Why President Trump should endorse Bernadette Wilson for governor of Alaska

By SUZANNE DOWNING

Sept. 1, 2026 – Bernadette Wilson did not arrive in Alaska politics through a government appointment or an invitation from the political establishment.

Her path began at the grassroots level, working alongside ordinary Alaskans on ballot measures and conservative campaigns before eventually becoming a candidate herself.

I first met her when she was pounding stakes into the ground to places campaign signs in support of the parental notification ballot initiative, which related to abortions conducted on minors. (The measure required 48-hour parental notification, with judicial-bypass and abuse exceptions, before an unemancipated minor under 18 could obtain an abortion.)

I was impressed with Bernadette back in 2010, and my admiration has not been shaken. Politics is a rough-and-tumble business, and I’ve seen her grit, her determination, and her consistency.

President Donald Trump should endorse her for governor. This will be one of the easiest endorsements he can ever make.

Wilson is a lifelong Alaskan, a mother of three and the owner of Denali Disposal, the private waste-management company she started more than a decade ago. She grew up in Anchorage and has family ties extending into Bristol Bay. Her grandmother was born in Naknek, and Wilson is a member of the Naknek Native Village Council and traces her Aleut ancestry through that branch of her family.

She is also the great-niece of Walter J. Hickel, the businessman and builder who served twice as Alaska’s governor and as secretary of the Interior under President Richard Nixon. Wilson has pointed to that family history as part of the tradition of Alaska entrepreneurship in which she was raised. Many in her family are in business, not in government jobs.

But Wilson’s own political résumé was built campaign by campaign and door by door.

While she was working on the parental notification ballot initiative,Wilson worked for conservative Joe Miller during his insurgent campaign against Sen. Lisa Murkowski. That should mean something to President Donald Trump. Wilson was trying to unseat Murkowski before doing so was cool in Alaska.

Miller’s victory over Murkowski in the 2010 Republican primary was one of the most consequential political upsets in modern Alaska history. Murkowski subsequently ran a write-in campaign and retained the seat in the general election, but the primary demonstrated that Alaska’s Republican establishment could be challenged by a disciplined conservative campaign. She was key to that campaign.

Wilson went on to work in other Republican campaigns, including those of Mead Treadwell and Nick Begich. In 2024, she served as a senior adviser to Begich during his successful campaign for Alaska’s congressional seat. Begich defeated Democratic incumbent Mary Peltola that November. Again, she was key to that campaign and no one disputes it.

Her political work has not been limited to individual candidates. Wilson became Alaska state director for Americans for Prosperity in 2021, overseeing grassroots organizing around taxes, regulation, government spending and economic opportunity. She later served as executive director of the Alaska Policy Forum, a free-market policy organization. All this while taking out the trash in Anchorage as she ran her company.

That experience placed Wilson at the intersection of conservative policy and grassroots organization. She has spent years recruiting volunteers, knocking on doors, talking with voters and advocating for a government that taxes less, regulates less and leaves more decisions in the hands of families and businesses. This is one reason why she placed first among the Republican candidates during the primary — by a large margin.

Wilson has also experienced government policy from the other side of the counter, as the person responsible for making payroll and keeping a small company alive.

Denali Disposal was among the Anchorage businesses battered by the Covid-19 restrictions that began under Joe Biden’s presidency. Wilson has said the company took a serious financial hit but survived. Many other businesses did not.

Public records concerning financial difficulties associated with Wilson and her company have since become campaign material for her critics. Wilson’s response has been that those records reflect what happened to many small businesses during the pandemic: Revenue disappeared, obligations remained, and owners had to fight their way through the consequences. It had not been an easy time to be in business.

Her history is therefore neither that of a lifelong government official nor that of a candidate presenting voters with a perfectly polished résumé. She’s going to take the slings and arrows — that’s what modern day politics has devolved into. But she has the history of someone who has built a business, encountered adversity, remained politically active and continued moving forward.

Wilson has made taxes and the size of government central subjects of her gubernatorial campaign. She signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, committing herself to oppose and veto new tax increases if elected. She has also emphasized Alaska resource development, fiscal restraint, and the payment of the Permanent Fund dividend according to a lawful formula, not a made-up amount set on the fly.

Her campaign represents a generational transition within Alaska’s conservative movement. The activists who spent years working behind the scenes at the grassroots level are ready for leadership positions themselves. Wilson is among the most visible examples of that transition.

She enters the general election not as a political newcomer in the ordinary sense, but as a first-time candidate with more than a decade of experience in Alaska’s conservative movement.

Having worked on ballot initiatives, managed campaign operations, organized grassroots activists, advised a successful congressional campaign and operated an Alaska business, she is ready to take the helm of the ship of Alaska.

That record helps explain both the enthusiasm surrounding her candidacy and the scrutiny now directed toward it. Wilson is no longer working behind the scenes for someone else. She is asking Alaskans to evaluate her own experience, her own decisions and her own vision for the state. Trump should take a look at this extraordinary woman and give his full-throated support to this lifelong Alaskan, business owner, conservative organizer, and political fighter who has absorbed setbacks, taken the slings and arrows, without leaving the field.

Wilson is still standing — and now she is running to lead.

Congressman Nick Begich has endorsed Bernadette. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has endorsed her. Trump will be the endorsement that unifies Alaskans around one Republican candidate for governor.

Suzanne Downing is the founder and editor of The Alaska Story and is a longtime Alaskan.