Amy Demboski: No spin, just the numbers, please. It’s Wilson — not Hughes — who leads in grassroots donors

By AMY DEMBOSKI

Aug. 1, 2026 – Campaign finance reports can tell voters a great deal about the candidates seeking to become Alaska’s next governor, but only if the numbers are presented honestly.

Must Read Alaska recently promoted the claim that “Hughes, Bishop, Begich rank top three candidates for governor with highest in-state patronage.”

The headline creates the impression that Republican Shelley Hughes, followed by nominal Republican Click Bishop and Democrat Tom Begich, enjoys the broadest financial support from Alaskans.

That is not what the campaign finance reports show. Not even close.

Will Koeppen, a data scientist and graphics developer with deep Alaska ties, recently analyzed the Alaska Public Offices Commission reports for Northern Journal. His work separates campaign income into meaningful categories: small-dollar contributors, major contributors, Alaska donors, Outside donors and candidates financing their own campaigns.

The resulting picture is much more complicated than the blog’s headline suggests. In fact, it makes MRAK look ridiculous.

If “patronage” means the number of people willing to contribute to a campaign, which is a traditional measure campaigns use to demonstrate grassroots support, Bernadette Wilson leads the Republican field by a country mile.

Wilson reported 885 Alaska contributors. Her donor count demonstrates a much broader base of individual financial participation than the headline about Hughes, Bishop and Begich would lead readers to believe.

Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins and Tom Begich had the most small-dollar contributors from Alaska, according to Koeppen’s analysis. But the total dollars raised by those candidates tell a very different story from their small-donor numbers.

Kreiss-Tomkins has raised more than $1.8 million, much of it supplied by large Outside donors. Thirty-eight non-Alaskans contributed more than $1 million to his campaign, including nearly $400,000 from just six employees of the artificial intelligence company Anthropic.

Tom Begich’s campaign is heavily dependent on two major Alaska donors. Oil lawfare attorney Robin Brena and oil and investment heir Justin Weaver contributed more than $650,000 between them—nearly half of Tom Begich’s campaign financing.

Those may be Alaska dollars, but two people writing enormous checks should not be confused with broad grassroots support from Alaska voters.

The same caution applies across the Republican field.

Treg Taylor received $100,000 from one Alaska donor., Dr. John Morris. Click Bishop collected $90,000 from construction executive John Ellsworth Jr. and $77,000 from Lynden chairman Jim Jansen. Bishop is also benefiting from approximately $425,000 contributed by unions to an independent expenditure group supporting his campaign.

Shelley Hughes’ reported total includes substantial self-funding of over $227,000, while her running mate, Blake Gettys, and his wife contributed $61,000. That is not evidence that Hughes has more individual Alaska donors than every other Republican candidate. Quite simply, she does not. That is self-funding.

Matt Heilala, meanwhile, has put more than $1.48 million of his own money into the race, making him the second-best-funded candidate behind Kreiss-Tomkins. No reasonable observer would interpret that number as proof that Heilala has the second-largest grassroots following.

A campaign can have a high percentage of its money originating in Alaska because one or two wealthy Alaskans wrote enormous checks. Another campaign may raise less money while attracting hundreds or even thousands of individual contributors. A third may appear well funded because the candidate supplied most of the money personally.

Those are three very different political stories.

There is nothing wrong with candidates accepting large contributions under Alaska’s current campaign finance laws. There is also nothing wrong with self-funding a campaign.

But the media should not repackage concentrated funding or candidate loans as “patronage” without explaining who supplied the money and how many people were involved. The Must Read Alaska narrative that Shelley Hughes is now pumping is a lie.

If we are counting total contributors, Bernadette Wilson leads the pack by far. If we are counting Alaska small-dollar contributors, Kreiss-Tomkins and Begich lead. If we are counting total Alaska dollars, the results are influenced heavily by a few extraordinarily large contributions. If we include independent union spending, Bishop’s financial position changes considerably.

Voters deserve all of that context. Koeppen’s analysis does not tell Alaskans whom to support, but does something more useful: It lets the financial reports speak for themselves. Something that Must Read Alaska was evidently reluctant to do.