Former Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor says he, too, is staying in the race for governor despite President Trump’s call for Republicans to unite behind small business owner Bernadette Wilson.
In a Truth Social post endorsing Wilson on Tuesday, Trump denigrated Taylor and former Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson. He said he had “never heard of” Taylor and urged the two to throw their support behind Wilson.
Bronson said soon afterward that he wouldn’t drop out. And at an Alaska Landmine debate on Thursday, Taylor said he didn’t fault the president for endorsing Wilson but said wasn’t leaving the race, either.
“I honestly think that the easiest way to a conservative win is if we all are in the race and we rank,” Taylor said at the debate.
Taylor and Bronson have repeatedly urged voters to rank all three Republican candidates on their ballots in an effort to block the leading candidate, Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, from winning the race.
Taylor has embraced Trump wholeheartedly in his campaign for governor on a business-friendly platform. He featured a photo he and his wife took with the president in a campaign ad. Taylor said he helped draft Trump’s first-day executive order seeking to boost resource development in Alaska.
Taylor said he didn’t take the endorsement as a betrayal by the president he’s spent much of his political career backing. But it wasn’t great timing, he said.
“I really wanted the focus to be on Dan Sullivan's race and Nick Begich's race,” Taylor said. “I wanted all Republicans to unite behind those two, get out the vote, and get them across the finish line because it’s absolutely vital for Alaska’s future.”
Sullivan and Begich, both Republicans, are running to keep their seats in the U.S. Senate and House, respectively.
Taylor’s campaign manager, April Gettys, is worried not all Republicans are taking it quite as well as Taylor, she said in an interview Friday. She’s concerned Trump’s harsh words for Bronson and Taylor could depress Republican turnout, she said, and even put Alaska’s critical Senate race at risk.
“The tearing down of the other Republican candidates did not need to happen, and people do feel torn apart by that. They feel betrayed,” Gettys said. “Those statements made many voters feel that they just don't even want to vote.”
The Taylor campaign is pushing hard on get-out-the-vote efforts in the closing days of the campaign, Gettys said.
“If people feel so discouraged right now, the last thing that you should be doing is staying home and sitting on your couch,” she said. “You need to get out there and get involved.”
Thursday’s debate also shed some light on a back-and-forth between the Republican gubernatorial candidates and Trump earlier in the campaign as he urged conservatives to consolidate.
Bronson said Wednesday that in the days after the August primary, he tentatively agreed to drop out of the race at Trump’s request, but only if Taylor dropped out as well. Bronson said he never heard a definitive answer and resumed his campaign after a nearly two-week pause.
At Thursday’s debate, Taylor said he never heard from the White House because, at the time, he had been removed from the ballot over the state campaign regulator’s determination that he failed to file a financial disclosure form on time. That led his running mate, businesswoman Candi English, to temporarily take his place.
“I think this is when those calls were taking place, and so I did not receive a call,” Taylor said.
Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, a Republican, later overruled the regulator and placed Taylor back on the ballot.
Early voting starts Monday, and Election Day is Nov. 3.
