we saw, we see crime rates drop, suicide rates drop in these areas precipitously. And it's because of that opportunity.

It's because when people are feeling desperate, when people are feeling hopeless, alcohol, drugs, and then all the crime that occurs with that. And so this is our card. We need to be playing this card. We have underperformed as a state. When it comes to developing the resources that God blessed us with.

And I'll also tell you that in this ESG fight, I had a major corporation show me the shareholder complaint. The shareholder complaint says, if you do not do this, this, this, and this— 4 things— in the name of ESG and climate change, we will forgive you if you pull your business completely out of Alaska. And we were seeing that over and over and over again in the insurance industry, in banking industry, and with investment advisors who were, who were downgrading investments in Alaskan companies or companies that simply did business in Alaska. A lot of pressure on companies throughout the United States in the name of ASG just to divest of Alaska. And of course, we saw that same thing under the Biden administration.

Biden administration had 30 by 30, and I'm getting way off slides now. Um, Biden administration had, um, 30 by 30, which is you wanted 30% of lands, 30% of waters into conservation status by 2030. Well, he's not going to get that in Maine. He's not going to get that in New Jersey. He's not going to get that in Texas.

He's not going to get that in California. He was going to hang that entire thing on the backs of Alaskans, tie up our lands, prevent us from developing those lands. And again, we just saw what resource development does for Alaskans. Give some hope. You know, that's why one of the major policies that I want to push forward is it's our land.

Let us, let's build our future on it. Right now, you all know federal lands, 62% owned by federal government, right? Less than 1% owned by individuals within Alaska. And I'm a big proponent of if you don't have private lands, you don't have private economy. We need to put more land in the hands of Alaskans.

And so you see kind of what we would envision there. I'm bullish on Alaska's future. We have so many opportunities, and we are blessed with vast resources that we are expected— we have a duty and an obligation to develop those on behalf of Alaskans. We spend all this time fighting in Juneau about the budget and about all the different issues, the PFD, and yet our roads are still in horrible condition right now, especially things like the Hall Road. You travel any major highway in the state and you're going to say, what is going on with the roads, right?

Homelessness is rampant, and we haven't had a major infrastructure project in decades, right? Even when times are good, even when price of a barrel of oil was high, no infrastructure projects, no capital budget. We have our first priority as a state is we have to balance the budget. Which means we have to make do with the revenues that come in. And so as your governor, I'm going to prioritize a couple things.

I'm going to prioritize protecting the most vulnerable, and that's public safety, infrastructure that is going to help move the state forward, unlocking and unleashing our resource potential— timber, minerals, rare earths— and our education. Right? But with education, I think we need to be more out— we spend so much time talking about the amount we spend in education, but very little talking about the outcomes for our kids. And so the answer to all three questions that we were asked at the very beginning is building our economy, which will provide prosperity for Alaska families. I'm proud of my record on that as the Attorney General.

I helped draft this president's first-day executive order that was focused 100%. We're the only state that got an executive order, helped draft it, Unleashing Alaska's Extraordinary Resource Potential. And in that, we selected very carefully those projects that we've been hoping for and praying for in Alaska for the last 40 years. We carefully selected those projects that were best positioned to move Alaska forwards and to help us access our vast resources on behalf of Alaskans. The crown jewel of that obviously was the gas line project.

Worked very closely on that project. And helped implement various other aspects of that executive order. We saw some progress in many of those items, right? We got the rights of way for the Ambler Road to get us to the Ambler Mining District. And we had a record lease sale in the NPRA, which unfortunately as the Attorney General I had to sue over twice.

Right? They weren't gonna hold the sale. Two, the Biden administration held the sale, but they put so many conditions on it that they knew no one could possibly bid it. And so we saw a record NPR sale, and we saw some great things in that NPR sale. We saw Exxon reinvest in the state, and we saw other companies, Shell, come back into the state.

I was in the oil and gas industry when Shell announced in the morning meeting, and I was in that meeting when Shell said, we're leaving the state, and it was a gut punch. And you could just feel for the Alaskans that were no longer going to be employed, right? For the Alaskans that so badly need economic development. And so that's a big part of it.