Sen. Shelley Hughes, R-Palmer, speaks with Senate Minority Leader Mike Shower, R-Wasilla, during a break in the Alaska Senate on Monday, April 28, 2025. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)
Palmer Sen. Shelley Hughes has become the seventh Republican to announce a run for governor in next year’s election. Incumbent Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Republican, is term-limited and cannot seek reelection in 2026.
With an announcement at Palmer’s Rebarchek Park on Thursday night, Hughes said that as governor, she would focus on energy costs and eliminating the state’s “brain drain” and its “brawn drain.”
“We need those people that can do the kinds of jobs, the resource-development kinds of jobs, that don’t take a master’s degree. And we also need the educated for certain positions, and we’re losing young people,” she said.
Hughes, a conservative member of the Senate’s all-Republican minority caucus, was elected to the Senate in 2016 after two terms in the state House. She served as a majority leader for two years before the current bipartisan majority took control in 2023.
“I think the good Lord gave me the gift of being able to build consensus without forsaking my values and my principles,” she said during her announcement speech, “and so that is a skill set that is very, very important for a governor to have, because you’re not always going to be given the Legislature that you would maybe hand-pick yourself. You have to play the cards you’re dealt, right?”
Hughes joins an already-crowded field of Republicans seeking to succeed Dunleavy in office.
As of Friday, the six other Republican candidates included:
At least two other Republicans — revenue commissioner Adam Crum and attorney general Treg Taylor — may also enter the race. On Friday, Crum announced his resignation from state service, effective Aug. 8, and Taylor has been holding a series of public events similar to those conducted by prior prospective candidates.
Hughes’ decision to run for governor means there is no incumbent running in next year’s election for the Senate seat she occupies. No candidates have filed to run for that seat, which is in a district that has solidly voted Republican in recent years.
By text message after her announcement, Hughes said she doesn’t know if she will resign from her seat early, as current Gov. Mike Dunleavy did when he was a member of the Senate and ran for governor in 2018.
“That is a decision I will make later in the year, but it is a real possibility,” she said.
If Hughes were to resign, a replacement would be appointed by Dunleavy to fill the remainder of the term. That replacement would have to be confirmed by the Senate’s other 10 Republicans, said Scott Kendall, the Anchorage attorney who wrote the relevant law.
Five of those Republicans are members of the Senate’s bipartisan majority caucus; the other five are in the Senate’s all-Republican minority caucus.
In a town hall meeting on July 3, Alaska Democratic Party chairman Eric Croft was asked when Democrats would begin filing for statewide elections, including the governor’s race, U.S. House and U.S. Senate. No Democrats have yet filed for any of those races.
“I think there’s a lot of those discussions going on,” he said. “There’s people interested. A lot of people (are) interested in what Mary Peltola does. I know people want it done right now, but it’s still a year and a half away, so I think (we need) a little bit of patience on that, but I understand the frustration.”
Sen. Scott Kawasaki, D-Fairbanks, said the national Senate Democratic Campaign Committee and its House counterpart “are trying to make sure that we’ve got a strong field of folks who want to run.”
Asked Friday whether anything has changed since that town hall meeting, Croft said by email that Alaskans deserve better than what they currently have in Congress and the governor’s office, and that he is confident that the party will have a strong candidate on the ballot next year.
