By ALEX GIMARC
Part 1 – Commfish
Oct. 1, 2026 – While the rest of the state is focused on the intramural food fight among Republican gubernatorial candidates, the putative leader, one Jonathan Kreiss- Tompkins (JKT) is completely ignored. This is a top-level exploration of a few of his issues.
From the conservative viewpoint, it is a target rich environment.
In an attempt to keep the discussion reasonable short, I will start with fishing. In JKT’s world, fishing only involves around 16,000 commfish license holders. In the world of the other 500,000 sportfish license holders statewide, resident and tourista, we are decidedly assigned the hind teat.
JKT’s stance on fishing is entirely defined by his hometown, Sitka, where there is a maximized commfish footprint, and literally no sportfish footprint. As such, his position is that anything that puts salmon in commfish nets is Good, while anything that detracts from that total is by definition Bad.
With that in mind, he authored an Aug 2026 open letter to Alaska’s Commercial Fishermen making five promises.
The first of these was to “restore balance to the Alaska Board of Fisheries.” In his view, anything that favors anything other than commfish is not balance. This is based on his upbringing in Southeast, Sitka, where commfish controls everything.
This is the hammer and nail problem – if you are a hammer, then everything is a nail.
His balance is predicated on every single fish in the salt belonging to commfish. He names several nominees he supported to the Board of Fish, all commfish friendly. He is sufficiently clueless to ignore the fact that the 500,000 sportfish license holders ought to have equal access to the same resource claimed by nearly 16,000 commfish crewmember licensees.
What a clueless, arrogant twit.
His second point is a promise to restore integrity to the Board of Fish cycle process. He blasts out-of-cycle actions, with the Board taking up management questions not scheduled for review. This is a micromanaging bureaucrat substituting process for real time corrections to obvious mistakes. He promises to appoint Board of Fish members and ADF&G leadership who respect the integrity of the Board of Fish cycle process – once again elevating process and regulatory capture over timely response to actual problems with the data changes.
He promised to appoint an ADF&G Commissioner who respects science and process. Note that what currently passes for current “science” on the Board supports the demonstrated environmental destruction of the North Pacific ecosystem by Alaska commercial hatcheries dumping billions of pink salmon fry into the salt yearly which are causing the destruction of wild runs of king, coho, chum and reds in PWS, Cook Inlet and Southeast.
Don’t believe me? Look at the Copper River returns this year. Yet we have the area commfish friendly area biologists doing their best trained seal impression making excuses for the environmental destruction. What will JKT do with that? I wonder (/sarc)
He then promises to fully empower the Division of Investments and CFAB to support fishermen and lower the cost of insurance for commercial fishermen.
Yo, Bubba: Commfish isn’t the only group of fishermen in Alaska whose businesses have been destroyed by changing conditions. I would note that the king guides on the Kenai and the MatSu sure could use said insurance and investments. What about them? Zip. Zero. Nada. You don’t care. Neither do your Southeast, Cook Inlet, Bristol Bay or PWS hatchery commfish people.
Wanna make this a group-on-group food fight? Great. I’m in, as my group, sportfish outnumbers your group, commfish, 30:1. If the game is purely predicated on the notion that mine’s bigger than yours, we will eventually win. And no, I don’t find it necessary to protect commfish from anything anymore, as they did not lift a finger to protect the MatSu or Kenai king guides, dipnetters or subsistence users or any of the rest of sportfishermen when returns suck.
While we in the sportfish world might not be sufficiently spun up today to keep JKT out of office, as he implements his Brave New commfish friendly World, we can most certainly make his term in office and the economic future of his commfish supporters a living nightmare.
JKT and his commfish supporters are about to get destroyed by the worldwide marketplace in salmon dominated by fish farming. While we could have been friends and fellow travelers in the solution, by choosing the “mine’s bigger than yours, sit down and shut up” approach, you guys destroyed all exterior support. Enjoy your journey into economic oblivion. So will I.
If JKT were as smart as his cheerleaders are telling us he is, he should choose another path. I don’t think he will, as he is too doctrinaire, too enamored with his own intelligence to choose any other path.
Bottom line here for the half million sportfish license holders in this election is this: Do you want to catch your own fish or do you want to only be allowed to purchase them from JKT’s supporters?
Simple question. Simple answer. Vote accordingly.
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.
14 thoughts on “Alex Gimarc: The magical world of JKT”
I don’t mind being called faggot. Its an endearing term for us homosexuals. But please, not Porky Pig. That’s a verbal assault.
From the photo it looks like the little bugger was at Disneyworld. Was he there for the annual Gay Days event? Hopefully Mommy gave him enough spending money.
His mommy is a retired medical doctor in Sitka. She knows well the consequences of the gay lifestyle. But silence! Nothing more a mommy can do but support her queer son. And that’s fine with me. However, I don’t want LGBTQ politics forced in my life. That includes transgenderism, homosexuality and gay diversity lifestyles taught in the classrooms of our public schools and paid for by the State of Alaska. That’s what’s coming with a JKT governorship.
👏👏
My sentiments precisely.
Fear is powerful
Add to those unmentioned wacko social issues: men in women’s lockerrooms, restrooms and sports; abortion, abortion and furthermore, ABORTION. More money for shrinking brick-and-mortar schools. And a group hug for the NEA, Green Lobby, RINOs and “independent” legislators. State income tax. No PFD. You will take the “new” Alaska, AND YOU WILL ENJOY IT!
Maybe that’s why he chose Zac Johnson as his running mate. Zac fully backed the Transgender Day of Remembrance during his time on the Assembly. What a pair – regardless of their personal proclivities. Politically, they’re a disaster.
Frankly I do not care what his preferred whatever is.
That being said, I simply can not take anyone seriously, who post a picture with a to-do list at Disney of all places. In my mind it defeats the purpose of the trip. This unfortunate post does NOT inspiring confidence in his abilities and one wonders if that pedantic approach is how he is going to run the state?
So for me JTK is a hard “No Thank you!”
The state published there were 533,000 sportfishermen in 2025. They say real number is less because fishermen get counted again and again for each area in which they fish. The data has no mention of how many are out-of-state anglers.
.
If the 16,000 commercial fishermen combined with, say 450,000, sportsmen, for 466,000 total fishermen. That is 63% of Alaskans fishing in some form or another. I’m skeptical it would be even 20%. I ask to be fact checked.
You would be far better off considering the order of magnitude problem (30:1 sportfish v commfish licenses) than arguing how many angels can dance on the head of that particular pin.
Fact of the matter is that every single sportfish caught salmon brings in at least an order of magnitude more $$$ to the Alaska economy than one caught by commfish. The entire world is swinging to fish farming, which means the economics are also. Either we here in Alaska get on that train, one we’ve pointedly refused to board since 1991, or we will be ground to dust underneath it as it barrels into the future.
JKT is already on that train and plans to accelerate it into the rock wall at the end of the tunnel, economically destroying commfish (as they celebrate their Pyrrhic victory over all other user groups in the state) along with all salmon runs of value – kings are already gone, silvers not far behind in parts of the state. Reds and chum are next in line.
And what do you plan on doing about it? Arguing precise ADF&G license numbers rather than considering generational policy screw ups? What sadness. It’s almost like chickens cheering Col Sanders.
The future is coming. It is coming hard. It is coming fast. it is fish farming. The longer we wait, the worse the damage to the wild runs and the more likely sportfish license holders will be willing to not lift a finger to assist commfish as it is ground into economic dust in a marketplace they refused to participate in. Never a good idea to turn non-combatants into active enemies. But such is life today in the fishing wars. Cheers –
I think JKT is the right choice for Alaska
Curious how both JKT and Mary are making a lot of noise about commercial fishing to deflect from their fruitloopity, outside leftist track records.
[…] Alex Gimarc: The magical world of JKT […]
[…] Alex Gimarc: The magical world of JKT […]