Gubernatorial candidate Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins whistle-stops in Nome

With the primary election coming up on August 18, candidates for various offices have parachuted into Nome for a quick campaign stop, often on very short notice. 
Last week, two gubernatorial candidates in a crowded field of 17 vying for the job as governor were scheduled to arrive in Nome, with only one actually showing up. 
Sitka-native Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, also known as JKT, visited Nome on Friday, July 24. He arrived by himself with no entourage or running mate in tow.
Born and raised in Sitka, the 37-year-old has a decade of serving as House District 35 Representative in the Alaska Legislature under his belt. He represented 21 southeast Alaskan villages from 2013 to 2023 in Juneau. “I was elected to the Alaska Legislature when I was 23 years old,” he said in an interview with the Nugget.
“I was the third youngest legislator in Alaska history, and I ran against a Republican incumbent and sort of pulled off an upset election and served for 10 years. So, just even though I’m young, I think I would argue I have as much or more experienced than most of other candidates running, at least in elected office and working on state government,” he said. 
Asked what prompted his interest in state government at such a young age, he said that the reason he dropped out of college – he went to Yale and left without a degree – was his concern about the now infamous Senate Bill 21, which replaced the Alaska Clear and Equitable Share progressive tax structure with a flat 35 percent tax on oil profits.
Kreiss-Tomkins won narrowly the election, voted against the bill but to no avail. The bill was enacted in 2013 and critics said it was tantamount to a multi-billion-dollar giveaway to major oil producers to the disadvantage of the state. That, young Kreiss-Tomkins thought, was not a good idea. 
Asked about his political philosophy, he said that he’s focused on problem solving. “I’m running first as an Alaskan. I want to govern first as an Alaskan, not as a member of any political party. That is a really important governing principle to me,” he said. 
His top priorities are reinvesting in public schools, focusing on fisheries, reducing bycatch and making sure that Alaska and not lower 48 trawl interests are calling the shots and lowering the costs of living in Alaska, including costs of healthcare, home affordability and power costs.
“Every school district in the state, and I’ve interacted with many of them at this point, has a different sad story about how the quality of education has declined over the last eight years under Governor Dunleavy,” Kreiss-Tomkins said. “I had an amazing education growing up in Sitka. I think we owe it to our kids, future generations, to invest in public education, and fully funding education and forward funding education is a hugely important issue for me.”
Asked about how he envisions the ideal collaboration between governor and legislature, he said, he’d be doing the opposite of what Governor Mike Dunleavy has done in the past eight years. He said he’d envision a “functional, collaborative, communicative” relationship with the House and Senate, “the opposite of our current governor.” 
“Our governor is in Saudi Arabia falcon hunting when the legislature is in session and he has been aloof and AWOL and that is the opposite of my approach, which is building relationships. You’re developing trust. You’re there physically, so you can try to solve problems together.”
For years, the governor’s reluctance to fully fund public schools to keep up with inflation has resulted school closures and cuts to the bone. That neglect of the schools plus the failure to get the fair share of the state’s oil wealth to fund schools and infrastructure, Kreiss-Tomkins said, gets under his skin. 
Another priority, he said, is subsistence fishing. He boated down the Yukon River last week, 450 miles of it, and saw empty fish camps. “Fisheries management is a whole other issue, but the state is literally party to a lawsuit to try to undermine rural preference and subsistence. I mean that like there’s nothing that is more anti-rural than that,” he said, adding that as governor, he’d get out of that lawsuit the first day in office.
Kreiss-Tomkins said he’s driven to make government work for people who don’t have all the advantages in the world working in their favor. “That’s why I think public education is important. Ideally it creates a level playing field. It’s why I think getting our fair share from oil is important because oil companies are fantastically wealthy. They can hire lobbyists up the wazoo, but every dollar in profit that goes to them, rather than Alaska, means money that’s not going to schools or permanent fund dividends or anything else. I think that is a really north star value for me.”
A recent gubernatorial campaign contributions analysis published by The Northern Journal/Anchorage Press showed that Kreiss-Tomkins is leading the gubernatorial campaign donations field with a $1.8 million haul. He has raised over $1 million from outside contributors, and the analysis linked $400,000 of these contributions to employees of the AI company Anthropic. This drew criticism that Kreiss-Tomkins is in the pockets of “big AI.” In response, Kreiss-Tomkins said that the contributors are individuals and not corporations who donated. In a Reddit post, verified by The Nome Nugget, Kreiss-Tomkins said that he worked on policy for a national science and technology nonprofit for two years before running for governor. “During that time, I was a strong supporter of national regulation of AI. […] Through this work, I developed an understanding of the risks of artificial intelligence, and I am a huge *supporter* of AI regulation. I am also the first (and so far only) gov candidate to propose a moratorium on data center development.”
As for the system of unlimited campaign contributions, he advocates for limits – “the lower the better,” he said. “In the interim, though, these are the crazy rules of the road we’re all playing by. Because of the bad system we’re in, every serious candidate for governor is taking in large contributions from donors. Which is why we should change this bad system and make it better! There’s a ballot initiative in the August 18 primary to reinstate contribution limits of $2,000 to candidates. I will be enthusiastically voting “yes.” I encourage others to do so.”
Tom Begich, also a Democrat, was scheduled to visit Nome last week as well but canceled last minute. Asked what in his mind the major differences between them are, Kreiss-Tomkins said he has lived in and represented rural Alaska. “I have a much stronger record focusing on rural issues, whether it’s subsistence or fisheries management or PCE,” he said. “The other thing I would say is, I would argue our campaign has the best chance of winning the general election in Alaska against whoever the Republican is —Bernadette Wilson, Dave Bronson, whoever it is —and the reason I say that is, I beat a Republican incumbent as a 23-year-old.”
While in Nome, Kreiss-Tomkins visited with Kawerak, Norton Sound Health Corporation, Nome Eskimo Community, KNOM radio and he held a meet and greet at Milano’s.
The primary elections are held on August 18. It is a ranked choice voting system, where voters are asked to rank four of their favorite candidates regardless of their party affiliation. The top four will advance to the general election in November.