What happened to the Alaskan Independence Party?

By SUZANNE DOWNING

After more than five decades as one of Alaska’s most distinctive political movements, the Alaskan Independence Party has formally dissolved.

In a vote taken Dec. 7, the party’s board of directors elected to disband the organization, bringing to an end a third-party experiment that once put a governor in office and for years ranked among Alaska’s largest political parties.

The decision followed months of internal review after a new board was elected in April 2024. According to the board’s announcement, the leadership undertook a focused effort to re-engage party members and rebuild grassroots outreach, an area it said had been neglected for years. What they found instead was widespread apathy.

The board concluded that much of the party’s remaining membership no longer actively supported its founding goals, believed the party functioned as an extension of the Republican Party, or had registered with the AIP unintentionally. In its statement, the board described the party as “legally alive yet spiritually dead,” with little remaining connection to its original mission.

The Division of Elections, which registers political parties, had not been informed. Neither had many members of the party who were contacted by The Alaska Story.

The AIP’s rise and decline are closely tied to Alaska political history.

The party’s roots trace back to the early 1970s, when gold miner and political activist Joe Vogler organized opposition to federal land and resource control following statehood. In 1973, Vogler founded Alaskans for Independence to challenge the legitimacy of Alaska’s 1958 statehood vote and advocate for a new referendum on the state’s political status.

Vogler ran for governor as an independent in 1974, earning roughly 5 percent of the vote. By the late 1970s, the Alaskan Independence Party had been formally organized to support electoral campaigns, achieving official recognized party status by the mid-1980s after meeting vote thresholds.

The party’s platform centered on an “Alaska First” philosophy, emphasizing individual liberty, resource development, minimal government, gun rights, and opposition to federal environmental regulation. At its core was a demand for a new vote on Alaska’s political status, with options including statehood, commonwealth status, territorial status, or full independence. While Vogler personally favored secession, the party maintained that its goal was a lawful referendum rather than unilateral separation.

The AIP reached its peak in 1990, when former Republican Gov. Walter “Wally” Hickel re-entered politics under the AIP banner and won the governorship alongside running mate Jack Coghill. Hickel captured about 39% of the vote in a fractured three-way race, making the AIP one of the few third parties in modern US history to win a governorship. Hickel later returned to the Republican Party before the 1994 election. Today, his great niece, Bernadette Wilson, is running for governor as a Republican.

Following Vogler’s death in 1993 — he disappeared and was later found murdered, officially ruled a robbery — the party struggled to maintain cohesion and direction. Although it continued to exist and periodically field candidates, the board now says there was no longer a unifying force to keep the party aligned with its founding purpose.

In recent years, the AIP maintained ballot access through voter registrations and occasional electoral activity. At its height in the early 2020s, it had nearly 19,000 registered members, briefly ranking as Alaska’s third-largest political party. The party ran candidates in legislative and congressional races as recently as 2024.

Ultimately, the board concluded the organization no longer functioned as an effective political vehicle. Meeting at 2101 Old Steese Highway North in Fairbanks, the directors voted to dissolve the party entirely.

“The board strongly believes in independence for every individual Alaskan,” the statement said, but acknowledged that the party itself could no longer carry that mission forward.

With its dissolution effective at the end of 2025, the Alaskan Independence Party becomes a historical footnote — the only major political party founded entirely by Alaskans, born of statehood discontent, rising to national attention in 1990, and ultimately undone by drift, division, and disengagement.

For a movement that once reshaped Alaska politics, the question now is not whether the AIP can return, but whether any future movement will again channel the same distinctly Alaskan skepticism of outside control that gave it life in the first place.