Gov. Dunleavy not ruling out position in Trump administration

As election results streamed in Tuesday night showing former President Donald Trump on track to win a second term, Alaska lawmakers began to wonder about a scenario that had been increasingly viewed as an “open secret” in the state’s political circles: What would happen if Gov. Mike Dunleavy took a position in a Trump administration?

“If Trump wins and Dunleavy goes to the administration, that is a silver lining for Alaska,” Rep. Andrew Gray, an Anchorage Democrat, said on a livestream Tuesday night hosted by the Alaska Landmine political blog.

In a Wednesday interview with TV station Alaska’s News Source, Dunleavy said Trump and his team had not asked him about Cabinet positions, but Dunleavy did not dismiss the idea of working in the Trump administration.

“We haven’t talked about any positions in Washington,” said Dunleavy. “Will there be discussion on potential positions in Washington? There may be, but I’ve got two years left in my term, and I love this state.”

Dunleavy has increasingly associated himself with the Republican presidential nominee during the election year. He was pictured with Trump at the Republican National Convention in July; he attended a Trump fundraiser in Texas last month; and he attended Trump’s rally in New York City less than two weeks before the election.

“I have not had discussions with the president about jobs. I have not had discussions with his people about jobs. If those discussions come, I’d be certainly interested in hearing what the president is thinking. But that hasn’t happened yet,” Dunleavy told Alaska’s News Source.

[Murkowski, a vocal Trump critic, vows to work with him to advance Alaska interests]

Dunleavy’s office declined an interview request from the Daily News on Thursday, and instead directed reporters to the Alaska’s News Source interview.

Dunleavy, who won reelection as governor in 2022, has two years remaining in his term. After that, he will be termed-out from seeking reelection as governor. If Dunleavy leaves his position as governor before the end of his term, state law dictates that he would be succeeded by Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom. Maj. Gen. Torrence Saxe, the commissioner of the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, would become lieutenant governor. No special election would be needed.

Dunleavy would not be the first Alaska governor to leave the post in favor of a Cabinet position. Wally Hickel resigned as governor in 1969 after President Richard Nixon appointed him to be secretary of the Interior.

“The most impactful thing any Alaskan leader can do is serve as an Interior secretary,” Rep. Will Stapp, a Fairbanks Republican, said Thursday. “I think that’s actually more impactful for the future of the state than even being the governor is.”

Stapp said the “primary hurdle for our state is always federal regulatory requirements.” An Interior secretary manages federal lands and waters and holds regular lease sales for energy development on federal lands.

“If an Alaska governor can be Interior secretary, that would be almost far more beneficial than staying as governor of the state in a pro-development administration,” said Stapp.

Gray also pointed to entrenched disagreements between some members of the Legislature and the governor on legislative issues, including education funding.

“I don’t think it would come as a surprise to anyone for me to say that there’s been some difficulty in having an aligned vision between the governor’s office and the Legislature, and a feeling that it could have been a more cooperative, collaborative working relationship,” said Gray. “I think that there’s room for improvement.”

Lawmakers failed by a single vote to override Dunleavy’s veto of a bipartisan education funding bill earlier this year — a topic that later fueled several successful legislative campaigns. Dunleavy also vetoed numerous bills that had passed the Legislature with broad bipartisan support, including ones to improve access to birth control and update the state’s taxation of rental car companies.

“In order for me to make sense of some of Gov. Dunleavy’s decisions, I felt that it was done in such a way as to sort of be an audition for the Trump administration,” said Gray.

Dahlstrom, with whom Gray said he has “a very healthy working relationship,” could strike a different tone from Dunleavy when it comes to policies prioritized by the newly announced majority coalitions in the House and Senate, including education funding and public pension reform.

[Alaska House quickly announced a bipartisan majority, but some lawmakers say that was premature]

Dahlstrom did not respond to an interview request Thursday.

“Let’s say Dunleavy is appointed Interior secretary, Nancy Dahlstrom becomes governor,” Sen. Shelley Hughes, a Palmer Republican, said Wednesday. “She has leaned pro-pension stuff in the past, so I think, just logically, they would see an opportunity to maybe get that through, because she’d be much less apt to veto it than Dunleavy. I think that’s definitely been part of the conversation today.”

Kelly Tshibaka, who chaired Trump’s Alaska campaign, said it “would be great for Alaska” if Dunleavy was offered a position in the Trump administration.

“But I haven’t heard anything about that, nor have I been asked about that, which might be evidence,” said Tshibaka.

Tshibaka, who previously worked in nonpartisan federal government positions in Washington, D.C., said if Dunleavy were considered for a Cabinet position, she would expect Dunleavy to have traveled to the nation’s capital in the spring or summer to begin conversations with would-be decision-makers and colleagues.

“If he wasn’t doing that, then he wasn’t on the list,” said Tshibaka.

Dunleavy did make several trips to Washington, D.C., in recent months. According to his official schedule, he made a weeklong trip in March, meeting with several members of Congress and attending the State of the Union address as a guest of GOP Sen. John Boozman of Arkansas. He returned to Washington again for short trips in August and September, when he delivered a speech at an event hosted by the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025.

The timing for appointments to Cabinet positions can vary. When Trump won his first term in office in 2016, he named Interior secretary nominee Ryan Zinke on Dec. 13, 2016, more than a month after Election Day.

Dunleavy met with Zinke, who is now representing Montana in the U.S. House, during his March trip to D.C. He also met with U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, a retiring West Virginia independent who currently chairs the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, which is charged with considering Interior secretary nominees.

“Whatever discussions are going to happen, my decision will be couched in, ‘What can I do to further this great state?’” Dunleavy told Alaska’s News Source.

Daily News reporter Sean Maguire contributed.