With a month left before Election Day, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins has a big lead in fundraising, according to campaign finance reports filed Monday that cover the period from Aug. 9 through Friday.
The former Sitka state lawmaker brought in $2.1 million during that eight-week stretch. That’s more than twice the combined total brought in by Republicans Bernadette Wilson, Dave Bronson and Treg Taylor over the same period.
More than half of the haul came from donors who gave $10,000 or more, the vast majority of which list out-of-state addresses. About 70% of Kreiss-Tomkins’ campaign donations to date have come from out of state, and nearly half of the campaign’s overall income has come from donors who list addresses in New York and California.
Kreiss-Tomkins lists recent donations of $100,000 each from Minnesota philanthropist Gwendolyn Sontheim, San Francisco energy affordability nonprofit chief executive Nicholas Josefowitz and Roger Perlmutter, the CEO of California-based pharmaceutical company Eikon Therapeutics. Two Alaskans — Wild Alaskan Co. CEO Arron Kallenberg of Homer and Anchorage real estate investment firm head Jonathan Rubini — also contributed six-figure checks to Kreiss-Tomkins’ campaign.
But in a statement, Kreiss-Tomkins’ campaign highlighted that he also brought in more money from more in-state donors than the rest of the field combined. Nearly 80% of his contributions were $100 or less.
“The reason for our campaign’s financial strength is simple: Alaskans want lower costs for energy, housing, childcare, and healthcare; they want great public schools; and they want a governor who will work with anyone from any party to get our state back on track,” Kreiss-Tomkins said in a statement emailed to reporters.
Altogether, Kreiss-Tomkins has raised nearly $4.3 million since launching his campaign in February. And he’s sitting on a roughly $1.2 million war chest, more than three times what the rest of the field has in the bank. Polls have consistently shown him on track to win the race after ranked choice tabulation.
Fractured field of Republicans lags behind
On the other end of the spectrum is former Anchorage mayor Dave Bronson, who raised just under $35,000 since August. He has under $28,000 on hand and more than $21,000 in debts, according to his report. Bronson, who was the only candidate available for an interview, says he’s running a lean campaign focused on low-cost outreach rather than TV and digital ads.
“Everything is saturated with political messages,” Bronson said in a phone interview. “People are tired of being bombarded, and we're not going to bombard them. We're going to go to events that they are at and talk with them.”
Bronson has consistently run behind fellow Republican Bernadette Wilson and has rejected calls from Wilson to end his campaign and unify Republicans behind her. But Bronson is optimistic he’ll be able to close the gap in the polls thanks in part to a run of bad press for Wilson, he said.
The Anchorage Daily News reported Saturday that Wilson had been sued repeatedly over unpaid bills.
“We knew that was coming,” Bronson said. “It came, and now we anticipate that that gap will shrink to, at least, nothing.”
Whether he’ll be able to overtake Wilson is unclear. A New York Times-Siena College poll released Saturday showed him just five points behind Wilson, but another poll from Alaska Survey Research released Tuesday found him lagging Wilson by 12 points.
Wilson was the top Republican fundraiser of the two-month reporting period, raising more than $500,000 since August. She did not respond to a request for comment.
Like Kreiss-Tomkins, about 70% of her overall fundraising this cycle has come from outside Alaska. But unlike her Democratic opponent, most of her out-of-state supporters donated small amounts. Wilson has also taken five-figure donations from investors, developers and business owners from people in Texas, Florida and Montana, leaving her with about $200,000 in the bank, according to her report.
The top Republican fundraiser of the cycle so far is former Attorney General Treg Taylor. He’s reported nearly $270,000 in income since August. More than half of that comes from Taylor himself and his running mate, businesswoman Candi English. A $93,000 radio and TV ad buy by Anchorage anaesthesiologist John Morris accounts for much of the rest of Taylor’s August and September fundraising. Taylor did not respond to an interview request Tuesday afternoon.
Together, Taylor and English account for 45% of their roughly $1.8 million in overall fundraising. He has over $100,000 on hand for the final month of the campaign, according to the report.
