Former Alaska Gov. Bill Walker weighing another run for governor

Former Alaska Gov. Bill Walker said Thursday that he's weighing entering the governor's race, with four days to go until the deadline to finalize the candidate list.

Walker, a Republican-turned-independent, served as governor between 2014 and 2018. Walker ran unsuccessfully again in 2022.

In an interview, Walker said he is compelled to run to highlight the state's need for a long-term fiscal plan.

"I'm so concerned about the lack of a fiscal plan," said Walker. "I plan to elevate that issue if I do proceed to file."

Alaska leaders have been speaking for decades about the need for a fiscal plan to balance the state's budgets in the long term. Efforts to adopt such a plan, which often call for new revenue measures and guardrails on how the revenue can be spent, have faltered for years.

Walker's former revenue commissioner, Randy Hoffbeck, also indicated in a filing with the state Division of Elections that he is considering a run for office. Walker confirmed the two are looking to run on the same ticket.

Walker said he won't make a final decision on whether to enter the race until Monday, the last day candidates can file the paperwork needed to appear on the Aug. 18 primary ballot.

Hoffbeck said in an interview that he and Walker had "expressed mutual frustration with some of the rhetoric that's going on in the current campaign, that it's not moving us in the right direction."

"So we kind of talked about, ‘Can we do this? Should we do this?' We haven't landed on a for-sure yet," he said. "We will meet several times over the weekend and make the decision go or no-go by Monday."

So far, 18 candidates have announced plans to run for governor, but more than half of them have yet to pick a lieutenant governor, a necessary step in order to appear on the ballot.

"I want to speak openly about what I think we should be doing as a state on the financial side," Walker said. "I really had hoped that there was going to be a fiscal plan in place as we speak, and it certainly is not."

Addressing Alaska's structural deficit was a major focus of Walker's one term as governor. Under his leadership, the state stopped following the existing statute for paying out the Permanent Fund dividend and began using a share of revenue from the fund to subsidize state services.

To solve Alaska's multibillion-dollar deficit, Walker proposed an income tax and increased taxes on the oil and gas industry. But his proposals stalled in the Legislature amid concern about pushback from voters and the industry.

Hoffbeck said that as commissioner of revenue, he helped oversee over 500 meetings statewide addressing the need for a fiscal plan and getting input from Alaskans.

"The meetings started out a little bit more controversial, but by the time people understood the real issue, what needed to happen in order to move forward, people were much more willing to embrace the fact that this is not going to be an easy thing to do. There's going to have to be some hard decisions made and sacrifices made in a lot of different areas to right this ship," said Hoffbeck.

Walker, the most recent independent to hold a governor's seat in the U.S., backed out of the 2018 governor's race days before the election.

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This story was originally published May 28, 2026 at 7:11 PM.