As former mayors of Anchorage, we each had the responsibility of leading Alaska’s largest city through moments of challenge and opportunity. While our administrations differed in time and approach, one priority remained constant: ensuring that Anchorage and Alaska have access to reliable, affordable energy.

Energy keeps our homes warm through long winters, powers our schools and hospitals, and fuels the businesses that employ our neighbors. It literally fuels every aspect of our economy and our quality of life. When energy becomes uncertain or unaffordable, the consequences are felt immediately by families, employers and communities across the state.

Today, Alaska faces a generational energy challenge. Cook Inlet natural gas production has been declining for decades. Like the frog in a pot on the stove, the problem around us has slowly grown but is about to reach a raging boil. Declining supplies of inexpensive Cook Inlet gas, rising demand and a lack of long-term certainty jeopardize the stability we rely on. Without action — right now — we will lose control over energy costs and availability.

We have faced moments like this before. During his tenure as mayor, Dan Sullivan recognized early the urgency created by declining Cook Inlet gas production. He convened an Energy Task Force that brought together industry leaders, policymakers and stakeholders to confront the issue directly. That work helped lay the foundation for the Cook Inlet Recovery Act, which the Legislature passed quickly to spur new investment and extend the life of the basin. It showed what is possible when Alaska acts with focus and urgency. It also showed the legislature can move fast when aligned on policy.

This is not a new conversation. For years, studies commissioned by both the Alaska Legislature and multiple administrations have identified the need to modernize Alaska’s tax structure and energy policies to remain competitive for large-scale investment and infrastructure projects. Again and again, those reviews reached the same conclusion: If Alaska wants to attract and keep transformational projects, the state must provide a stable, competitive framework that reflects the realities of modern energy development.

The Alaska LNG project is the only viable path to meet that need. It would deliver a stable, long-term supply of natural gas to Southcentral Alaska, helping ensure that homes, schools and businesses have dependable energy at predictable prices. It would also create jobs, strengthen the economy and generate revenue that supports essential public services.

For Anchorage and the entire Southcentral region, the stakes could not be higher. As the economic center of the state, Anchorage depends on dependable energy to sustain growth and opportunity. Utilities, employers and families all need certainty to plan ahead.

If the Legislature fails to pass meaningful property tax reform for Alaska LNG, this opportunity will slip away like other projects have done. Alaska’s property tax system was not designed for a megaproject like Alaska LNG. Because of that, tax reform legislation was introduced in March that will lower our energy bills and speed the delivery of natural gas from the North Slope. Our legislators must act quickly on a targeted solution and avoid making changes that raise energy costs or slow this project. Otherwise, Anchorage and all Southcentral Alaska will be forced to rely on imported gas for decades.

That outcome exposes us to higher and more volatile costs, shrinks our economy, prevents job growth and sends billions of dollars out of state.

Every day of delay increases that risk. As our electric and gas bills made clear this winter, costs are already rising. Without fast action, consumers should be prepared for increases of 30% to 40% or more. Our state will become an even harder place to start a family or a business.

A project of this scale requires careful consideration and responsible decision-making. But waiting carries its own consequences. The longer Alaska delays, the fewer options remain and the more expensive those options become.

As former mayors of Anchorage, we each had unique approaches to problem-solving. But now we speak with one voice: State leaders and legislators must act with urgency and purpose to enact tax changes that propel this project and unlock the revenue, economic, energy security and other benefits from our North Slope natural gas. Decisions now will shape the state’s economic future for generations.

George Wuerch (Anchorage mayor from 2000-2003) previously served as governmental affairs manager for the Northwest Alaskan Gasline, was founder/president of Fluor Daniel Alaska Engineering and served as vice president of corporate affairs for Alyeska Pipeline Service Co.

Mark Begich (Anchorage mayor from 2003-2009 and U.S. senator from 2009-2015) is a strategic consulting adviser hired by Gov. Dunleavy’s office to help advance the Alaska LNG project.

Dan Sullivan (Anchorage mayor from 2009-2015) previously served on the Regulatory Commission of Alaska and the Alaska Natural Gas Development Authority board.

Dave Bronson (Anchorage mayor from 2021-2024) is a candidate for governor of Alaska.

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SOLDOTNA — Alaska Republican Party leaders on Saturday reelected Carmela Warfield to continue serving as chair, two years after she was first chosen for the role.

The vote took place during a statewide convention in Soldotna, where more than 200 delegates from across the state gathered under garlands of Alaska and U.S. flags to update the party platform and hobnob with both elected officials and candidates.

Warfield was challenged for the chairmanship by Zackary Gottshall, who called on Alaska GOP leaders to do more to oppose elected Alaska Republicans who work across the political aisle.

Warfield beat Gottshall in a 165-45 vote, after Gottshall accused Warfield of appearing “more focused on building personal political visibility and securing endorsements for another term than organizing a serious effort to replace the seven Republican legislators caucusing with Democrats or challenge Sen. Lisa Murkowski.”

Warfield, ahead of Saturday’s vote, said “the Alaska Republican Party is stronger when we focus on what unites us instead of what divides us.”

Warfield now enters her third year at the helm of Alaska’s largest political organization. She has tightly controlled the party’s public image, declining numerous interview requests from the Daily News during her tenure.

In a departure from the norm, Warfield allowed reporters to attend only five hours out of the two-day convention, denying reporters access to debates on the party rules and a forum featuring several gubernatorial candidates.

Cheerful party staffers were stationed at the entrance to the Soldotna Field House to ensure no reporters had access to the building beyond the allotted window.

But during a brief window of access, divisions over the GOP’s direction and operations were on full display. Delegates spent roughly an hour debating whether to add a sentence to the party platform supporting “granting personhood of the unborn at conception.” The motion ultimately failed 89-109.

Factions of the Alaska GOP have long been critical of elected party members who work with Democrats or deviate from the party platform, which already formally opposes same-sex marriage and abortion access, and supports teaching “the historical Judeo-Christian foundation” of the U.S. in schools.

The party has a long history of attempting to keep its elected members in line and punishing those who stray.

Party leaders in 2021 censured Murkowski, a Republican who has served in the U.S. Senate since 2002, after she voted to impeach President Donald Trump. They also voted in 2021 to censure Republican Eagle River state lawmaker Kelly Merrick after she supported a bipartisan coalition in the Alaska House. But after both Murkowski and Merrick won reelection in 2022, defeating party-backed challengers from the right, party leaders promised to turn away from censuring GOP candidates for a period of at least two years.

Since then, the number of Republicans in the Legislature joining bipartisan legislative coalitions has grown, despite party leaders’ consternation.

In the Alaska Senate, a 14-member bipartisan majority includes five Republicans. In the House, the 21-member majority includes two Republicans. Republican leaders of the bipartisan coalitions did not attend the Saturday convention.

Under Warfield’s leadership, the Alaska Republican Party has aligned itself closely with Trump, who in turn has endorsed Warfield, along with U.S. Rep. Nick Begich and U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, who are running for reelection this year.

Trump has also voiced support for the repeal of Alaska’s open primary and ranked choice voting system, which has weakened the party’s tight control over candidate selection.

Both opponents and supporters of Alaska’s voting system, which was adopted by Alaskans in 2020 and withstood a repeal effort in 2024, say it had aided moderate political candidates who are willing to work across the political aisle, ensuring they can more easily withstand challengers from the right.

The Alaska GOP has made repealing the voting system a key tenet of its efforts in the 2026 election. A successful repeal would enable the party to again assert more control over the Republican primary process,

Party leaders on Saturday also elected Jason Perry, a Baptist pastor, as the new Alaska GOP vice chair. Perry received 161 votes in a three-way race against Paul Bauer Jr., a former Anchorage Assembly member who received 23 votes, and Jeanne Reveal, a party district chair on the Kenai Peninsula who received 22 votes.

Voting on party leaders and resolutions was almost derailed — again — by party leaders’ concerns over using an online system to tally the votes of more than 220 delegates.

Several party members said they wanted to use paper ballots instead of “clickers” that allow delegates to cast votes in real time. A similar motion was made during the 2024 convention.

But the idea this year was met with exasperation and outright derision from some longtime party members. Brett Huber — state director for Alaska’s chapter of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative advocacy group — openly chided some of the delegates.

“Everybody agrees on God and country. Everybody. And then we forget that and fight amongst ourselves,” said Huber.

“If we remember what brought us here — God and country — and we quit misbehaving, we may win,” he added.

“Honor at Last”

By Aurora Hardy; Epicenter Press, 2026; 146 pages; $14.95 paperback; $7.99 Ebook.

How does one write about a family member she hardly knew? In Aurora Hardy’s case, the answer came as a “fictional biography.” Although her new book never says outright that her novel is anything other than “based on a true story,” a reader might infer that the main character — Sonny — is her own father. In interviews, she has said that is the case, and that she built her story from what she could research and learn from other family members about the man who left his wife and daughter when she was 4.

The portrayal, a sympathetic one, swings back and forth between the life of an ailing Yup’ik man sitting outside his sister’s fish camp in 1978 and his memories of everything that has come before.

The most detailed sections of the book come early, concerning Sonny’s birth, early years, and especially his time in the Alaska Territorial Guard, also known more commonly as the “Eskimo Scouts,” beginning when he was just 12. “Honor at Last” could be considered, at least in part, a history of the Guard. Hardy presents that history from the point of view of a young person living on the lower Yukon, frightened by news of the Japanese invasion of the Aleutians, and proud to be a protector of his homeland.

Early on, a plane arrives with Maj. Marvin “Muktuk” Marston and Territorial Gov. Ernest Gruening, who make patriotic appeals and enlist volunteers. Sonny, whose skill with a rifle is attested to, is allowed to join and then works with his father to drill, cache supplies, keep trails open, patrol the river and coastline, identify foreign planes, and radio authorities to give and receive reports. On two occasions — likely fiction, but representing the work of the Guard — Sonny and his father shoot down a Japanese bomb balloon and search for a missing plane.

[Book review: A scholarly new perspective on the roles of Alaska Natives in World War II]

Hardy emphasizes the many changes that came to Native villages during the war years, the intense patriotism of villagers, and the sacrifices they made by forgoing their normal routines, rituals and especially their subsistence practices. “The unity of purpose empowered the Yupik men. Old men dug deep into their remaining strength while young boys grew in purpose and care while serving in the Guard.”

By the end of the war years, Sonny had contracted tuberculosis. While he yearns to join his friends in signing up for additional military service, his health requires multiple hospitalizations in Bethel. There, removed from his village and its ways, he is exposed to white culture and meets and marries a blue-eyed nurse.

In Hardy’s telling, Nuliaq — Yup’ik for “wife,” the name used throughout — is loving but manipulative. She insists on moving to Kodiak, where she’d first worked as a nurse, and then, after the 1964 earthquake, to Fairbanks, where the couple experience overt racism, then to caretake a remote mining camp where they spend a very cold winter. Nuliaq learns of Native allotments and moves the family, now with a small daughter, Bun, to Chitina. There, they build a cozy home on land “abundant with life and natural resources.”

Sonny, always a hard worker and devoted family man, is twice cheated by men who hire him, once of an entire summer’s earnings. He had never learned to read and write and depended on trust. He is at last forced to go to Anchorage to find work, never to return to his embittered wife and confused daughter. He also never returns to his home village.

After he leaves, Nuliaq refuses to speak of Sonny or to allow any contact with him, and Bun grows up without knowing anything of her father except what she later learns from his relatives. She had felt loved by him and held onto one particular memory, a time when he “read” a familiar storybook to her; instead of reading the words she knew almost by heart, he made up his own story, one infused with Yup’ik knowledge and teachings.

Bun, seemingly a stand-in for Hardy herself, many years later comes across a news item about the U.S. Army discharging members of the Alaska Territorial Guard from service. Bun fills out the required paperwork and, in 2007, nearly 30 years after her father’s death, receives the document granting him an honorable discharge. Hardy concludes, imagining Bun’s reaction: “He had served as a Guard member when his country asked him to help fight the war. He had used his Guard training to overcome challenges for the rest of his life.”

Fiction serves history well when it brings to life people who lived it. Through her personal connection and research, Hardy has shown what the World War II experience in Western Alaska could have meant for a young man, and how his service may have influenced the rest of his life.

Between 1942 and 1947, 6,389 volunteers from 107 Alaska communities served in the Guard as a military reserve force of the U.S. Army. They were as young as 12 and as old as 80, mostly too young or old to be eligible for conscription. It wasn’t until 2000 that Sen. Ted Stevens introduced a bill to direct the Secretary of Defense to award Guard members honorary discharges; this was signed into law by President Clinton. Only then did Guard members receive veteran status and eligibility for federal benefits. The youngest of those who served, if still alive, were then in their 70s.

[Book review: ‘The North Face of Summer’ offers a compassionate look at an Alaska conflict]

[Book review: Steeped in Inuit culture, ‘Leave Our Bones Where They Lay’ offers a universal message]