A man untangles his net in his boat on the Kuskokwim River in Bethel, Alaska. October 10, 2023. (Photo by Claire Stremple/Alaska Beacon)
Southwest Alaska’s Senate district will see new representation in the Alaska State Legislature next year, after the retirement of the state’s longest-serving legislator, Lyman Hoffman. At a forum this week, four candidates offered different views on the district’s most pressing issues, from fisheries to energy and the rising cost of living in rural Alaska.
Senate District S, one of the state’s largest districts, spans communities across Western Alaska and stretches to Cook Inlet, Bristol Bay and Aleutian islands that are only accessible by boat and plane.
The candidates are Dillingham independent Rep. Bryce Edgmon, who currently serves as House Speaker, Republican Darren Deacon of Kalskag, Democrat Wassilie Guy of Napaskiak and independent Richard “Rick” Robb of Bethel. 
In the primary election, Edgmon was the frontrunner with 37.9% of the vote, Deacon received 23.9%, Guy received 18.9% and Robb got 11.4%. Voter turnout was 20.3% with 4,184 ballots counted.
Each senator in the 20-member Alaska Senate represents approximately 36,800 residents and serves four-year terms.
The four candidates participated in an online forum hosted and broadcast by KYUK in Bethel and KUCB in Unalaska on Wednesday, and made their pitch to voters.
Edgmon was born and raised in Dillingham, where he lives when not in Juneau, and has represented the region in the Alaska House since 2007. He is the first Alaska Native to be elected House Speaker, and touted his experience and relationships in the Legislature.
“I couldn’t imagine replacing the dean of the Legislature, Sen. Lyman Hoffman, with someone who has never served a day as a legislator,” Edgmon said. “My experience is vast. I’m well versed on all the issues. I’ve got credibility among my peers, having been elected speaker multiple times, and I’ve also got relationships I think will greatly enhance the Y-K (Yukon-Kuskokwim) region as well as Senate District S.”
Deacon is Yup’ik Athabascan and grew up in Upper and Lower Kalskag, where he lives and works as a telecommunications installer. He’s run for the Alaska House before, including challenging Edgmon in 2024.
“I want to fight for a full dividend. I want to fight for our subsistence rights, which always seem to be threatened, especially fishing,” he said. “And I just want to bring a new face, if elected, to the Senate with new ideas and just want to fight and do right for the people.”
Guy is Yup’ik and was born and raised in the village of Napaskiak on the Kuskokwim River where he lives and subsistence fishes year-round.
“I taught myself local government, state and tribal, and have been advocating ever since,” he said, explaining that his advocacy covers public services through the community assistance program, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Indian Health Service.
Robb is a longtime resident of Bethel, where he raised his family and has worked in behavioral health as a licensed professional counselor.
“I’ve made a career helping people through rough times, mental illness, substance abuse issues, developmental disabilities, suicide prevention,” he said. Robb has also previously served on the local city council, as mayor, and on the board of the Alaska Municipal League.
The candidates differed in their views on the top three priorities for the region. 
Robb said his top priority would be restoring fisheries. Western Alaska has seen a dramatic collapse in salmon runs on the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers in recent years.
“We have to explore hatcheries. We have to explore anything we can do to get our fish, and we need to address trawling,” he said, referring to the industrial trawling industry that has been criticized for its accidental harvest of other species, known as bycatch. He said he would also focus on public safety and funding for schools.
Deacon said fishing would also be his focus, as would lowering the cost of living, in particular by advocating for a large Alaska Permanent Fund dividend, “which also would help costs and lower the cost of living,” he said.
Guy said he would also advocate for a large dividend and to protect the Power Cost Equalization program, a state subsidy that offsets rural communities’ high energy costs. He said he would also support reviving a pension for public employees, and state subsidies for bulk fuel purchases.
Edgmon said narrowing priorities to three isn’t realistic. “When you get down to Juneau, you’re going to be dealing with 15 to 20, perhaps 25 different priorities,” he said. “But if I had to condense it down to three priorities, I would start by first saying that my first priority is to put Rural Alaska at the front of the table, not at the back of the table, not in the middle of the table, but at the front of the table.”
Edgmon said that he would work to increase funding for the state’s Home Heating Assistance Program, a state program that provides emergency and annual assistance to households based on income eligibility requirements.
“Right now we funded it at $11 million. I think we’re going to have to come back and perhaps double or triple that to make sure that families in need can get the heating vouchers that they’re going to need to get through the winter,” he said. He said he would also focus on education funding, reviving a public pension, election reform, public safety and trawling regulations.
Edgmon said he believes that if he is elected he would be appointed as a co-chair of the Senate Finance Committee, which drafts the state budget and selects priorities, which would benefit the district. That appointment would be up to the members of the Senate majority.
Alaskans are seeing skyrocketing energy costs, particularly in rural communities, as the U.S. war with Iran is driving up costs for heating fuel, groceries and transportation.
Later in the debate, in a lightning round where candidates asked questions of each other, Robb responded to a question from Guy about how candidates would address rising costs, and said he would also advocate for emergency heating assistance this year.
“To give every resident or every home, every household a heating fuel credit of at least $1,000, so we can have so people can heat their homes this winter,” Robb said.
The four candidates disagreed on the amount and source of funding for the annual dividend from the Alaska Permanent Fund, the state’s sovereign-wealth fund.
Guy and Deacon said they would seek to address rising costs in rural communities by advocating for a “full PFD,” referring to a payment based on a formula in state law that has not been used since 2015. “People would have between $3,000 and $12,000 per family. That would help out with a lot of costs,” Deacon said.
But that would come at a multibillion-dollar price that doesn’t fit in the state budget without spending from savings. Since 2016, legislators have opted for a “surplus dividend,” paying a dividend with what’s left over after state government services are covered. This year, the dividend was $1,000 plus $200 in energy relief per eligible Alaskan.
Edgmon asked the other candidates how they proposed paying for a full PFD. He said a large PFD is impractical and lacks support among legislators who want to fund potentially billions of dollars in other priority areas.
“The reality is, in Juneau, there are no votes for a full PFD. So any candidate to me that says that they’re going to promise a full PFD is providing basically a false promise. It’s a hollow statement, and it upsets me because we work hard down in Juneau to get full funding for education, for PCE, for public safety, and a very meaningful dividend,” Edgmon said.
Deacon said he was unsure how to fund a full PFD until he could study the budget. Robb said he would support a change in the law in order to pay out a larger dividend, supported by growth in the Permanent Fund. Guy said he would support corporate investment policy to grow the fund and its earnings. Neither of those approaches would generate enough revenue for a full PFD in the short term.
All four candidates said they would support adequate state funding for education.
Robb said he supports the creation of an education endowment fund to provide designated funding for schools, and forward-funding to create more stability. “It’s one of the biggest responsibilities, constitutionally mandated responsibility, especially out here where it’s all REAAs (Regional Education Attendance Areas) and there’s not a lot of local sales tax or property taxes to support it,” he said. “I would support: forward funding, educational endowment fund, adequate pay for teachers, and growing our own teachers.”
Edgmon emphasized the need to address challenges of teacher recruitment and retention particularly in rural communities, and said he supports the work of the bipartisan task force currently examining how the state funds education.
“I also want to say that if we do have to reexamine the K-12 funding formula, that we do it very judiciously, and that we have somebody who’s got experience at the helm to be able to defend rural Alaska, so that we don’t get shortchanged should that occur,” he said. “But I think it comes down to getting more adequate funding levels to our schools.”
Guy responded only that he would support adequate funding for schools. Deacon agreed, and said he’d support more investment in school maintenance, citing high-profile cases of deterioration of school buildings in the district in Sleetmute and Aniak. “I believe maybe bringing more legislators out to tour these places so that they can see for themselves what the funding does out in the villages,” he said. Deacon said he also supports changing a law to protect funding for schools that drop below an enrollment requirement of 10 students.
All four candidates said they’d support working with state and federal agencies to help communities impacted by ex-Typhoon Halong last year continue with recovery, as well as pursue long-term disaster planning and relocation for some communities.
All four candidates also expressed support for increasing access to healthcare. Deacon noted the need for more dental care. Robb emphasized that unmet needs, particularly for behavioral health and suicide prevention, could be met through expanding telehealth opportunities. Robb and Edgmon noted the impacts of the budget cuts and new requirements for Medicaid enacted in the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
“The expansion population beginning in 2027 is going to have to provide work requirements. The eligibility status is going to be in question for a lot of recipients,” Edgmon said. “There are going to be downstream impacts from the Big Beautiful Bill, and the Legislature needs to be aware of all of them.”
Edgmon is the front-runner in campaign fundraising, according to campaign finance reports filed one month ahead of the general election with the Alaska Public Offices Commission. He has raised nearly $55,000 this election season, with more than $27,000 raised last year and thousands this year contributed by unions, and seafood, healthcare, realtors and telecommunications executives and industry groups.
Deacon has raised $150, which he contributed to his own campaign. Robb has raised more than $2,700, with $2,100 in self-funding. Guy reported no funding raised or spent this election.
Early voting has begun for the midterm elections, with 26,450 Alaskans casting votes as of Thursday morning, and will continue until the polls close at 8 p.m. on Nov. 3.
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Courtesy of Alaska Beacon
