JUNEAU (AP) - Former governor Bill Walker announced plans Tuesday to run for the job again in 2022 and said his former labor commissioner, Heidi Drygas, would be his running mate.
Walker dropped his 2018 reelection bid just weeks before the November election after the resignation of his lieutenant governor, Byron Mallott, disrupted the campaign.
Republican Mike Dunleavy won the 2018 race against Democrat Mark Begich, who was trying to return to elected office after losing his reelection bid for the U.S. Senate in 2014.
Dunleavy recently filed a letter of intent to seek reelection.
Next year’s elections in Alaska will be held under an entirely new format, with the top four vote-getters in the August primary moving to the November general election, and candidates for governor and lieutenant governor running as a team in the primary.
The primary will be open to all candidates in one pool. A 2020 voter initiative that set up the new election structure eliminated the traditional political party primaries.
Drygas said both she and Walker are independents.
Walker, who served as governor from 2014 to 2018, said he decided to run after hearing concerns from Alaskans that issues facing the state are not being fixed. Debate over a long-term fiscal policy to pay for public services and the future of the annual Permanent Fund dividend paid to residents were key issues when Walker was governor and remain so, with Dunleavy and legislators again debating the issues this week during a third special session of the Legislature underway in Juneau.
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