By Michael Tavoliero
We have lived the definition of insanity in Alaska politics. Again and again, conservatives send a governor to Juneau to protect the PFD, rebuild the economy, and shrink government and every time, that governor walks into a political Lindemann shredder built to pulverize an agenda before it can even start. The mandate is real. The votes are real. The chokehold is real.
This is not because the people changed their minds.
It is because a conservative public executive entering office is without the legislative and institutional power needed to implement the agenda the voters elected them to pursue.
This is the story of how the Dunleavy and Bronson administrations were gelded, not defeated, at the ballot box but neutered in office by a system designed to restrain any executive who threatens the entrenched order.
The lesson is not limited to Alaska.
The first Trump administration is the national version of the same phenomenon.
The Meaning of Gelding in Politics
In horsemanship, a gelding is a male horse castrated to make it easier to control. It is calmer, manageable, and less resistant.
In politics, a gelded executive meets three criteria: 1) he holds office but not authority, 2) he retains the title but not the power, and 3) his mandates become symbolic rather than operative.
The individual remains the “leader” in name, but the system ensures no leadership.
How This Happened
When Donald Trump entered office in 2017, he carried a clear mandate to reduce bureaucracy, secure the border, and reverse the policy trajectory of prior administrations. But he immediately discovered a truth that had nothing to do with elections and everything to do with institutional power: the permanent federal bureaucracy governs itself. Career officials, agency lawyers, regulatory commissions, and intelligence bureaucracies operate as a continuous government whose priorities persist regardless of who is elected.
Trump soon found that a president does not command the federal government; he inherits it. Cabinet agencies slow-walked or reinterpreted his directives. Senior staff tried to moderate his agenda rather than execute it. Congressional leaders avoided delivering on core promises such as border reform and structural spending cuts. At the same time, internal leaks, investigations, and impeachment proceedings diverted governing energy into defending legitimacy rather than exercising authority.
The effect was not electoral defeat but containment in office. The administrative state ensured that the title of power remained with the presidency, while the practical exercise of power remained with the bureaucracy. Policy was delayed or diluted. Personnel who opposed the president’s agenda were protected by civil service rules. Legislative coalitions served to limit reform, not advance it.
Trump was not prevented from governing because the public withdrew support. He was prevented from governing because the system is designed to absorb and neutralize any executive who attempts to govern outside its established boundaries. He held the office, but the bureaucracy held the authority.
Governor Mike Dunleavy’s administration collapsed when a coalition of Democrats, moderate Republicans, public-sector unions, Permanent Fund lobbyists, state-funded advocacy networks and the mainstream media not only blocked spending reforms and halted departmental restructuring but also launched a coordinated recall effort for the purpose of snipping the executive will itself. The recall was not about misconduct; it was a political warning shot designed to discipline the governor into submission. Its message was unmistakable: if you govern according to the mandate the voters gave you, we will remove you. Facing the combined force of the bureaucratic class, the corporate beneficiaries of state spending, and legislative coalitions, Dunleavy was pressed into mutilating the statutory PFD, scaling back reform, and adopting a posture of negotiated survival rather than principled leadership.
In other words, he was gelded not by defeat, but by the threat of punishment for winning.
Mayor Dave Bronson’s administration similarly crumbled when the Anchorage Assembly used procedural authority, emergency powers, union control, and the municipal bureaucracy to reverse executive decisions and nullify the mayor’s policy agenda on day one of his oath of office.
The message from the political establishment was clear: elections may change the figurehead, but policy remains in the hands of the bureaucracy and coalition legislature.
For Trump the next 4 years of lawfare prosecution ironically allowed him to develop a code and policy, which changed the balance of executive prowess.
What follows is the Warrior Code and Operational Plan of a Second Trump Administration, written specifically to illustrate how Alaska conservatives must restructure power, personnel, and institutional alignment so that the next Alaskan governor is not gelded again.
The Warrior Code of a Second Trump Administration
A Model for Alaska’s Path to Restore Self-Government
The first Trump administration exposed the truth: Winning an election is not the same as winning power.
The bureaucracy, legislative coalitions, executive agencies, and embedded career officials operate as a parallel government; one that continues regardless of who the people elect.
Therefore, the warrior code of a second Trump presidency is not about fighting louder but about governing differently.
The lesson of the second Trump administration is simple: reform does not happen by persuasion alone; it happens by control of the machinery that carries out policy.
Personnel is Policy.
The administration made workforce structure the first battlefield. By reinstating and updating Schedule F, it moved policy-shaping roles into classifications where employees could be replaced if they obstructed the elected agenda. Hiring freezes, targeted eliminations, and the removal of DEI offices signaled that government employment exists to execute policy, not defy it.
Authority Must Be Centralized Before It Can Be Delegated.
The administration reinforced the unitary executive doctrine by requiring agencies, including many nominally “independent”, to align their rulemaking and legal interpretations with presidential direction. The goal was to collapse internal veto points and make accountability traceable to the President, rather than diffused across bureaucracy.
The Bureaucracy Must Be Reorganized, Not Challenged.
Rather than fight the administrative state on its terms, the administration began restructuring it: reclassifying positions, relocating federal functions out of Washington, and merging or eliminating programs that did not serve constitutional roles. Reform was pursued through executive directives, the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) rulemaking, and structural adjustment, not speeches.
Legislature: Incentives, Not Pleas, Drive Alignment.
To pass major policy, the administration adopted a centralize-then-negotiate strategy: set the policy baseline by executive action and then force Congress to take public, high-visibility votes. Endorsements and campaign support favored those who aligned; primary challenges and withheld resources signaled cost to defectors.
The takeaway: Reform requires reordering power, staff, authority, structure, and legislative incentives, not merely arguing for it. No agenda survives when implemented by those who oppose it.
Transition to Part II
And this is where Alaska stands.
We keep electing leaders who promise reform, but we send them into a government, an “Invasion of The Body Snatchers” script, whose structure is designed to absorb and neutralize them.
If Alaska wants real change, on the PFD, on Medicaid expansion, on education reform, on resource and energy development, we cannot simply elect a governor. We have done that. How did it work?
We must rebuild the governing majority, restructure the bureaucracy, and re-align incentives so the elected mandate can actually be carried out.
Keep a look out for Part 2: A Model for Alaska’s Path to Restore Self-Government begins there.
Well said! Bureaucracies within 21st century “Democracies” have been empowered freatky since the employment of the digital age (computers). Technolgoes have only hardened government bureaucracies and very likely have spawned our era of neo-conservative autocratic executive leadership. That old “deep State” idea has been around for quite sobering now; and failing grassroots r aris Al of the common peoples’ will, bureaucracies will continue to prevail; particularly so if buttressed by media that supports “WoK, leftest, Socialistic agendas.
Republicans have been running Alaska since 2002. (Remember-Walker was a Republican until all y’all decided that only the purest conservatives had a right be a Republican.)
Republicans have done a crap job of it. It isn’t being gelded-it’s that their actual ability to run a government stink.
Republicans hate government because it doesn’t work-but Republicans are the ones who broke it.
Totally agree, but I’m not going to hold my breath. Anchorage liberal fascists ( yes, I said it) control the state. They are not seeking to improve the lives of the average Alaskan, but merely want power (i.e. control).