Six Republicans announce formation of Alaska Senate minority caucus

Wasilla Republican Sen. Mike Shower will lead a six-member GOP minority caucus in the Senate beginning next year, the caucus said Tuesday.

Shower, an Air Force veteran and commercial pilot, has served in the Senate since 2018, when he was appointed to the seat to replace Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who resigned to focus on his run for governor.

The all-Republican Senate minority is set to act as a counterweight to the bipartisan majority coalition, which is expected to number nine Democrats and five Republicans. Among them are Senate President Gary Stevens, a Kodiak Republican, and Senate Majority Leader Cathy Giessel, an Anchorage Republican.

The majority coalition has previously indicated that it plans to advance legislation to increase the state’s public education budget and revamp the state’s pension programs for public employees, in an effort to counteract the steady outmigration of working-age adults from the state. Minority members have uniformly opposed those proposals, arguing that the state should instead promote private-sector solutions to outmigration and revamping the state’s ailing economy.

Republicans in the minority plan to “empower the private sector to drive growth, streamline government to better serve Alaskans, and deliver a budget that is both balanced and sustainable,” Shower said in a prepared statement.

The announcement came after the bipartisan Senate majority coalition lost three members following the recent election, going from 17 to 14 in the 20-seat chamber.

Alongside Shower, the minority is set to include current minority members Sen. Shelley Hughes of Palmer and Sen. Robb Myers of North Pole. The three have spent the last two years as the only Senate members not included in the chamber’s bipartisan majority. Because of the minority’s size, none of the three participated significantly in committee work.

Now, they will be joined by Tok Sen.-elect Mike Cronk, who ran for an open seat created by the departure of Republican Click Bishop; Anchorage Sen. James Kaufman, who decided to join the minority after spending two years as a coalition member; and Wasilla Sen.-elect Rob Yundt, who ousted Republican David Wilson for the seat after Wilson joined the coalition in 2022.

With six members, the minority is guaranteed two seats on the seven-member Senate Finance Committee, which leads the budget-crafting process. It will also have guaranteed seats on other committees. The minority has not yet announced which of its members would occupy those seats.

“We’re excited that we are twice the size we were the last two years. We are thrilled that we actually have committees and we can’t be silenced,” said Shower.

Myers, who is set to serve as minority whip, said in a statement that the caucus would focus on “small-government, conservative principles that a majority of Alaskans support.”

Kaufman, the only former coalition member who elected to join the minority, said in a statement that the state needs “a caucus that is clearly focused on enabling the private sector.”

“State government can help, and has an important role to play, particularly by getting out of the way whenever possible, and by efficiently delivering infrastructure projects and services that are outside of the private sector’s reach,” Kaufman said.

Like the Senate, the House is set to be led next year by a bipartisan coalition. The coalition’s narrow 21-seat majority is expected to include two Republicans, five independents and 14 Democrats.

The remaining 19 Republicans in the House have yet to make any announcements on leadership roles in their caucus.

Shower said the Senate minority combined with the House minority — both of which are expected to be ideologically aligned with Dunleavy — could make it difficult, or entirely impossible, for the Legislature to override the governor’s vetoes of legislation and spending.

That means that though the House and Senate majorities largely agree on prioritizing education funding and revamping pensions for public employees — two ideas that Dunleavy has resisted — it’s unlikely that the Legislature can advance such legislation without the governor’s approval.

Dunleavy has regularly used his veto pen since taking office in 2018 to nix legislation and budget items he opposes. Alaska has one of the highest thresholds in the nation for overriding a governor’s veto. In a high-profile moment that shaped the recent election cycle, lawmakers failed by a single vote to override Dunleavy’s veto last year of a bipartisan bill that would have increased education spending by hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

“We can proof (Dunleavy’s) veto for anything. Any bill, any fiscal line item veto or a veto of a budgetary item — we can hold that,” said Shower. “So that is certainly something that I hope will play on people’s minds as far as not trying to go too far down a path that the governor has already said on certain things he’s not going to agree to it, because that would be a waste of our time.”

The Legislature will convene Jan. 21 in Juneau.