By ALEX GIMARC
March 4, 2026 – Matt Heilala has been making the rounds running for governor as the Republican nominee. He is well funded, largely on his own dime, which I like a lot, as he believes in his own stuff so far.
He spent a half hour or so with Amy Demboski on her KENI show a few weeks ago. All in all, it was a decent visit on a performative basis, but a complete disaster on a policy and prediction basis.
Pretty harsh conclusion, right? I don’t think so. My two top level reactions to the visit were his failure to understand the foundations of our ongoing fiscal difficulty and his default into a Rodney King, “People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?” approach.
Both of these are remarkably naive, especially for a grown male trying to be a Republican nominee for anything.
Heilala proposes to work with Democrats on the budget and other issues, coming to agreement on things we can agree upon and going elsewhere when we can’t. Nice words but ignoring reality.
The reason we can’t get from here to there is because democrats don’t want to go there, not unlike Iranians in nuclear weapons talks . Worse, we have 8-10 Republicans elected to do Republican (conservative) things fully onboard with those democrat goals, thus the “Bipartisan” majorities in both the senate and the house. Democrats hate every single thing Republicans want to do, demonstrating that on a daily basis with votes against the Permanent Fund dividend, votes for unaffordable defined benefit state pensions, and the entire pantheon of democrat social issues lunacy.
Difficult to do the “Can we all get along” routine and survive with a group of people who hate you. When do you plan to fight? Do you even know what that means?
Second, Heilala’s wraps himself in fiscal responsibility by refusing to support the statutory PFD claiming we can’t afford it anymore. Yet his website makes the following mind-blowing claim that:
“The economy has to be energized, and the State Budget balanced, before we can address issues of spending – because right now – Alaska can’t afford a ham sandwich.”
If you don’t address spending, how, pray tell can you balance any budget? I would say, “You idiot,” but that would be redundant redundant.
Spending is the key to all of this. And if you don’t realize this, you aren’t nearly the responsible businessman you pretend to be. In case you hadn’t noticed, under this crowd, the PFD is already gone, while the majority targets the corpus of the Permanent Fund, actively obstructing the natural gas pipeline.
Yes, we can crank up the state economy to bring in much larger amounts of money to the state treasury. Your problem is that your new BFFs among the Democrats and Republican who caucus with them can and will spend the increased cashflow much quicker than you can bring it in.
What do you propose to do about that? Zip. Zero. Nada. Crickets, even though the solution is relatively simple: Put control of spending as close to whomever it benefits as humanly possible, something Dr. Matt doesn’t seem to understand either.
While Clueless was a moderately entertaining movie 30 years ago, it is hardly an appropriate or successful governing style in 2026. Perhaps voters need to consider another choice.
Alex Gimarc lives in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disabilities policies. 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.
12 thoughts on “Alex Gimarc: Matt Heilala for governor? Not this round”
Brilliantly done!
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Thanks, Alex.
Gimarc, always divisive.
Thank you Alex. I heard Mr. Heilala today on the Mike Porcaro show and while in the first part of the interview he promoted building and projects by basically saying “yes to projects” should be the default, he than wiggled and waffled on the LNG pipeline. It seemed to me that he did not know specifics and in my book if you are running for governor promoting a project forward agenda, having a better grasp on the details and being able to communicate them coherently should be a given.
Both you and SenMyers and pretty sure more AK men finally are understanding what need to be done though not the politically popular actions to do But if Democrats and Republican voters want their soon to be adult children to stay on Alaska or return back to Alaska then they need to give the children a place that is worthwhile to build a future. Sacrifices are necessary out of today’s adults today for prosperity for our adult children.
Don’t think I agree, Tina. I am not particularly interested in my children staying in Alaska, especially if it is no longer a good or prosperous place for them to live. Rather, I am very interested in Alaska being such a great place that is is worth living in, something that seems to escape the limited interest of democrats, Republicans who caucus with them, and their apologists. There is a difference. As to sacrifices, we parents do that all the time, even unto grand and great grand parenting. Don’t you dare demand additional sacrifices, as you are both presumptuous and condescending. Cheers –
Thank you for this response to Tina, Alex. You saved me the trouble….
To be honest I doubtful with the current elect leaders present I think we won’t see changes. Means All 60 legislators need to leave. We need to reevaluate whose we elect and why? And who shook we be electing?
Republicans never get to work “with” Democrats. Republicans always give up their positions and acquiesce to them, until later down the road the Democrats get everything they originally wanted. Communist Chinese employ the same strategy. They employ a large bit of patience and keep at it until they get everything they want (from foreign powers). Just say no thanks to Democrats….. just like I’ll say to Heilala
The article seems to criticize Matt Heilala for not being specific enough about where to trim excessive spending. I got excited because I thought the article was going to provide some specific ideas of where to trim. But I did not see anything.
Well, the article did say: “…even though the solution is relatively simple: Put control of spending as close to whomever it benefits as humanly possible,”
I got excited when I saw the word “solution”, but then I realized it was just a puff of non-specific smoke.
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I have a specific idea to trim spending, and that is: get rid of collective bargaining for state employees and teachers. I wish I could hear other regular citizens say the same thing publicly. But I understand that a lot of people don’t want the unions to get mad at them.
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Though I’m undecided on which Republican candidate I’ll vote for, I do like it when Matt Heilala stresses the need for a balanced budget. I also like when he says: “We can’t afford a ham sandwich”. But specifically, we cannot afford a foot tall sandwich that Dagwood Bumstead would build, which is the size of a “statutory” PFD.
It’s more basic than that, Randy. Heilala doesn’t even mention spending outside of grabbing the PFD, which seems to me backwards economics. Cheers –
Randy says: “Well, the article did say: “…even though the solution is relatively simple: Put control of spending as close to whomever it benefits as humanly possible,”
I got excited when I saw the word “solution”, but then I realized it was just a puff of non-specific smoke.”
This IS specific. It is a system rather than a goal. Rather than painstakingly detailing one BS solution after another, it proposes a simple test. Does this choice put control of the $$$ closer to the citizen than the other? Those that do should be adopted. Those that don’t should be rejected. Do this long enough and you solve the problem entirely.
Systems ALWAYS triumph over goals. You want goals, which are the democrat technique. You ought to try solutions, which tend to be used by conservatives. Cheers –
Thanks AGimarc. There seems to be a dearth of info on this candidate. “Vote for me I’m different” while promising more of the same is smoke and mirrors. I will not be voting for this candidate.