# Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins **Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins** — "JKT" in Alaska shorthand — is the Democratic nominee for governor of Alaska in 2026 and a former state representative from Sitka. He is on this wiki for one reason: he is the candidate a sitting Republican U.S. senator crossed party lines to endorse a week before a midterm election. ## Before the race Born **7 February 1989** in Sitka, he left Yale after three years to run for the Alaska House in 2012, entering a redrawn Southeast Alaska seat in which no other Democrat had filed. He won by 32 votes after a recount, certified on 3 December 2012, and went on to represent District 35 — the island communities of Sitka, Hoonah, Petersburg and Craig — for five terms, from **January 2013 to January 2023**. Outside the legislature he founded Outer Coast College and the Alaska Fellows Program, and co-founded the pandemic data project Covid Act Now in 2020. ## The 2026 governor's race He announced on **4 February 2026**, the sixteenth candidate to enter an unusually crowded field for an open governorship. He placed first in Alaska's nonpartisan top-four primary with **22.5%**; Tom Begich, who finished second, withdrew and endorsed him, leaving him to face a three-Republican field — state attorney general Treg Taylor, former Anchorage mayor Dave Bronson, and Bernadette Wilson, the strongest-polling of the three. His platform is domestic and fiscal rather than national: a restored pension plan for teachers and state workers, higher and earlier-passed school funding, tax changes to advance the Alaska LNG project, state support for Alaska Native cultural programs, opposition to a statewide sales tax as regressive, and extension of the corporate income tax to out-of-state sellers and to Hilcorp. Two late-October polls put him six to ten points ahead of Wilson after ranked-choice tabulation. ## The Murkowski endorsement On **27 October 2026**, [[Lisa Murkowski]] endorsed him, describing him as a young Alaskan with a perspective the state needs and asking Alaskans of any party to consider him. Fox News characterised it as a snub of the Trump-backed candidate in the race. The endorsement is the data point rather than the man. Alaska's ranked-choice general election is the mechanism that saved Murkowski's own seat in 2022 against a Trump-endorsed challenger, and it is the mechanism that makes a cross-party endorsement survivable for her now. Where a closed-primary state punishes that move, Alaska's ballot design prices it cheaply — which is why the state keeps producing Republican behaviour that the national party cannot discipline. ## See Also - [[Lisa Murkowski]] - [[Ranked-Choice Voting]]