By ALEX GIMARC
Oct. 16, 2026 – The race to represent citizens in House District 15 is a reprise of the 2024 race won by incumbent Mia Costello. Once again, Denny Wells, a registered Democrat, is running for the third time in a row. He lost by single digits in 2024. He won the August primary by 57 votes. This race is shaping up to be similarly close.
On the face of it, Wells presents a great public face: young, vigorous, with three young children and former Peace Corps service. Still, he is a proud, committed Democrat, though he presents the moderate face we have come to know and love from Democrats this election cycle. He also has union connections, with a family member who was an IBEW member.
I will note a few issues that are concerning, but ultimately, this race is all about turnout. Turn out your people and you win, regardless of how important you believe the issues to be. The following are presented as a vehicle to encourage turnout.
His campaign website is a good place to get an idea of his priorities. An extended Alaska Beacon piece may be an even better source. As usual, it is what he studiously refuses to mention that tells us his actual beliefs.
He is very strong in support of public education, which you would expect from any young parent. Sadly, he seems to confuse funding with success, despite decades of experience in this state demonstrating the complete disconnect between funding and performance. Worse, there is no indication of how much money per student he thinks is enough, nor is there any mention of his plans for parents who pull their kids out of the public schools to escape the disaster he wants to dump more money into, or what he plans to do when the increased funding meets the wall of decreased performance.
On energy, he makes all the right noises about “harnessing traditional energy,” but he goes right into “expanding affordable renewable energies,” a public exercise in wishful thinking and mining unobtanium. While he claims to be “working to address the looming natural gas crisis,” how does he plan on doing that, especially if there is not a single word on the natural gas pipeline that his party’s majority in the Legislature rejected this year?
He does mention joining in the legislative attempt to screw over Hilcorp by closing what Wells calls “the S-Corp loophole.” Gonna be difficult to get more natural gas if you are busily taxing your producers and new projects into oblivion.
His fiscal responsibility section mentions a spending cap, protecting the Permanent Fund and “a sustainable PFD.” No definition of what he thinks is sustainable. Note that the 2026 statutory PFD (around $3,800) would have put another $13,000 in his family bank account had the Democrat majorities in both houses passed it. Perhaps Mr. Wells finds basic math difficult.
Finally, he opines that a couple dozen voters in his 2022 race not getting their ballots counted because they were received late is something that needs to be fixed. I suspect that he is interested in this because he believes they were Wells votes and, as such, a great reason to change election law statewide. Quite self-serving. On the other hand, if they were suspected Costello votes, I expect his interest would be elsewhere.
Denny Wells is a photogenic, attractive Democrat, with a suitably focus-grouped resume and shopping list of Democrat legislative priorities. He is pretending to be something other than what he is, hoping we don’t notice. He studiously ignores all discussion of the gasline and the economic folly of defined-benefit pensions, which he will support based on his stated focus on law enforcement. He ends with strong support for dumping an ever-increasing number of dollars into the endless, unaccountable disaster of public education here in Alaska without demanding any sort of improvement.
What do we get with Denny Wells? Just another Democrat. And if you enjoyed the expensive, unaccountable clown show Democrats and their RINO enablers managed to turn the Alaska Legislature into this last session, Denny Wells is your boy. He will smartly add yet another clown to an overly full Democrat/RINO clown car.
On the other hand, if you are interested in a legislator who has done her level best to bring a natural gasline into Alaska, attempt to get public education to finally deliver what it has been paid to deliver for decades, fend off budget-busting foolishness like defined-benefit pensions, and deliver a statutory PFD, then your choice ought to be Mia Costello.
Choose wisely, as Democrats are going to act like Democrats while Republicans will continue to act like adults. And if the problem is too many Democrats and their priorities, the solution certainly isn’t electing more (or any) of them.
Alex Gimarc has lived in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disability policy. His weekly column “Interesting Items” is a summary of news stories with substantive Alaska-themed topics. He was a small business owner and information technology professional.
3 thoughts on “Alex Gimarc: Candidate Denny Wells is a ‘moderate’ face for the same Democrat agenda”
This Wells guy is the perennial candidate and it’s just boring. For one, the democrats of today are not the same democrats of yesteryear. The party has been infiltrated, and is being overrun by socialists and communists, whom are only capable of one thing, destroying and redefining our great country. One look at any socialist/communist government’s accomplishments throughout history, and across continents, and the results are the same: the redistribution of wealth to a few privileged members of the party, and spreading misery and despair to everyone else. Voting democrat simply means further sinking into the hole while digging deeper.
Great information here on yet another Houdini Democrat. The great Rush Limbaugh often said if Democrats running for office told the truth about who they were and what they represented they would never win an election.
As a side note: never saw The Alaska Beacon until the link in this article. Looks like yet another nationally funded leftist paper masquerading as “independent Alaska journalism.” Just like recent The Alaska Independent “newspapers” showing up in mailboxes across Alaska funded by far left David Brock of Media Matters.