By MICHAEL TAVOLIERO
President Donald J. Trump taught a brutal but necessary lesson to anyone serious about becoming Alaska’s next governor: If you aren’t fully armed with your team, your playbook, and your orders before your hand leaves the Bible — you’ve already lost.
My late and sharp-minded friend Art Chance (Recommended reading for every Alaska candidate, “Red on Blue: Establishing Republican Governance,” by Art Chance) put it best: the moment your hand comes off that Bible, you must act with ruthless precision.
No waiting, no hesitation. Executive orders? Filed. Departmental overhauls? Filed. Appointments, lawsuits, administrative purges? Filed. Every reform, every dismantling, every necessary battle plan — already mapped, locked, and loaded for immediate execution.
If you hesitate, you will be poked with a fork because you’re already done.
And yet, time after time, Alaska has elected dreamers — good on the stump, paralyzed in power. They step into the governor’s mansion full of hope, and within days, the choking white noise of entrenched bureaucracy and revenge-seeking legislature strangles their resolve. Vision fades to confusion. Action drowns in static. Another administration dies before it even begins.
“Not this time!” many of Alaska’s political elite now declare. But words are not enough.
The next governor must come ready for war — against apathy, against inertia, against the bureaucratic rot that steals Alaska’s future, and a Legislature riddled with RINOs who repeatedly hand power to the Left and its enforcers: the union cabal and its media lackeys. Like President Trump, he or she must embody the Boy Scout motto in its purest form: Be prepared. Act immediately. Never retreat.
Anything less is surrender.
The Trump Doctrine for Executive Success in Alaska
To win and to govern with purpose, Alaska’s next chief executive must embrace the following strategic pillars now:
1. Personnel is Policy: Vet, Appoint, Fire
- Have every commissioner, deputy, and legal counsel selected before taking office. Their loyalty must be to the people, not the bureaucracy.
- Use Schedule F-style reforms at the state level: reclassify or remove entrenched bureaucrats who sabotage reform.
- Purge state departments of career obstructionists embedded in agencies like Health, Education, and Natural Resources.
2. Preload Executive Orders and Legal Challenges
- Draft every EO for the first 100 days before Election Day. Don’t plan — execute.
- Anticipate litigation. Pre-write legal arguments. Pick your courtroom battlegrounds.
- Prepare challenges against unconstitutional federal overreach, especially in energy, land use, and tribal jurisdiction.
3. Create a Parallel Power Structure
- Empower external advisory councils and citizen working groups to bypass agency roadblocks.
- Use local governance commissions to decentralize administrative authority.
- Create public oversight tools for transparency, real-time spending audits, and whistleblower protection.
- Harvest from these bodies loyal and capable individuals for your administration as well as legislative candidates.
4. Own the Narrative
- Control the messaging pipeline. Traditional media will be hostile.
- Deploy a rapid-response digital communications team. Use direct-to-voter media, not legacy outlets.
- Educate Alaskans: your agenda isn’t radical — it’s restorative.
5. Declare Legislative Contingency
- The single most productive reality of state government will be a conservative majority in Alaska’s legislature. Work directly with the Alaska Republican Party and all Alaska conservative groups to make this a reality in 2026.
- If that doesn’t happen, prepare for a hostile Legislature. Expect betrayal. Don’t depend on a majority — build policy tools that don’t require one.
- Use the veto, executive reorganization powers, and statutory reform through regulation.
- Force public accountability: make lawmakers vote against their own constituents in broad daylight.
6. Dismantle the Union Machine
- Audit every union contract and grievance system.
- Redirect resources from union-dominated programs to direct services for families and small businesses.
- Empower school choice, eliminate forced dues, and challenge unlawful bargaining practices.
The Battlefield Is Already Set
The deep state isn’t limited to Washington. It thrives in Juneau — in boards, commissions, regulatory fiefdoms and activist departments. The only way to win is to enter the fight like Trump in 2024: with precision, preparedness, and a war cabinet, not a transition team.
Alaska needs a wartime governor. A peacetime candidate — however likable, however polished — will be devoured before the snow melts in April.
It’s time to break the pattern — to elevate not just a politician, but a commander-in-chief of Alaska’s recovery. The blueprint has been tested. The opposition is entrenched. The stakes are existential.
So here is the final question every candidate must answer before they ask for your vote:
“Are you ready — truly ready — the moment your hand comes off that Bible?”
If not, you’re already too late.
So far, the three people that have filed for governor race is a sad joke! Where is the business thinking persons that have a real talent to lead a state? I’m sick of the rejects in the offices now and in the past 16 or more years. This state is poorly represented in Congress and State government.
If there is talent out there, please show yourself and get in the action to lead this state. We are in the worst mess because of this administration in Alaska and need a leader that has the courage to get our state moving in the right direction and the world.
Come on now, show yourself and take on the good fight for a state that hasn’t had good leadership for years!!
Ms. Wilson is a successful business person from a very business oriented family. And when her building burned she showed clear thinking in a crisis and made arrangements for her customers to be serviced by ohers while the building was still smoldering. She obviously knows how to build a team that can act in a crisis. We should hear her out before rashly making a decision about her.
This is a good manifesto, it takes serious planning and determination to make something out of these opportunities. With any plan you also learn from what didn’t work. Have philosophical beliefs that you base your decisions on and others can figure out how to act. Don’t just do wild dumb crap. If it isn’t part of the essential mission or close to a possible outcome and is going to create more problems and resistance than any positives don’t do it or talk about it. Greenland, Canada as the 51st state, wild policy (tariffs for example) that is poorly thought out and inflicts more damage than good, getting a jet as a gift from possible adversaries, etc etc etc. Leadership opportunities come along very seldom and it is hard enough to change entrenched interests, self inflicted wounds don’t help. There are only so many resources to be applied. Governor Dunleavy would have done well to purge as many people as possible. He also has not done himself any favors by not being personally engaged to communicate with legislators who want to help or even back up his lieutenants. Alaska didn’t go backwards but we have not done much to set up the future either. We also need to look at why we are being led by the party with a 2-1 disadvantage in affiliation. Their networks and funding have to be eliminated.
Excellent article, Mr Tavoliero!! I pray we are able to field such a candidate or our state will suffer greatly!!
The outlined program certainly does not represent Governor Stands Small, who has been an almost complete cuckold of the Democrats and RINOs in the state legislature.
Thank you for remembering Art Chance. He was one of Suzanne’s most courageous lieutenants and we miss him everyday here at MRAK. Great article, Michael.
Bernadette I hope you are listening, I’ve heard dynamite comes on small packages
Each candidate for Governor should know the power and responsibility he/she has that is outlined in the Alaska Constitution Article III. Section 16. The governor shall be responsible for the faithful execution of the laws… Canon 3. A judge shall faithfully follow the laws… When the laws are not faithfully followed then lawlessness and the perpetrator triumph. A judge that doesn’t faithfully follow the laws, rules, policies and procedures cannot be seen as having “good Behaviour” (U.S. Constitution Article III Section 1.).
ALASKA NEEDS JUDICIAL REFORM.
The Governor needs to protect our constitutions, constitutional rights, full distribution of our permanent fund checs, and our right to a fair trial within a court of law that is based on the sworn undisputed testimony of the plaintiff and/or defendant, and the factual evidence.
ALASKA NEEDS JUDICIAL REFORM.
Great points and a good mentality to start and operate. I don’t really care about Republican or Democratic parties; we need a Governor who can take these marching orders for all Alaskans. Michael Tavoliero and Bernadette Wilson would make a great pair in Juneau. Get back to common sense and address these parasites that infest our government already.
Boyd and Dalhstrom are just relics of the poor system and won’t change anything. Dunleavey could have done more but didn’t have the fight in him to push ahead of bureaucrats. I agree, Alaska didn’t go backwards but Juneau did what they could to mess up the future. Priorities need to be reestablished, and pet projects need to be done away with.
Thank you for mentioning Art Chance–he is truly missed! I remember when I was first going to get into politics and someone warned me that it was a “dirty business”. Later I told a friend that truer words were never spoke. I definitely found out how your words and actions can so easily be twisted. I became very cynical about the media. Michael, you’ve said how you wouldn’t want to run for office yourself, but do you have a clone somewhere out there? We SO need someone with your intelligence and logical mind.
Great points being made Mr. Tavoliero. I agree. The trouble is finding a candidate that can win, and that actually cares. It’s been my personal experience after assisting several governors during their campaigns, including a little help for Governor Dunleavy too, no one truly cares.
If a candidate is serious about proving how much they care, they should secure potential leaders that have current boots-on-the-ground expertise in the major areas of Executive Branch responsibility and formulate a strategy to shine a light on examples of waste, mismanagement, and corruption taking place in these departments to prove they are aware of at least some of the problems, and what authority they have to take corrective action.
Show the public that you are a leader deserving of their trust, and the trust of your potential staff. It’s time for a new approach to winning a gubernatorial race in Alaska. We are out of time for serious leadership in Alaska.