Attorney General Stephen Cox, appointed by Governor Dunleavy to fill the vacancy left by Candidate for Governor Treg Taylor, had his confirmation hearing with the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 1, 2026. The Legislature was originally scheduled to vote on Cox’s confirmation today, May 7, but the vote has been rescheduled to an undetermined date, likely next week.
Senate President Gary Stevens (R-Kodiak) asked the first question, inquiring of Cox what he can do to address people’s increasing distrust in government.
“We’ve been experiencing public distrust in government, political polarization around the country and around the state,” stated Senator Stevens. “The Pew Research Center recently conducted a survey. It showed that public trust in our government is at its lowest level since 1958— only 17% of respondents said they trust their government to do the right thing. So, distrust and polarization are rampant in this country and in the state. We’re seeing a widespread civic ignorance, I believe. We are seeing distrust in our institutions, in the U.S. Supreme Court even. Distrust in one another. Toxic levels of political polarization.”
Senator Stevens asked Cox: “Assuming we can respect each other and respect every citizen, every Alaskan— whether they are to the left of you or me or to the right of you or me— what can you do, as one of the highest officials in this state [and] in our government, to bring Alaskans together, to help them understand what it means to be a citizen (particularly our young people), to help them, to help all of us in the polarization we are seeing that is separating Alaskans one from another?”
Cox replied that he shares Stevens’ concern about public distrust. He acknowledged that he alone does not have answer to the problem, but that he can bring a “measured approach to identifying problems, finding solutions, finding obstacles in the way, and attacking those problems head on.”
Cox emphasized his prior experience in working with people across the aisle and his desire to enforce Alaska’s laws and leave the politics to the politicians.
Here is Attorney General Steven Cox’s full answer to the question:
I don’t know how we solve the problem of distrust in government. I wish I did. I think there are a lot of problems that we face, even with respect to social media and the viral nature of how political attacks here and there are slung about and then become viral. I think part of what we’re experiencing is an addiction to that kind of viral political attacks on one another.
What I think I can bring to the table is a measured approach and interest in working across the aisle alongside people who I know disagree with me in terms of a variety of issues. This is something that I’ve done all throughout my career. In most of the enterprises that I have worked inside, I was surrounded by people who might disagree with me with respect to politics or public policy or even the law and how to interpret the law. But what you find is that I can work with anyone, and I’m happy to sit down with anyone.
I take the same measured approach to identifying problems, finding solutions, finding obstacles in the way, attacking those problems head on. And I don’t want to worry about the politics.
A case in point is one that I just mentioned in respect to the City of Anchorage. We have a quality-of-life crime situation and the public safety situation that is very hard — multifaceted, with lots of different challenges, not just with respect to prosecutorial resources or investigative resources, or decades of non-enforcement or decades of a lack of resources. You’ve got jurisdictional challenges. You have mental health issues. You have homelessness issues. You have drug addiction issues. And you’ve got politics. There are politics. If you read how the media have been covering these issues over, say, the last year, two years, three years, you see the politics.
When I approached this problem, I asked the governor if I could work on it with the mayor, and that we could take the politics out of it, and partner together, and take an all-of-government approach. I was very glad that he was excited about doing that. We have had, I think, a very constructive dialogue and partnership with the mayor, and I’m very proud of that.
There is a risk of failure. This is a hard problem. And when you announce an initiative on such a hard problem, people expect results immediately. And I won’t be able to deliver results [immediately]— it’ll take months, maybe years, to reverse some of these challenges. But I’m willing to do that.
I am also willing to talk about it. I’ll have those discussions here. I will have these discussions with you in private. I will have those discussions with the media. And I think that’s a good thing toward restoring public trust in government. But that is a big problem, and I don’t know how to solve it, but that is what I would do.
Readers can listen to the full confirmation hearing here:
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