Republican Wasilla Rep. Jesse Sumner drops out of state House race after finishing first in primary

Rep. Jesse Sumner, a Wasilla Republican, said Thursday that he is ending his reelection campaign for the Alaska Legislature after coming in as the top finisher in a four-way primary.

As of votes tallied on Thursday, Sumner had 33% of primary votes. He faced three Republican challengers — Steve Menard, who had 27%, Elexie Moore, who had 23%, and Jessica Wright, who had 17%.

Sumner said he dropped out so he could spend more time with his family. He has four children, including a 10-month-old daughter.

“It’s just really hard on my family,” he said Thursday.

Sumner said he had not done anything to campaign ahead of the primary and was already considering dropping out of the race before results were in.

Sumner, who runs a home-building business, was first elected to the Legislature in 2022, after previously serving on the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assembly.

He said he has not yet decided if he will endorse one of the remaining candidates in the race.

Asked if there were particular experiences in Juneau that affected his decision to drop out of the race, Sumner named Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of a bipartisan bill that would have permanently increased public education funding for the first time in several years. Sumner was one of several Republican House members who joined the minority caucus in voting to override Dunleavy’s veto. The veto override effort failed by a single vote.

Sumner also referred to two other bills that he sponsored that were vetoed by Dunleavy because they passed the House several minutes after the constitutional deadline for the end of the legislative session.

“It is a little demoralizing — you’re down there for two years working on things and it is very difficult to actually get anything done. You start to wonder, what are you really doing there?” Sumner said.

Sumner is one of a small handful of elected Republicans in the state who have openly supported Alaska’s ranked choice voting and open primary system, even as Alaska Republican Party leaders have openly stated their opposition to the voting reform that Alaskans adopted in 2020 and first used in 2022.

Sumner said that the voting method “will lead to positive change,” and that he hoped the system would not get repealed when Alaskans are asked about retaining it in November.

[Alaskans will vote on whether to repeal ranked choice voting under state Supreme Court decision]

“I think there’s been a lot of deadlock and partisan gridlock as a result of people always being motivated to have to be as conservative or as liberal as possible to win their partisan primary,” he said.

Several Republican candidates said before Tuesday’s open primary that they would drop out of their race unless they were the top-finishing Republican, in an effort to emulate Alaska’s closed primaries, which were replaced with open primaries in 2022.

Some were already making good on the promise. In a social media post, Cole Snodgress, a Republican who came in third in a six-way race for House District 36, said he would withdraw from the race after receiving 14% of the vote, making him the second-place Republican.

The remaining candidates in the race include Brandon Kowalski, a Democrat with 34% of the vote; Republican Rebecca Schwanke with 19%; Republican Pamela Goode with 14%; Republican Dana Mock with 12%; and Libertarian James Fields with 7%. The top four finishers in the primary advance regardless of party affiliation, meaning that unless another candidate in the race withdraws, Fields will be eliminated and the remaining candidates will appear on the November ballot.

Sumner said he thought the decision for some candidates to drop out would not benefit Republicans.

“It’s typically not helpful when you’re going into an election to say that the election system is broken,” he added. “It would be a lot more productive for Republicans to try to encourage Republicans to use the ranked choice voting system.”