Meda DeWitt

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Strengthen schools: stable funding, free nutritious meals, expanded support, and after - school activities.

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Strengthen food security by protecting our fisheries, subsistence, and investing in agriculture and food hubs.

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Alaska’s Constitution (Article VIII) holds fish and wildlife in public trust and mandates management for sustained yield. The North Pacific fisheries, the largest wild-capture fisheries in the United States, are failing rural Alaska, subsistence users, sport fishermen, small-boat commercial families, and the communities that depend on them. The 2025–26 Bering Sea pollock TAC is 1.375 million metric tons- more than 3 billion pounds (NMFS IB 24-52). Seattle-based trawlers take home up to 76% of the value of all groundfish caught in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska (Alaska Beacon, 2024). As Governor, I will use every available instrument, the ADF&G Commissioner appointment (AS 16.05.251), six Board of Fisheries seats, and Alaska’s NPFMC nominations, and invest in independent reviews of scientific findings and data, to restore management integrity.

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3. Tribal Data SovereigntyFor Alaska Native communities, data sovereignty is an extension of tribal sovereignty. For generations, data (research) about Indigenous communities has flowed outward to institutions that used it to justify policies serving those institutions, not those communities. We will apply the CARE principles, Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, and Ethics, to all state data relationships with Tribal governments: formal government-to-government agreements, health and population data returned to Tribes in actionable form, support for Tribal data infrastructure, and recognition that Indigenous knowledge systems are sovereign assets.

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4. Modernizing State SystemsAlaska’s agencies manage data in silos, leading to redundancy and inconsistency and failing to support the integrated analysis needed to improve outcomes or reduce costs. Thus, an Alaska Data Governance Office will be established with a unified framework built on data minimization, transparency, and every Alaskan’s right to access and correct their own government records. We will apply FAIR principles to non-confidential state data, enabling research and public benefit. And we will require disaggregated outcome reporting so statewide averages cannot hide community-level failures.

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Create an Alaska Investment Window (2–3% of assets) for in-state infrastructure, energy, and broadband: held to the same return standards as the rest of the portfolio.

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1. In rural Alaska, we will fund every community that wants a Village Public Safety Officer. One in three communities currently has none. A VPSO costs a fraction of a trooper deployment and prevents the crime, rather than responding to it days later.

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3. For Missing and Murdered Indigenous People, we will publish Indigenous homicide data quarterly, fund Data for Indigenous Justice as an official state partner, and staff the investigations these families have waited years for. No government agency was tracking these cases. A community advocate built the database herself. That is a governance failure this administration will correct on day one.

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4. For rehabilitation and reentry, we will invest in the evidence-based programs that reduce recidivism, because every person who does not return to incarceration saves the state $81,000 a year and represents a life rebuilt. We will restore funding to Alaska’s four reentry coalitions, reform parole board transparency, and ensure that every person released from custody has housing, identification, and a treatment connection on the day they walk out the door.

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5. For prevention, we will treat unaddressed trauma as the public health and fiscal crisis it is. Untreated trauma drives addiction, suicide, and incarceration. Evidence-based trauma treatment costs $2,000 to $8,000 per person. The downstream cost of doing nothing is nearly $20,000 per person per year in lost workforce, lost health, and lost life. Prevention is not more expensive than reaction. It is dramatically cheaper and the only approach that actually works.

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Restore mandatory inflation proofing as the first charge against any draw, before dividends or government spending.

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2. For survivors of violence, we will build the forensic infrastructure Alaska lacks. Prosecutors currently decline half of all sex offense referrals because the evidence cannot be processed. We will fix that, and we will ensure that services for survivors are designed for every survivor, including men, boys, and LGBTQ+ Alaskans who are systematically excluded from the systems built to help them.

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1. What We Will Do: We will automatically enroll every eligible Alaska child in Denali KidCare using data the state already collects through the Permanent Fund Dividend application; no separate application needed, and we will apply the same approach to eligible adults. We will redirect administrative savings to community health aides, behavioral health workers, and telehealth services in communities that currently lack them. We will fund preventive screenings, tobacco cessation, and medication-assisted treatment as essential fiscal investments.

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3. Add Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity to Alaska’s Hate Crime Statutes. Alaskans should not have to depend on federal prosecution for bias-motivated violence targeting who they are. I will support legislation adding sexual orientation and gender identity to Alaska’s hate crime statutes, bringing state law in line with federal protections and with the values Alaskans have consistently expressed in public polling.

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1. Sign a Statewide Non-Discrimination Law. Alaska needs explicit statutory protection in employment, housing, public accommodations, and government services. Bostock established the federal floor; Alaska’s constitution demands at least as much. I will work with the legislature to pass a comprehensive non-discrimination law and will sign it.

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3. To address recidivism and survivor safety, we will implement automatic Medicaid re-enrollment upon release, require discharge planning starting 90 days before release, and HHS and DOJ will collaborate to develop treatment and recovery pathways.

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Expand grants for school gardens, food cultivation programs, and traditional foods curricula, so students learn to grow, harvest, and prepare local foods as part of their standard education. This builds nutritional knowledge, practical skills, and a deep connection to land, culture, and community.

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Restore a formula-based dividend tied to actual Fund earnings at a 50/50 split with government services. Never promise a dollar amount- promise the formula.

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Right now, Alaska is in a protection gap that is both dangerous and unnecessary. It is a failure of leadership that a person can be protected in Anchorage or Juneau but lose their civil rights the moment they cross a city line. It is also a failure of leadership when our state government actively chooses to stop investigating discrimination complaints. As Governor, I will not wait for the political winds to shift. On day one, I will direct the State Commission for Human Rights to restore full jurisdiction over LGBTQ+ discrimination cases and hate crimes. We will settle for nothing less than the federal floor established by the Supreme Court, and we will build a ceiling that reflects Alaska’s unique constitutional commitment to privacy and personal autonomy.

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The Bottom Line– Our combined investment is estimated at $60–$112 million annually in state funding against $232–$456 million in avoided costs each year. The numbers are very favorable. The young person leaving foster care with a trash bag and no plan did not fail Alaska; Alaska failed them. We will do better.

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Strengthen bias-motivated crime investigation and prosecution capacity within the Department of Law and the Department of Public Safety.

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5. Ban Conversion Therapy Statewide. Anchorage led in 2020 by banning conversion therapy for minors, the first city in Alaska to do so. Every major medical and mental health association has rejected this practice as harmful. I will support and sign a statewide ban so that no young Alaskan, regardless of where they live, is subjected to it.

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Expand grants for community and land-based learning, connecting classrooms to local ecosystems, economies, and workforces. Establish a Summer Opportunity Initiative for academic intensives and apprenticeships. Align DEED, DHSS, DOL, and OCS so services reach Alaska’s youth without silos.

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Strengthen the Board of Trustees: expand to 9 members, require investment expertise, stagger terms, reduce political appointments.

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Article I, Section 25 (Marriage), added by ballot measure in 1998, still carries language restricting marriage to “one man and one woman.” That provision was rendered unenforceable by Hamby v. Parnell (2014) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), and it stands today in direct tension with the equal protection and privacy guarantees of Sections 1 and 22. I support formal repeal of Section 25 so that our founding document reflects current law and the equal dignity of every Alaskan family (Alaska Const. art. I, § 25).

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Alaskans themselves have moved decisively on this question. Polling from the Public Religion Research Institute shows 70% of Alaskans now support same-sex marriage (Public Religion Research Institute, 2025), a near-reversal from the 1998 vote that put Section 25 into our constitution. Our founding document should reflect where Alaskans actually stand.WE BELIEVE marriage is a sacred union of consenting adults, founded on love and mutual respect, and built upon principles of equity and compassion.

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To our LGBTQ+ youth and their families: I see you, and I will gladly stand between you and the national political agendas currently targeting your safety and our schools. Our own legislative attorneys have flagged anti-trans bills as unconstitutional, and as both a mother and a leader, I will veto any legislation that seeks to strip dignity or privacy from any Alaskan, and yes, that always includes our children. We are a state built on the right to live and let live. And political agendas aside, “live and let live” includes the right to live authentically. This concept and the decisions therein are only the business of the individual and their trusted care team, which can include family and medical professionals.

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2. Restore the Human Rights Commission’s Full Jurisdiction. The 2022 rollback was a policy choice made by an attorney general, not a constitutional requirement. I will direct the Alaska Department of Law and the State Commission for Human Rights to resume full investigation of LGBTQ+ discrimination complaints across all covered categories, consistent with Bostock and Alaska’s own civil rights framework.

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6. Require LGBTQ+ Affirming Care Training for Behavioral Health Providers and First Responders. LGBTQ+ Alaskans experience higher rates of suicidality, substance use, and victimization, with much of the disparity driven by stigma and provider discomfort rather than identity itself (Institute of Medicine, 2011; Russell & Fish, 2016). Affirming, competent providers save lives. I will direct the Department of Health and the Department of Public Safety to establish standardized LGBTQ+ affirming care training for behavioral health providers, peace officers, Village Public Safety Officers, dispatchers, and emergency responders, developed in partnership with LGBTQ+ Alaskans and Two-Spirit knowledge keepers.

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7. Confront Violence Against LGBTQ+ and Two-Spirit Alaskans Within the Broader Public Safety Response. Alaska’s rates of sexual assault, intimate partner violence, and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons disproportionately harm LGBTQ+ Alaskans, who experience elevated victimization and lower reporting rates due to fear of bias from law enforcement (Urban Indian Health Institute, 2018; James et al., 2016). My administration will:

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8. Center LGBTQ+ Alaskans in LGBTQ+ Policy Development. Policy affecting LGBTQ+ Alaskans must be developed in meaningful partnership, not over them or without them.

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Alaska is the best place in the world. We hold abundant lands, waters, and wildlife, and one of the strongest constitutions of any state, one that protects privacy and freedom, requires sustained yield, and manages our wealth "for the maximum benefit of its people." We have every opportunity we need to thrive.

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will bring Alaskans to the table to lower costs, restore stability, and catalyze growth: Lower energy and heating bills by unifying the Railbelt grid, developing affordable renewable power, and easing the Cook Inlet gas crunch.

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Stabilize our budget and protect our Permanent Fund Dividend by closing oil and gas tax loopholes and setting a sustainable spending cap.

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Recruit and retain workforce by restoring a defined - benefit pension that keeps teachers, troopers, and nurses here.

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Health and safety: expand health care, prioritize data transparency, end catch - and - release policies, and invest in rehabilitation.

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Climate adaptation for communities facing erosion, flooding, and rising costs.

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Alaska has everything it needs to meet that moment: 365 million acres of land, extraordinary renewable energy potential, Indigenous knowledge systems built over millennia, and communities that have always known how to do more with less. What has been missing is a Governor willing to build an economy worthy of all of it.

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2. Lean Governing- So Alaskans Get More: New revenue can only go so far if the machinery consuming it is inefficient. This administration will conduct a systematic, agency-by-agency review of how the state spends money on its own administration, not as an ideological exercise in shrinking government, but as a practical duty to the Alaskans paying for it. The goal is clear: identify programs that duplicate efforts, layers of administration that drain resources before reaching communities, and procurement and contracting practices that cost more than they should. Where services can be streamlined without cutting what Alaskans receive, they will be. Where consolidation makes sense, it will be implemented. Every dollar freed from unnecessary administrative overhead is a dollar available for schools, infrastructure, health services, and community programs that Alaskans truly need. A government that runs more efficiently at the top is better for Alaska.

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The Bottom Line: Alaska does not need to choose between fiscal responsibility and a thriving future. The Permanent Fund’s sustained yield, the salmon’s return, the land’s productivity, and the well-being of every community, rural, urban, Alaska Native, and newcomer alike are the same obligation, written into the same Constitution, owed to the same future generations. This administration will govern like it.

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Rural and predominantly Indigenous districts have been disproportionately affected, with some schools pulling from operational budgets to fix plumbing and fire suppression, money that should be paying teachers.

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3. Restore the Defined-Benefit Pension Option & Open Licensure Pathways: Make restoring the defined-benefit pension option a Governor’s priority bill. Alaska is the only state in the nation that does not offer teachers a defined benefit plan. Teacher turnover in rural Alaska runs as high as 31%, costing an estimated $20 million per year.

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4. Fund Local Control- Not Compliance Mandates: Fund a statewide Technical Assistance network so districts can adopt state literacy and legislative priorities without red tape costs. Strengthen tribal consultation requirements for DEED and all Governor’s education commissions. Support, don’t mandate.

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5. Fund the Alaska Reads Act — Then Return Oversight to Districts: The Alaska Reads Act is working, 60% of K–3 students reading at benchmark by year-end 2025, up from 44%. But the state mandated it without fully funding it, and districts are pulling from operational budgets to comply. Direct DEED to shift to a support-and-accountability model: fund implementation, and return primary authority to local districts and charter schools within 120 days of inauguration.

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The Governor will direct the Attorney General to assess legal options, join or file appropriate litigation, and submit supplemental state bridge funding for districts most dependent on federal dollars. Alaska cannot wait for Washington to fix this.7. Reduce Chronic Absenteeism: More than 44,000 Alaska students were chronically absent last year. The root causes, food insecurity, housing instability, lack of transportation, and untreated behavioral health needs, are cross-agency problems that no single department can solve alone. Issue an Administrative Order establishing aligned plans for social services and civil rights enforcement by improving inter-agency coordination of all departments tasked with supporting Alaska’s youth. To close the achievement gap or a literacy gap, students need to be present. 8. Expand Land-Based & Community Learning: Including Food, Nutrition & School Meals: Provide free breakfast and lunch for every Alaska student; no applications, no stigma, no child going hungry at school. Hunger is one of the most documented barriers to learning. Universal school meals eliminate the gap.

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2. Build Climate Capacity Where Alaskans Live: Rejoin the federal Coastal Zone Management Act — Alaska has been the only coastal state without a federally approved coastal management program since the legislature let the Alaska Coastal Management Program expire in 2011, costing us CZMA grant funding, and a coordinated framework for managing 34,000 miles of shoreline facing accelerating erosion, storms, and permafrost loss. Fund Tribal climate adaptation coordinators through regional hub organizations, Y-K Delta, Northwest Arctic, Norton Sound, Interior, Bristol Bay, Southeast, on multi-year cycles that develop lasting capacity. Ensure Tribal organizations lead regional climate planning, with state agencies providing support. Coordinate VPSO expansion, CHA/BHA workforce, education investments, and regional data infrastructure with these hubs. Deliver climate, health, and program data to communities in real time.

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3. Support communities that need to relocate on their own timeline: Direct DCRA, DOTPF, DNR, and DHSS by Administrative Order to follow community-led relocation protocols, the community’s plan determines the schedule, not the state’s convenience. Assign a Governor’s Climate Community Liaison for Newtok/Mertarvik, Shishmaref, Shaktoolik, Napakiak, Kivalina, and other relocating communities. Use CARE data principles in relocation planning. Incorporate behavioral health, including climate grief and solastalgia treatment, into every relocation plan as a required element, not optional. Publicly report progress, timelines, and barriers annually.

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5. Protect Mental Health When the Home Itself Is Changing: Fund climate behavioral health services, partner with Tribal health organizations for rural delivery of services. Establish regional grants focused on climate behavioral health, prioritizing communities experiencing managed retreat, relocation, or severe subsistence loss. Connect climate grief to the ACE screening and trauma-informed care framework, acknowledging that environmental displacement worsens existing trauma. Ensure that the RISE program’s behavioral health component addresses solastalgia among young people in affected communities (see education section). Train educators in climate-aware social-emotional learning.

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6. Treat the Salmon Collapse as the Emergency It Is — Defend Food Sovereignty and Reform Trawling: Prioritize rural subsistence food sovereignty as a non-negotiable management goal above commercial allocations during stock collapses. Directed subsistence Chinook harvest on the Yukon has been closed or severely restricted since 2020; fall chum escapement remains below the 300,000–600,000 drainage-wide goal (ADF&G SP 25-15). The NPFMC’s February 2026 action, a 45,000 Western Alaska chum cap applying only to clusters 1 and 2, June 10–August 31, not taking effect until 2028, falls short of what Tribal nations have called for. The pollock fleet caught 498,044 chum as bycatch from 2015 to 2024. Bycatch limits must never exceed subsistence harvest limits for Yukon-Kuskokwim residents. Mandate salmon-excluding devices on all trawl gear, require real-time genetic monitoring, and impose area-specific shutdowns when caps are reached. Manage trawl gear by its actual impact: federal analysis confirms pelagic trawl gear contacts the seafloor 40–100% of the time (NMFS, 2024), and any net making sustained bottom contact must meet bottom-trawl regulatory standards regardless of classification. Establish an Alaska Food Sovereignty Task Force, co-led by Tribal governments, to coordinate subsistence harvest monitoring, emergency food reserves during fishery closures, and long-term food system resilience, with an emphasis on traditional foods as medicine. Develop community-controlled food-processing and cold-storage facilities in rural hub communities. Restore salmon habitat in the Yukon and Kuskokwim basins.

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1. Manage Pollock for Sustained Yield and the Whole Food Web: Alaska’s Constitution does not authorize single-species harvest optimization. It requires sustained yield, which means accounting for what the ecosystem needs from pollock biomass, not only what the fleet can extract. Pollock is a keystone forage species, serving as primary prey for Chinook and chum salmon, Pacific halibut, Steller sea lions, northern fur seals, seabirds, and marine mammals (Aydin et al., 2007; Livingston, 1993). Removing 3+ billion pounds annually without modeling food-web demand is a drawdown, not a sustained yield. Harvest limits must incorporate ecosystem carrying-capacity modeling. The same principle applies to herring, a forage species essential to nearshore food webs and subsistence harvest now drawing increasing scrutiny at the NPFMC (Dec. 2025). Herring bycatch must be capped and reported with the same rigor applied to salmon PSC.

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2. Manage Trawl Gear by the Impact It Actually Has: Federal analysis confirms pelagic trawl gear contacts the seafloor 40–100% of the time (NMFS, 2024). Alaska state law (5 AAC 39.105(10)(C)) defines pelagic trawl as gear that does not operate in contact with the seabed. West Coast federal regulations (50 CFR 660.11) require the same. The North Pacific definition is the outlier. Any net making sustained bottom contact must meet bottom-trawl regulatory standards regardless of classification. Salmon excluder devices must be mandatory fleet-wide. The NPFMC’s June 2025 deferral to industry self-reporting through a Gear Innovation Initiative, results not expected until April 2026, is insufficient when Oceana’s pending lawsuit alleges failure to protect essential fish habitat and the National Academy of Sciences has documented that bottom trawling reduces complexity, productivity, and biodiversity of benthic habitats (NRC, 2002).

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3. Count All Bycatch Mortality — Including What Never Reaches the Deck: Bycatch assessments must include modeled estimates of unobserved seafloor mortality. Organisms killed by gear contact, but never brought aboard, are not accounted for in the current accounting. Mandatory 100% observer coverage and real-time genetic reporting are the backbone of enforcement for every reform in this plan.

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4. Prohibit Trawling in Designated Halibut Nursery Areas: Designate known juvenile halibut concentration areas in Alaskan waters as protected nursery habitat and prohibit all trawl gear within those boundaries. Trawling in nursery areas destroys recruitment before a single fish enters the directed fishery. ADF&G holds the biological data to support these designations today.

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5. Reject the Inadequate February 2026 Chum Salmon Bycatch Action: The NPFMC’s 45,000 Western Alaska chum cap applies only to clusters 1 and 2, June 10–August 31, not Bering Sea-wide, not year-round, and will not take effect until June 2028 (NPFMC Motion C-2, Feb. 2026). The Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission called it “too little and too late.” The fleet caught 498,044 chum as bycatch from 2015 to 2024 (KDLG, Feb. 2026). Directed subsistence Chinook harvest on the Yukon has been closed or severely restricted since 2020; fall chum escapement remains below the 300,000–600,000 goal (ADF&G SP 25-15). Bycatch limits must never exceed subsistence harvest limits for Y-K residents.

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7. Require Independent Stock Assessments as a Federal Backstop: The 2025–26 federal shutdown prevented NOAA from completing SAFE reports, forcing the NPFMC to set harvest limits using 2024 data (AMCC, Jan. 2026). Alaska cannot allow federal disruptions to determine whether fisheries are managed based on current science. The Governor will advocate for state-funded supplemental assessments incorporating Traditional Ecological Knowledge as a permanent backstop.8. Protect CDQ Communities While Reforming the Fleet: The Community Development Quota program delivers approximately $100 million annually to 65 Western Alaska communities, many with no viable alternative revenue. CDQ groups now hold catch rights to more than 35% of Bering Sea pollock (ADN, 2023). This administration will not collapse rural economies to fix rural fisheries. Bycatch caps, gear standards, and ecosystem-based harvest limits can be implemented in ways that preserve CDQ allocations and the infrastructure sustaining communities like Unalaska, Akutan, and Y-K Delta villages. The goal is not to shut down pollock; it is to manage pollock as the Constitution requires: for sustained yield, for the food web, for the communities that depend on both the fishery and the fish, and for future Alaskans.

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2. Dahlstrom: What Went Wrong — and the Standard We Must MeetIn December 2025, Lt. Governor Nancy Dahlstrom transferred Alaska’s full confidential voter roll to the DOJ without legislative approval, public notice, or enforceable safeguards, after federal courts ruled that the request lacked legal standing. That data is now being added to a nationwide federal database beyond Alaska’s control. A DeWitt administration will revoke that agreement on Day One and legally establish the conditions under which any agency can share confidential data with the federal government: explicit legislative approval, enforceable protections, and mandatory public disclosure.

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Technology should serve communities. Innovation must not jeopardize autonomy. The right to privacy, enshrined in our constitution over fifty years ago, must hold significance in the digital age.

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Cap the total draw at 4%, all-inclusive, covering dividends, government, operations, and fees. No exceptions. No second clause. Constitutionalize it.

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Include LGBTQ+ Alaskans by name in Alaska’s MMIP response framework, data collection, family advocacy services, and investigative protocols.

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Clear the backlog of untested sexual assault kits on a published timeline, with public reporting that disaggregates outcomes and accounts for LGBTQ+ survivors.

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Direct funding to domestic violence and sexual assault programs to expand LGBTQ+ affirming shelter, advocacy, and crisis response, with priority in rural communities.