As a Yale University senior in 2012, Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins lived out of a backpack and in a pair of running shoes as he traveled by plane and state ferry and camped out in towns across Southeast Alaska House District 2 in his unlikely campaign for a seat in the state Legislature.

He would return to Sitka from time to time, often visiting the home of Linda Behnken, who had known JKT since high school, after one of his usual late-night long-distance runs.

“He would go straight to the refrigerator and dig in,” Behnken, the director of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association, recalled. 

After finishing off some Stonyfield yogurt — a particular favorite — Kreiss-Tomkins would crash in the living room on the bed of Behnken’s female husky/shepherd mix, Rascal. 

“She would give him dirty looks,” Behnken said. “He spent more nights in Rascal’s dog bed than at home while he was in Sitka.”

Now, 14 years later, Kreiss-Tomkins is close to completing a journey from Rascal’s bed — and his hometown — to the governor’s mansion in Juneau.

He has a commanding lead in the vote totals, outdistancing his nearest competitor by more than 42,000 votes, but will need to wait until the final tally on Nov. 18 to declare victory.

In interviews with the Sentinel in the week before the Nov. 3 election, friends of Kreiss-Tomkins described how the candidate sprouted from his hard-charging, ambitious childhood in Sitka to be a passionate, curious and focused problem-solver in Alaska politics.

The district he represented in the Legislature from 2013 to 2023 spans multiple Southeast communities from Yakutat to Prince of Wales Island. 

In an interview with the Sentinel, State House Speaker Bryce Edgmon recalled how the young, even-handed Kreiss-Tomkins invariably closed legislative caucus meetings by saying, “Before we all disband, can we sum up what we just talked about?”

JKT is a “non-defensive communicator,” Edgmon said, who made sure caucus meetings ended with a shared understanding and clear marching orders. Legislators today emulate that approach, Edgmon said. “We still call it the JKT rule,” he said.

At home and in Juneau, Kreiss-Tomkins also was known for his relentless drive and energy.  “I remember how I would get a call from JKT — pick a time at night — and he’d be running up the side of a mountain or something, with a long list of tasks,” Edgmon said. 

Kreiss-Tomkins’ intense work ethic was credited with helping form the bipartisan Alaska House majority coalition in 2016 that ended a quarter-century of Republican control. 

“Jonathan was a big part of that,” Edgmon said. “His ability to be approachable for Republicans to feel comfortable engaging with him was an extraordinary quality.”

Gritty and determined, JKT also is known as a fearless adventurer and was an avid ultra runner before he broke two leg bones in a 2022 paragliding accident. He later took up powerlifting as a favorite hobby.

Behnken learned from Kreiss-Tomkins that, as a teenager, he acquired maps of the Sitka groundwater drainage system so that he could “surf” out the pipes beneath the city into the ocean.

As an early elementary student, he reportedly quizzed peers on the names of capital cities of countries around the world, as a game. His kindergarten teacher, Karen Jones, recalled Kreiss-Tomkins as a “creative thinker, and fairly quiet.”

Sitka businessman Charles Horan, who was Kreiss-Tomkins’ merit badge counselor in Boy Scouts, remembers that JKT went by “Johnny” as he grew up. “He was normal.”

“I mean, he had that Cheshire smile on his face — he was always up to something, getting things done, and he wasn’t shy,” Horan said. 

For a special Scouts project, Horan recalled, Kreiss-Tomkins developed a storage system for canoes at Medevejie Lake so they wouldn’t be splintered as the lake rose and fell and froze over. “It was a wise, simple solution to a persistent problem,” he said.

Horan described how JKT was shaped by his parents, Connie Kreiss and Floyd Tomkins, as well as his older brother, David, and his community. Kreiss-Tomkins grew up fishing with his family and worked as crew on commercial fishing boats.

By high school, Kreiss-Tomkins was diving into political self-education — he memorized the names of all 50 state attorneys general, all 100 U.S. senators and a couple hundred members of the House of Representatives. At 14, He concealed his age while working with the adult leaders of Democrat Howard Dean’s presidential campaign.

JKT’s high school drama/debate coach, Stacey Wayne, recalled his “rich knowledge of current events both domestic and foreign” in Drama, Debate and Forensics competitions.

He understood and could speak to both sides of an argument because “he’s a good listener, and he really is open to the other side,” she said. Wayne said she could tell then that JKT knew how to build common ground between people with different views.

Kreiss-Tomkins was a stellar runner growing up and broke trails behind his family’s house, including a path to high school. He is the youngest person to win Sitka’s annual Alpine Adventure Run, finishing in 2009 at age 20 with a time of 1:10:54 on the 7-mile course that climbs 2,500 feet up a mountain.

After graduating from high school in 2007, he explored South America for a year before bringing his love of Alaska to New Haven, Connecticut, as he started college at Yale.

The author Anne Fadiman, who teaches writing at Yale, remembers how JKT stood out from the hundreds of applicants to her nonfiction class. “How could I not accept someone who submitted a writing sample about climbing Ojo de Salado, the tallest volcano in the world?” she said.

That was the story of JKT’s 2011 trip to South America with hiking buddy Chandler Kemp, of Haines. Their goal was to climb the volcano and determine whether its highest peak lies in Argentina or Chile. 

As a rising college senior, Kreiss-Tomkins asked his then-journalism instructor Mark Oppenheimer to be the adviser for his senior thesis in political science. But during the summer JKT told Oppenheimer that he had decided to run for the Legislature and not return to Yale.

“I thought, ‘Well, this is a bit foolish,’” Oppenheimer said. “I figured he’d go home, run, lose, and I would see him in the spring.” But JKT won and did not return to Yale to finish his degree.

While serving 10 years in the Legislature, Kreiss-Tomkins tackled issues reflecting his own values, and empathy for others.

Yeidikook’aa Dionne Brady-Howard, Sitka Tribe of Alaska Tribal Council chair, said that as JKT entered politics, she saw that he embodied a favorite proverb of her late grandmother: “He who loveth knowledge loveth instruction.”

“He knew what he didn’t know and he wanted to learn,” and his humility distinguished him from other elected officials, Brady-Howard said.

Jim Brennan, a retired attorney in Petersburg, worked with JKT on ways to keep limited-entry state salmon fishing permits in the hands of Alaskans. Brennan said he was so moved by the young legislator’s dedication to the issue that he agreed to work alongside JKT, offering pro bono legal services.

“At the time I thought this guy might someday run for statewide office,” Brennan said. “But then I dismissed him — he’s from Southeast, I’m from Southeast, and we never go anywhere in statewide politics! It’s all about the Railbelt,” the population core from the Kenai Peninsula to Fairbanks.

“I underestimated him,” Brennan said. “A lot of people underestimate him.”

Daily Sitka Sentinel reporter Shannon Haugland contributed to this story.