JUNEAU, Alaska — With less than two weeks until Election Day, political groups have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars highlighting that the top vote-getting Democrat on the ballot in Alaska’s U.S. House race is serving a 20-year prison sentence in New York.

Two political action committees have spent more than $380,000 since the August primary on ads opposing Eric Hafner, a registered Democrat who is running for Alaska’s lone seat in the House while incarcerated.

This spending is part of an effort to encourage Democrats and other voters dissatisfied with Republican incumbent Rep. Nick Begich to cast their votes instead for Bill Hill, a commercial fisherman and retired educator from Western Alaska who is running as an independent with the endorsement of the Democratic Party.

In Alaska’s ranked choice voting system, the top four vote-getters advance from the primary to the November general election regardless of party affiliation. While well-funded candidates like Begich and Hill were all but guaranteed to advance to the general election, how many votes fringe candidates like Hafner could draw from the front-runners in November is a key question in Alaska’s closely watched congressional races.

Hafner received 3.8% of the vote in the August primary, with 6,175 votes, placing well behind Begich and Hill, Begich’s top challenger.

The spending to elevate awareness of Hafner’s status as a federal inmate to boost Hill is part of a broader pattern in Alaska’s congressional races, where PACs have poured millions of dollars into campaigns involving candidates who received little support in the August primary.

In the U.S. Senate race, two PACs have spent more than $2 million boosting Gerald Heikes, a Republican challenger and perennial candidate who received just over 1% of the vote in the August primary, in an effort to weaken the front-runners.

Also in the U.S. Senate race is a third Republican: Dan J. Sullivan, a retired teacher from Petersburg who has been assailed by the Republican Party and President Donald Trump as a sham candidate put forth by Democrats in an effort to draw votes from the incumbent senator of the same name. In the primary, Dan J. Sullivan earned 2.5% of the vote.

Dan J. Sullivan has repeatedly maintained he is running his campaign in good faith and believes the incumbent Sen. Dan S. Sullivan is not doing a good job representing the interests of Alaskans. Since the Alaska Supreme Court ruled he was allowed to run, he has done minimal campaign fundraising and spending. Federal campaign spending data also shows no political action committees have spent funds to either oppose or support him this cycle.

Ads tell voters the D stands for ‘doing time’

Both the Hill campaign and political action committees want voters to know that the Democrat on the ballot is currently behind bars.

Hafner pleaded guilty to harassing elected officials in New Jersey federal court in 2022. He first ran for Alaska office in 2024, and the Alaska Democratic Party sued to remove Hafner’s name from the ballot. The Alaska Supreme Court that year upheld his ability to run for the office.

Begich earned 44.6% of the vote in the primary while Hill trailed by more than 12 points, with 32.5%. Hafner finished a distant third with 3.8%, and Libertarian Jim McDermott rounded out the top four on the November ballot after receiving 1.2% of the vote in the primary.

Wheel Dog PAC, a group created to support Hill, has been the largest spender opposing Hafner, spending about $350,000 since August on a mix of mailers, digital ads, radio spots and text messages to voters, according to campaign finance filings.

In one ad, the group draws attention to Hafner’s incarceration with a play on his party affiliation.

“The D by his name? Yeah, it stands for ‘doing time,’” the video says.

Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy, a political action committee focused on policies such as childcare, paid leave and healthcare, has also spent about $35,000 opposing Hafner.

One ad backed by the PAC urges voters to not be “fooled,” and to “vote against Eric Hafner.”

“Washington Republicans had backed Hafner because he could take votes away from Bill Hill, the only candidate who can defeat Nick Begich,” another ad said, referencing the National Republican Congressional Committee’s strategy to boost Hafner in his 2024 bid.

The Hill campaign itself has also created ads highlighting Hafner’s status as an inmate from Outside on social media, along with distributing yard signs to supporters saying “Eric Hafner: In prison in New York.”

No registered political groups have publicly declared support for Hafner. Still, a group that did not register their spending with the Federal Election Commission ran a text campaign boosting the candidate before the August primary.

Political spending boosts Heikes

In the U.S. Senate race, political groups have spent more than $2 million promoting Gerald Heikes, a Republican who received just over 1% of the vote in the August primary and has raised no campaign funds.

Heikes advanced to the general election after the fourth-place finisher, Democrat David Leslie, dropped out, securing Heikes a spot on Alaska’s ranked choice ballot alongside Republican incumbent Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, Democratic former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola and Dan J. Sullivan, the Petersburg candidate.

Two political action committees, Alaska Values PAC and Right for Alaska, have spent heavily on ads promoting Heikes both before and after the August primary. Both groups are based in Wisconsin and have ties to Thomas Datwyler, a conservative political consultant and campaign finance compliance expert who has worked on active federal and state campaigns.

When he ran for U.S. House in 2024, Heikes was the target of heavy spending from a Democrat-backed group running ads leading up to the August primary emphasizing his stance calling for a nationwide abortion ban. That year, he was not one of the top four vote-getters who advanced to the November general election.

The strategy of promoting multiple like-minded candidates is based on the idea that splitting votes among candidates from one party or ideological camp could benefit the opposing side. Recent election cycles have shown that a sizable share of Alaska voters don’t rank more than one candidate, even when there are multiple ideologically aligned options.

Right for Alaska, which spent more than $700,000 in the lead-up to the August primary, touted Heikes as a more socially conservative alternative to the incumbent Sullivan.

One PAC campaign ad on Facebook included images generated by artificial intelligence purporting to show the incumbent Sen. Sullivan in an operating room alongside drag queens with a voiceover accusing the Republican senator of voting to spend “our tax dollars on irreversible sex change surgeries for kids.” Another mailer claimed Heikes will do more to fight “DEI and wokeness.”

Another group, Alaska Values PAC, spent about $1.3 million on ads promoting Heikes in October alone. That includes an ad making a similar claim about Sullivan voting in support of “sex change surgeries for minors,” and a second spot criticizing the Republican senator for voting in support of a spending package that increased the federal debt while “our PFD gets smaller and gas is 5, 6 bucks a gallon.”

“Heikes gets it,” said an actor in the ad, which received more than 40,000 impressions on Meta platforms. “I’m only ranking Heikes.”

Alaska Values registered as a PAC only last month, and publicly available records do not identify its sources of funding because it was created after the most recent deadline to report political fundraising.

The major donors behind Right for Alaska — which has the same campaign treasurer as Alaska Values PAC — are political nonprofit 501(c)(4)s that generally are not required to publicly disclose their donors.

One of the donors is Sixteen Thirty Fund, based in Washington, D.C., which describes itself as a progressive organization that seeks to address issues ranging from “climate change, to protecting voting rights and access to health care, to promoting equity and social justice.”

The other major donor is Liberty Force Action Fund, which FEC filings show is based in Virginia. Records show no chair or treasurer tied to the group, nor does it have a publicly available website.

_____

©2026 Anchorage Daily News. Visit at adn.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.