Jared Goecker, a conservative and longtime Eagle River resident, filed with the Alaska Public Offices Commission to run for State Senate for the seat now occupied by Sen. Kelly Merrick, who is also a Republican who has chosen to be part of the Democrat-dominated Senate majority caucus.
Born in Montana to an Air Force family, Goecker has lived all over the world, but has lived primarily in Eagle River.
While in college, he interned in the nation’s capital and then became the regional field director for Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, before Pence was chosen as President Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick.
In 2016, Goecker started working for Weidner Apartment Homes and volunteered on Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s campaign. He was hired by Dunleavy and eventually became the deputy director of Labor Relations, where he led negotiations with the state’s most powerful labor unions.
He joined the Municipality of Anchorage in 2022 as deputy human resource director, and said he has overcome many challenges related to a polarized political environment.
Goecker said he is pro-family and pro-life. As a father, and husband he knows how important it is to honor your word and protect those you love. The tragedy that struck the Goeckers last year, when his brother was murdered, has motivated Jared to make real changes in Alaska’s criminal justice system so other Alaskans don’t have to endure what his family has suffered.
Goecker is active in his local community council, with the District 23 Republicans, volunteers with cleaning up Eagle River trails, and serves dinner weekly at the Downtown Hope Soup Kitchen.
While he lived in Japan duking the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown, he took part in humanitarian and recovery work with his parents and Air Force Base personnel (assembled and delivered food/supply packages to stricken areas, cleaned up/sorted through rubble, visited local schools to spend time with the children traumatized from the 9.1 quake/tsunami).
His website is found at this link.
Since Jared Goecker held the position of deputy human resources director for the Muni when Joe Gerace was hired as the Anchorage Health Director, I want to know the role Goecker played in hiring that fraudster. We cannot forget the damage done when Gerace presented an assortment of fake military and medical-related credentials and was given a six-figure income he did not earn and for which we taxpayers paid. How was it that none of Gerace’s phony paperwork was verified? Does Goecker have HR experience OR did he get the Muni job under Nikki Tshibaka as a political favor? If Goecker wants to trot out his association with the military through his father’s service, I would have expected him to vet that portion of Gerace’s fake resume at the very least and, thereby, prevent that hire (and some others while he has held the HR position).
My advice is that Eagle River should find a better candidate to run against Kelly Merrick.
LTC it seems that your timing is off.
Joe Gerace was confirmed by the assembly in November of 2021, so BEFORE Mr. Godecker joined the administration in 2022. Nice try to attempt to smear his name with that mess.
As for CER finding a better candidate, that’s really not how the system works. Judging from the article Mr. Godecker has more going for him than Kelly Merrick ever did. I also would hate to see her run unopposed.
Arghh, clearly did not have enough coffee this morning to wake up my spelling brain. My apologies to Mr. Goecker for misspelling his name!
If I still lived in Eagle River I’d definitely look into Jared and vote for him!
I am running for Senate Seat L (Eagle River / Chugiak), which I announced with APOC months ago. Weeks after the last senate race, I had many people tell me they had voted for Kelly Merrick and realized they made a mistake and would vote for me next time if I ran for senate. This theme of comments have continued by the hundreds, thus I am running again to avail an experienced and real member of Eagle River / Chugiak to serve as senator in Juneau.
Ken McCarty
Ken, I respect you. Thanks for stepping up to run two years ago. It is time for a new generation. A rematch between you and Kelly will yield the same results. It wasn’t a particularly close race.
Ken, I have little respect for you after your malicious stunt to get the governor to veto the badly-needed reconstruction of the Starner St. bridge over Peters Creek, followed by your rambling and incoherent public letter attempting to defend that decision and action.
What were you thinking, and REALLY doing, there?
Eagle river ARE you really sure he is a Conservative? He looks like Democrat and smells like one too by his job associations.
Michael Tavoliero- that’s the name thanks to his recent comment on a recent article I didn’t have to go too far. He’s a great example and standard for Eagleriver to measure all future candidates if they pass the smell test. Him and measuring Conservative candidates against God.
This will be it. Eagleriver-Chugiak already had two major recent flubs. It can’t afford to be wrong a third time. Especially while it’s moving away from Anchorage in Eagleexit. The beginning stage will cement the direction of a community. ER will it show itself it will be RED or will it decidedly go purple? Eagleriver Republicans need to do some self examination makes sure your members are solidly Red in the beginning stage while Eagleriver is planning its Eagleexit. Cause if this guy is as weak as his work experience looks he’ll be another Republican folding under Alaska’s corrupt bastards club.
What are you talking about?
Three strikes and your out??? Huh??
What does Eagle Exit have to do with who runs for the state senate seat and who gets elected?
It should further be noted that with Ranked Choice voting, vetting candidates by the party and its members is pretty much out the window. Now anyone can pay their fee and claim to be this or that to be on the ballot. Did you sign the petition to repeal RCV?
Mr. Goecker’s affiliation with District 23 Republicans indicates to me that he is actively interacting with conservatives. (as an aside Kelly Merrick did not participate in the main debate or to my knowledge came to meetings when she ran the first time)
Kelly Merrick is trash. She stood on our lawn last year, feeding us lies she thought we wanted to hear. That woman has zero backbone and is not at all the conservative she has claimed to be in the past. Yuck.
We need better candidates.
V, I had the same experience, when meeting her at the Republican party picnic the first time she ran. She swore to me that her husband’s politics and affiliations never influenced her decisions and that she was of a conservative mind. Since then we have seen the Joey Merrick Machine in action with Kelly supporting the union all the way. She and Cathy Giessel are two peas in a pot!
With all due respect to Ken McCarty, he is a very nice person (having met him at the Bear Paw) and would make a solid legislator but appears too low key, to get any traction against the ad blitz and dazzle Joey and the team puts on.
I really don’t know where we can find the strong conservative candidate that I think we need. So far, we have only nice candidates, and although any of them are better than the fake, it’s no longer about how they play with others. Those days are long gone. We need someone who is as angry as the constituents and can tackle the problems without fear, under constant attack to him and his supporters and family. A strong legal background would be very helpful, but a brawler for sure.
The first step of return to real elections is to get rid of ranked choice voting. Having your vote reassigned to someone who you did not choose as the best choice is nuts.
If you still like ranked choice, change to a run-off system. No more automatic reassignment of one’s vote.
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