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.
One thought 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.