SOLDOTNA — In a crowded field of 17 candidates, how are Alaska voters going to pick their favorite in the governor’s race primary?

It’s a question confronting not only voters but also the candidates themselves, as they scramble for enough support to make the top four and advance to the November general election.

“I’ve never encountered anything like this where there are this many people, and quite frankly, many of us have similar ideas. So when you think about what’s the distinction, not only is the public having difficulty breaking through — so are the candidates,” said former state lawmaker Lesil McGuire, one of a dozen Republicans in the race.

Under Alaska’s open primary system, all candidates appear on the same ballot this month. The top four vote-getters, regardless of party, will advance to the general election. With days remaining until the Aug. 18 primary day, candidates are zigzagging across the state and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in an effort to secure a spot.

Getting their names out there was the goal for nine candidates who trekked to Soldotna on Thursday evening — 12 days before the primary — to participate in a forum dubbed “Narrowing the Field.”

Some in the audience of roughly 150 were not shy about declaring their support for one candidate or another with shirts, buttons or hats. Others said they came that evening because they could not make up their minds.

Barbara Blakeley, from Sterling, said at the beginning of the event that she supports former Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson, but is also considering voting for former state Sen. Shelley Hughes, podiatrist Matt Heilala or former Revenue Commissioner Adam Crum. Asked at the event’s conclusion whether the forum helped her decide, she exclaimed “no” with mock frustration.

“It just made me like them all more,” Blakeley said.

Tiffany and Jacob Holt, Soldotna residents, said they came to the event with an open mind and an interest in hearing directly from the candidates themselves.

“The political ads are doing nothing for me,” said Jacob Holt.

After the forum ended, they said they were still undecided.

Republicans, Democrats and independents are competing not just against candidates from their own party, but against the entire field. That creates unusual incentives: Candidates have reason to distinguish themselves, but also to avoid alienating voters who might otherwise support them as a second choice in November.

The crowded field also makes money less useful as a way to distinguish one candidate from another. Numerous candidates are well-funded and have the capacity to draw on their own wealth — or Outside donors — to match their opponents’ spending.

“You’d normally have a lot of candidates, but you don’t have 12 active campaigns with people actively working. Normally you get a handful of four or five viable — at most — but on this one you’ve got a broad range of people either with financial support or with name recognition, and we’re all really trying,” said Crum, another Republican in contention.

Current Gov. Mike Dunleavy is termed out from seeking reelection after eight years in office, leaving the race wide open and with no clear front-runner. The parties themselves have done little to narrow the field so far.

“Had we been down to four Republicans in this race … we’d be in far better shape,” said Bronson, who entered the race last year, adding that he wished the Alaska Republican Party “had come in and got all these lesser candidates that were polling low single digits out.”

Without such consolidation, Bronson and other Republicans risk splitting the vote in the pick-one primary among candidates with overlapping bases of support.

Recent polling has shown several of the leading candidates separated by only a few percentage points, creating the possibility of an upset in the final days as voters make up their minds. Alaska has seen its share of razor-thin elections, including races decided by a dozen votes or fewer.

Without a clear front-runner, “name recognition is big,” said Bronson. “People have just not been paying attention. We go and talk to these groups and they go, ‘You’re running for what, again?’”

The Democrats

The race for governor includes two Democrats — former state lawmakers Tom Begich, who represented downtown Anchorage in the Senate, and Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, who represented Sitka and other Southeast communities in the House.

That creates an unusual possibility: Democrats could conceivably put two candidates into the four-way general election, even as Republicans divide their votes among a dozen candidates.

On topics ranging from education funding to taxation, their views are largely aligned. Both say they plan to increase funding for public schools, protect Medicaid access and update Alaska’s oil and gas taxes.

Their biggest differences are less about policy than about political profile and strategy. Begich, 65, was the first Democrat in the field and has polled consistently ahead, in large part thanks to his membership in a well-known Alaska political family. His campaign is funded primarily by two wealthy Alaska donors.

“Tom’s name ID is like, 95%,” said Kreiss-Tomkins. “He’s had the best name ID of any candidate the entire time, I think, which is a reason why he’s led in so many polls for so long.”

Kreiss-Tomkins, 37, is counting on his relative youth, along with ads cut by high-powered political consultants in Alaska and the Lower 48, to make the case that he is more likely to become the state’s first Democratic governor since the end of Tony Knowles’ tenure more than two decades ago. Knowles himself has endorsed Kreiss-Tomkins.

Kreiss-Tomkins’ campaign is funded primarily by contributions from Outside, including sizable sums from employees of a California AI company — drawing criticism and scrutiny from left-leaning voters, which could prove pivotal in a primary that tends to draw a more partisan electorate.

But things can change dramatically in the final days before the primary, as candidates spend their cash reserves on advertising, said Kreiss-Tomkins, the top fundraiser in the field.

“I think there’s going to be a lot of dynamism in these final couple of weeks because other candidates, myself included, are getting better known, and that’s kind of when the race really happens,” he said.

Some Democratic voters have said they would like to see just one of the two Democrats advance to the general election. With the GOP votes spread thin, it is not out of the question that both Begich and Kreiss-Tomkins could be one of the top four finishers, giving Alaskans two Democratic options in the general election. Neither candidate has publicly committed to dropping out in such a scenario — a move that would elevate the fifth-place finisher onto the ballot.

The Republicans

On the Republican side, several polls have shown that Bronson and Anchorage businesswoman Bernadette Wilson are leading the field. But they are far from the only candidates who can appeal to Republican voters.

“I don’t know of any real difference between Shelley and I or Treg or even Bernadette,” said Bronson, referring to former state Sen. Shelley Hughes, former Attorney General Treg Taylor and Wilson. The GOP field also includes Crum, Matanuska-Susitna Borough Mayor Edna DeVries and former Labor Commissioner and state legislator Click Bishop, who is supported by labor organizations across the state.

Several Republicans have emphasized their support for President Donald Trump and his efforts to boost natural resource development in Alaska. But with multiple candidates making similar appeals to conservative voters, even strong Republican credentials may not be enough to distinguish one candidate from another.

The candidates have largely refrained from publicly criticizing one another over ideology or style. That has led to a series of forums and debates in which candidates are far more likely to explain why they agree with one another than lob attacks.

“One of the best parts is the civil discourse that we have, which I think has been uplifting, as opposed to the tearing down,” Crum said.

The approach contrasts with the 2022 U.S. House race, when two Republicans — former Gov. Sarah Palin and Nick Begich — spent much of the campaign attacking each other, helping Democrat Mary Peltola emerge victorious.

Hoping to consolidate the GOP vote, Wilson promised nearly a year ago that she would drop out of the race after the primary if she is not the top Republican vote-getter. She urged other Republicans to make similar commitments. But at the Soldotna forum Thursday, numerous Republican candidates refused to do so.

“With this system, it actually does make more sense for more conservatives to stay in it because you actually work together,” Crum said.

The independents

The only candidate in the governor’s race who has previously held the job is Bill Walker, who held the post between 2014 and 2018. He was the last independent to serve as governor of any state.

Walker entered the race as a last-minute decision, mere hours before the deadline. He said that the other candidates were not spending enough time discussing the types of unpopular topics he wanted to hear about, like the need to change the Permanent Fund dividend structure and overhaul the state’s revenue system.

The results of the primary will “depend on who shows up,” Walker said.

Nearly two-thirds of Alaska’s registered voters are nonpartisan or undeclared, up from just over 52% a decade ago. That represents a potentially large pool of voters for independent candidates — but only if they turn out.

At the Soldotna forum, where many audience members were registered Republicans, Walker received little attention.

“The partisan people — they’re used to showing up at a primary,” said Walker. “In an open primary, we’ll see if the nonpartisans show up. That can make all the difference in the world.”

Meda DeWitt, another independent in the race who many know for her role leading a 2019 effort to recall Dunleavy, said she’s been left out of polling and counted out of discussions despite the appeal of her nonpartisan approach. That has made gauging her own standing “like reading tea leaves,” she said.

The partisan candidates “have to sort themselves out,” DeWitt told the Soldotna audience during the forum. As an independent, she said she can get crossover support from voters who would otherwise pick either a Republican or a Democrat.

At the conclusion of the forum, audience members voted on their favorite candidate of the evening.

Nick Sorrell, a KSRM radio host who helped organize the event, said that out of 126 votes tallied, Crum won with 46 votes, Hughes came in second with 31 votes and Bronson came in third with 24 votes.

The result was hardly a scientific measure of the statewide race. But for Crum, it offered a glimpse of the strategy required to survive a primary where the goal is not necessarily to pull ahead — just to finish fourth or better.

“It’s a weird strategy. This is a math thing,” he said.