At 37, JKT is on the verge of making Alaska history. His path is unusual.

By SUZANNE DOWNING

Nov. 6, 2026 – When Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins first ran for office, he took ferries and floatplanes around Southeast Alaska to knock on doors and beat Alaska Tlingit Rep. Bill Thomas, by 32 votes.

This year, the former Sitka lawmaker entered an already overcrowded race for governor in February, reported over $700,000 immediately, and nearly $1.85 million in campaign income by mid-July. He went into the final stretch with more than $5.3 million raised. The early source of that money was a network of executives from Anthropic, a California artificial intelligence company.

Kreiss-Tomkins, known as JKT, had 49.13% of first-choice votes, nearly 20 percentage points ahead of Republican Bernadette Wilson. Republican spoiler candidates Dave Bronson and Treg Taylor trailed.

The race has yet to be called, but analysts looking at the data and outstanding votes are beginning to predict a JKT victory. If no candidate finishes with a majority of first choices, the state is scheduled to run its ranked-choice tabulation Nov. 18. It now appears that Republican voters had not ranked other candidates at a rate that will be enough for Wilson to overtake him.

If his lead holds, Kreiss-Tomkins would become Alaska’s youngest governor and the first Democrat elected to the office since Tony Knowles won a second term in 1998. Sarah Palin was 42 when she took office. Bill Egan, Alaska’s first statehood governor, was 44.

Every governor since Knowles has been a Republican or, in Bill Walker’s case, an independent who had split the sheets with Republicans in order to court Democrat votes.

JKT would become the youngest sitting US governor by a clear margin, and one of the youngest in US history. As of late 2026, the youngest was Sarah Huckabee Sanders (Arkansas) at 44. The average age of sitting governors is around the low-to-mid 60s.

Kreiss-Tomkins also has that hyphenated (double-barreled) surname. He is likely the first governor in US history with hyphenated name. Compound names without hyphens do exist (e.g., Michelle Lujan Grisham, Sarah Huckabee Sanders), but a true hyphenated last name appears to be a first.

JKT is single, never married, and has no children. That is unique, as well.

He is also someone who takes on and beats Alaska Natives. Winning for governor would give him his second win against an Alaska Native. His first was beating Alaska Native Bill Thomas (Alaska House representative) of Haines; now, he is beating the leading Republican candidate — Alaska Native Bernadette Wilson.

Kreiss-Tomkins has never held a private-sector job or run a business. He worked on a fishing boat and as a substitute teacher, He dropped out of Yale to challenge a sitting Alaska Native legislator in 2012. He was 23 when he won. By the time he left the House in 2023, he had served a decade.

Kreiss-Tomkins helped start nonprofits that suck at the teat of big government, such as Outer Coast, a higher-education program in Sitka, the Alaska Fellows Program and the disease-tracking project Covid Act Now, which participated in and pushed the Covid scare narrative.

After leaving the House, he spent two years working for a national nonprofit on science and technology policy on Capitol Hill.

His coalition was unusual, too. The lone Democrat on the general-election ballot won the endorsement of nominal Republican US Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who passed over the Alaska Native and two other Republicans to endorse the Democrat. JKT has pledged to include Republicans and independents in his administration.

The buying of the Alaska Governor’s Mansion: JKT’s $5.3 million campaign rides a wave of Outside money

Kreiss-Tomkins filed Feb. 2, one day after the Alaska Public Offices Commission’s year-start reporting period closed. The campaign said in February that it had already raised more than $750,000, but because it entered after the Feb. 1 cutoff, voters did not get its first detailed campaign finance report until July, four weeks before the primary.

Six Anthropic employees gave a combined $372,000 in that first reporting period. One of them, Drake Thomas, gave $100,000. Thomas connected JKT with other Anthropic employees who supported his campaign. By early October, about 70% of the campaign’s donations by dollar amount had come from outside Alaska, and addresses in California and New York accounted for nearly half of its overall war chest.

Kreiss-Tomkins says his work on AI regulation helped attract donors who share his concerns about the technology. His platform, as with other Democrat governors around the country, calls for a pause on new data centers until lawmakers pass rules for them, local approval before construction, and protections against shifting electricity costs onto existing customers. He also proposes holding AI companies liable in Alaska courts when their products cause harm.

Breaking: Lisa Murkowski abandons Republicans, endorses JKT for governor

Suzanne Downing: JKT says ‘remain curious.’ Alaskans should be curious about his actual judgment

Alex Gimarc: Gimarc: The Colorado Model comes for Alaska through JKT

Alex Gimarc: JKT, the big bad virus, and his hasty retreat to fear-and-control policies

Wilson presses JKT’s record at governor debate as Bronson praises Democrat, urges compromise