By ZACK GOTTSHALL
Leadership is not measured by how well conflict is avoided, but by whether responsibility is embraced at the moment when it is most uncomfortable.
In 2025, the Alaska Republican Party has failed that test, not because its grassroots was silent, but because its leadership was unwilling to act.
Across Alaska, multiple House District Committees exercised their authority under Party rules to demand accountability from elected Republicans whose actions repeatedly diverged from the Party’s platform and stated principles. These district actions were not impulse-driven, but were formal, deliberate actions taken through established district processes.
In 2025, House District Committees took formal action involving specific elected officials, including US Sen. Lisa Murkowski, State Sen. Â Cathy Giessel, State Sen. Â Kelly Merrick, and State Rep. Chuck Kopp, just to name a few.
Yet time and again, Alaska Republican Party leadership failed to act decisively or meaningfully on these calls.
This failure has consequences.
House District Committees are not advisory bodies. Rather, they are the foundation and majority of the State Central Committee, which serves as the governing body of the Party between state conventions. When district committees act, they are expressing the will of the grassroots. And that is the very authority from which Party leadership derives its legitimacy. Ignoring that will is abdication of responsibility.
More troubling still, repeated inaction by those entrusted with Party leadership now threatens to undermine the Party’s ability to enforce accountability in the future.
When leadership publicly discourages sanctions, minimizes censure efforts, or argues that certain elected officials may be “needed” for future legislative purposes, it signals that enforcement of Party standards is optional. Acting politicians can reasonably argue that the Party, through its leadership, chose not to enforce its own rules. That argument grows stronger each time district actions are sidelined or ignored.
The cost of this failure is no longer theoretical. It has real and lasting consequences.
Sen. Rob Yundt may ultimately avoid discipline, and not because the concerns lack merit, but because historical precedent now favors inaction.
When Party leadership repeatedly declines to enforce its own rules, it creates a record future respondents can point to and say, “This is how the Party operates.” The signal sent to voters is devastatingly clear: the Alaska Republican Party does not care who uses the “R” after their name once elected. Each time leadership backs down, more voters disengage, more trust is lost, and more Republicans walk away. They leave because they no longer believe the Party will defend its own platform.
In addition, selective or inconsistent enforcement erodes credibility and weakens the Party’s moral authority. It invites claims of favoritism, political convenience, or retaliation. A Party that will not enforce its own standards cannot credibly demand adherence to them.
Leadership that refuses to act boldly in defense of Party principles does not preserve unity — it hollows it out. Courage is not cruelty. Accountability is not division. A Party that chooses political convenience over integrity ceases to be a principled institution and becomes a personality-driven organization.
Equally troubling is the growing confusion about the role of Party leadership itself. Party leaders are stewards of the Party’s values and platform. They are not meant to use the Party as a political shield, a networking vehicle, or a platform for self-promotion. Stewardship requires humility, restraint, and a willingness to place the institution above individual ambition.
When leadership elevates optics, access, or future political calculations over enforcement of the Republican platform, it inverts its role as an entity that exists to advance Republican principles.
Failure to act decisively and boldly reflects a lack of courage, and that’s a quality that is not optional in leadership — it is essential.
If the Alaska Republican Party is to remain a serious, values-driven institution, it must recommit to enforcing its own rules without fear or favoritism. That means honoring the authority of House District Committees, respecting the governing structure of the State Central Committee, and acting decisively when accountability is required.
Cowardice dressed up as pragmatism is still cowardice. And leadership without courage is not leadership at all.
Zack Gottshall is a retired U.S. Army Intelligence Officer, former Vice Chairman of the Alaska Republican Party, a Commissioner on the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights, and a small business owner in Anchorage, Alaska.
6 thoughts on “Zack Gottshall: Cowardice is not leadership and inaction undermines our party’s future”
The article’s opening statement is strong. I like this guy.
AK GOP leadership has forgotten how to stand up for our core beliefs and values as stated in the GOP platform. Over time the confidence in both elected legislatures and elected gop leadership has eroded due to no consequences for defying both we the people and the guiding documents of our republic government. Getting along is not an answer or solution to this republic. Standing firm, speaking out loud, and calling people out to why they turn their backs to we the people and the documents that explain explicitly how a republic government is to work must be spoken out loud and clear. No explanation to their defiance to the republic then no money, support, no R will be allowed.
The Murkowski issue has a lingering history of friendship with people. What does that have to do with your core beliefs in the republic? Members in the gop leadership value friendships more than a strong republic government that helps and secures all our friends one way or another. Selecting to choose a friendship for that alone bares nothing but that between the two. Shameful. I will keep speaking out that we the people are first, always.
God bless us all.
I wouldn’t call it cowardice
It’s your Republican members are Government Dependent.
They don’t know any other way than Government and singles and families have built their family’s wealth because of Government employments, contracts, grants, such n such,
To do the right actions for Alaska is correcting our past which means Hard in popular decisions will be made.
Or you can always just keep on kicking the can down the road hoping you will die before hard financial times arrive.
The choice is for every Alaskan?
You want to start now while we still have a cushions and buffers to soften the blows? Or do you want to wait for catastrophic collapse without any safety nets, buffers because we used those resources up on our selfishness.
I mean the writer himself has grown his wealth by government dependency being employed in the army, commissioner of Alaska state commission for human rights
Just as Democrats There are a lot of Republicans in the same situation as the writer they can’t afford to lose the government money
They don’t want smaller government when it means giving them and their neighbors, friends, other family members hardship
WELL SAID! Thank you for saying it. Not only locally, this is a problem nationally. We need the GOP to develop a backbone and do what our president is doing. He can’t do it alone. I truly hope there are consequences for Yundt because he has played his constituents. We need a resurgence of people willing to follow the law, something we’ve ignored here in Alaska. We need to all get in the fight for the things that made America great.
The author, Zack Gottshall, has pointed out the obvious. For many decades the Alaskan Republican Party has been the poster child of the National Republican Party as a spineless entity afraid to vigorously stand up for values critical to preserving a free country.
“… selective or inconsistent enforcement [of party principles] erodes credibility and weakens the Party’s moral authority. … A Party that will not enforce its own standards cannot credibly demand adherence to them.”
Alaska’s Republican party is feckless. Merriam-Webster, feckless: weak, ineffective, unsuccessful, worthless, irresponsible, inefficient, counterproductive.
District committees need to unite and double-down with actions to ensure that only those who actually follow party values are supported or even allowed to identify as Republicans.