Conservative activist Bernadette Wilson announced on the steps of the Alaska State Capitol in Juneau on Tuesday that she’s entering the race for governor.Wilson, a business owner who has also led conservative policy groups, pitched herself as a political outsider in an interview.“I think it’s time that we take someone with a business background and entrepreneurial spirit, someone that hasn’t been jaded, you know, within the halls of this building, and we get infrastructure done,” she said.
“We’ve got to sit down and have a serious conversation about how we’re going to get education in this state. There’s no reason Alaska shouldn’t be No. 1.”Wilson says she has deep roots in the state as the great-niece of former Alaska Gov. Wally Hickel and a member of the Naknek Native Village Council. She is the majority owner of the nine-year-old Anchorage garbage company Denali Disposal, according to state records.Wilson has also been active in conservative politics.
She’s a sponsor of the latest ballot initiative seeking to ask voters in 2026 to repeal Alaska’s open primaries and ranked choice voting. Until recently, she was the interim executive director of the Alaska Policy Forum, a conservative think tank. Prior to that, she was the state director for the Alaska arm of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative advocacy group affiliated with brothers Charles and David Koch. Wilson was the top choice in a straw poll of readers conducted by the conservative site Must Read Alaska.In her announcement, broadcast on social media by Must Read Alaska, Wilson said her lack of experience in elected office was an asset.“
Current leaders like President Donald Trump and Congressman Nick Begich, previous leaders like Governor Hickel have all gone and done wonderful things for our state and for our country, but they all have one thing in common,” she said. “None of them had a government bureaucrat background when they started. Indeed, even when President Ronald Reagan first ran for governor of California, he had not been in government.”
Wilson also lamented the state’s failure to pay Permanent Fund dividends in line with a formula in state law that lawmakers have essentially ignored since the mid-2010s, when oil prices crashed and the state started relying on an annual draw from the Permanent Fund to pay for state services. The Permanent Fund draw has replaced oil revenue as the top source of the state’s unrestricted cash, which pays for everything from state troopers and schools to roads, bridges and ferries.As oil prices drop on weakening global demand and growing supply from abroad, the state faces a grim fiscal future. Senators recently approved an austere budget while warning of even tougher times to come.
Legislators in the predominantly Democratic bipartisan coalition in the Senate have pushed to expand taxes on out-of-state corporations and oil and gas companies to help close the gap, but they have run into resistance from Gov. Mike Dunleavy and the narrowly divided House.Asked how she would address the state’s looming budget crunch, Wilson said she would reduce the state workforce.“We have one of the highest rates of public employees, government employees per capita than any other state,” she said. “It’s time for us to look at the bloat.
Is it going to be painful? Absolutely, it is. But we need to take a strong look at that budget and figure out, what are we going to do?Though she holds a number of traditionally conservative positions on resource extraction and development, Wilson breaks from Gov. Mike Dunleavy on one key issue: She said she would like to see a significant increase in education funding in an effort to improve student performance.“I am tired of hearing an arbitrary number on education continually get thrown out, whether it’s $1,000, $1,200, $700. I want to support a (basic school funding) increase that’s the number that the education bureaucrats can look at me and say, Bernadette, that’s the number that’s going to make us number one in the country,” she said. “That’s the number that I want to know. That’s the number that we should be supporting.”
Dunleavy has repeatedly said funding alone would not improve the state’s school system. Education advocates have pushed for a more than $1,800 increase in basic funding to restore schools’ buying power to what it was in 2011, though lawmakers and the governor have said the decline in oil prices has made such a move unaffordable. A bipartisan bill that would, among other reforms, boost basic per-student funding by $700 is pending on Dunleavy’s desk, and he told superintendents on Thursday he plans to veto it unless lawmakers pass additional education policy changes.
But Wilson shares some positions with Dunleavy and other conservative Republicans on public education, including support for so-called education savings accounts, a voucher-like system that allows students to use government funds to attend private schools.That’s an issue in a high-profile constitutional case working its way through Alaska’s court system challenging the use of state homeschool funds on private school tuition.
The Alaska Constitution prohibits the use of public funds “for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution.”Wilson lives in Anchorage, but she said she kicked off her campaign in Juneau to illustrate her willingness to go “right into the belly of the beast.”Wilson joins an all-Republican field for the 2026 race alongside Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom and former Fairbanks Sen. Click Bishop.
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