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The 2024 election is over, but vote counting continues, and many races are still too close to call.

How will ranked choice voting affect the outcome?

And what do the current numbers signal about potential shifts in leadership for Alaska's legislature?

We'll discuss it right now on Alaska Insight.

The frenzied pace of the campaigns and the endless number of fliers, calls and text messages have now ended.

But that doesn't mean results are settled.

Tonight we'll break down what's known, what still needs to be decided, and what that could indicate for the composition of the legislature in January.

But let's start off with some of the top stories of the week from Alaska Public Media's collaborative statewide news network.

There are still tens of thousands of votes left to across the state, left to be counted, and some key races remain undetermined.

But state lawmakers have already formed bipartisan coalitions in the House and Senate.

Lawmakers announced on Wednesday that the House would flip from Republican led majority control.

The speaker of the House will be Dillingham Independent Representative Brice Edelman, Edelman said on Thursday.

There is confidence that there are enough members to form a majority organization.

That means the legislature as a whole will be more moderate than it has been for the past two years.

Though Alaskans voted for Donald Trump this year by a wider margin than four years ago, the trend at the state level runs counter to the right word shift seen across the country this cycle.

Edelman said the majority has for key principles.

It's organizing around balanced budgets that don't overdraw the permanent fund.

Stable funding for public education, reforming the state's 401 K style retirement system, and boosting energy development.

Oil companies could buy oil leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but with new restrictions under a plan released on Wednesday.

At least 400,000 acres in the refuge's coastal plain would be available for oil and gas leasing, but only in areas deemed to have high potential for holding hydrocarbons and only under new environmental restrictions to protect wildlife and other resources.

This, according to a preferred plan released by President Joe Biden's administration.

The plan, detailed in a supplement environmental impact statement led by the US Bureau of Land Management, proposes much more limited oil development than what was authorized by the administration of former president and now president elect Donald Trump.

With Trump set to return to the white House, the area is back in the spotlight.

He has declared intentions to reopen the area to drilling.

Environmentalists are expecting a tough fight over the refuge in coming years.

Anchorage School District officials have announced seven elementary schools that they're proposing to close over the next three years, as the number of students in the district continues to decline.

The district will soon start taking public feedback on the proposal, and the Anchorage School Board is scheduled to ultimately decide on the closures at a meeting in December.

Since 2010, the district's student population has dropped by roughly 6000 students, or about 12%, and it has closed three elementary schools.

Superintendent Jared Bryant has said.

More families are also opting to homeschool their children through correspondence programs.

The district's proposal includes a plan to lease three of the seven buildings to charter schools.

It says another two could gather could house other special programs, such as child care facilities.

Anchorage is strapped for childcare, with many facilities having long waitlists and high prices.

You can find the full version of these and many more stories on our website.

Alaska public.org or download the Alaska Public Media app on your phone.

Now on to our discussion for this evening.

The 2024 election was historic and that for the first time in a century, a former president came back to challenge his successor and prevail.

What will a second Trump presidency mean for Alaska?

Voters here opted for more moderation in state legislative races and bipartisan coalitions have already formed in the state Senate and House.

A fascinating election cycle and a lot to consider.

Joining me tonight to discuss what the way forward could look like are Alaska public media as government reporters.

Liz Ruskin is our Washington correspondent and Eric Stone is our state government reporter.

Eric is now back in Juneau after being in Anchorage for election night.

Liz has been here for throughout the campaign season.

I'm glad you're still here.

Before you have to head back to the nation's capital for the transition to the next administration.

Thanks both of you for being here after what's been a long, long week.

Yeah, yeah.

Glad to be here.

Yeah.

I'm glad you're both here, too.

Eric, let's start with the current standings for Alaska's races.

There are still votes to count, as we noted, but you wrote this week about this bipartisan coalition plan for both the House and Senate.

Talk about how this is shaping up and what a portends for the annual sessions.

Work.

So, yeah, as you said, bipartisan coalitions have formed in both the House, in the Senate, Dillingham Independent Representative Bryce Eggman will be the speaker.

And that means it's going to flip from Republican control.

And that and there are there is also a bipartisan coalition in the Senate.

So that means we could see some alignment on issues that we didn't see.

Alignment on during the last legislature.

The the priorities that you laid out earlier, for the House majority, are a lot of the things that the Senate majority last session, where we felt very strongly should, you know, be, should, come into place, things like boosting education funding, reforming the retirement system in, in, you know, in favor of, potentially something like a pension system.

Returning to that, also, you know, boosting energy development, as, you know, gas supplies in Cook Inlet continue to dwindle and, investing in infrastructure around the state.

So, and another thing that's worth noting is, that that there, there, the budget, the excuse me, the, the house plans to stick with it, you know, it was stick within this 5% draw on the permanent fund.

And that, you know, that, I suspect we'll see less, a lot less, conflict between the two chambers than we saw during the last session.

Well, it's very early for them to be organizing already, and there's been a little bit of pushback by some Republicans saying, criticizing, saying, hey, votes aren't settled yet.

Do you think that could set up some early tension?

You know, it's possible.

But observers that I've talked to say they're, you know, it's it makes a lot of sense for the coalitions to organize this early.

And you know, potentially it could potentially be seen as a strategic move, you know, in order, you'd basically stake out your, territory and hope that, you know, can help you bolster your majority.

1I1 thing I wanted to mention is that the house is leaving its, invitation to join the majority coalition open intentionally for, quite a while, a potentially, you know, almost through Thanksgiving.

And what they're trying to do is build a large majority as they can, in order to, you know, you know, get through their priorities.

We saw how how difficult it was last session for Republicans to pass, proposals that they were very interested in because they had a slim majority that relied on, Democratic and Independent votes.

All right.

Thanks for getting us started, Eric.

Liz, the US House race between incumbent Democrat Mary Tola and Republican challenger Nick Begich has.

Currently.

Begich is leading by a thin margin, but there's still thousands of votes left to count.

Break down where this race stands currently.

Yeah, from what I can tell, it's possible that, Mary Pelton could still pull off a win, but it's not probable.

She's about 10,000 votes behind that, roughly four percentage points.

And that's a pretty big deficit to make up.

As you said, there are thousands of votes left uncounted.

But it's not clear that they would break differently.

So, do you think that the race is likely to go to tabulation through the ranked choice voting system?

And if it does, do you have a good sense of where the outstanding votes are and how that, you know, you just said it might not break for her?

Well, the outstanding votes could, have a potential to close the gap, but, ranked choice, tabulation is not going to make a difference in this race if the gap is at, four percentage points.

The the reason is that the two minor candidates just didn't get enough of the vote for the rankings to to swing the outcome.

For some perspective, the third place finisher was John Wayne, how he took less than 4% of the vote.

And so if every single one of his voters ranked Pell Tola second, it still would not be enough to put her ahead.

Let me tell you, his voters did.

Not all of them rank her second?

There's no reason to think that they favored her.

There's some.

But, you know, he was a conservative.

He was being billed, as the conservative choice by those people.

So, by her, you know, her supporters.

So because they were trying to pull votes away from, Nick Begich, but, you know, she did not get all of his second rankings, so she'd have to get, the vast majority of second rankings from both minor candidates.

I mean, it, there just aren't enough and not there aren't enough, ballots that went to the minor candidates for the, rankings to make a big difference in this case, unless the gap is closed substantially.

Well, there's more to be determined.

There certainly.

Ballot measure two, Liz, would repeal Alaska's system of open primaries and ranked choice voting.

That vote count is also very close right now.

Closer.

Do you think it's likely to pass?

Okay.

Repeal is ahead right now.

And it could pass.

But here I think it's possible that the outstanding, ballot could make a difference.

Repeal right now is passing with less than 51%.

That is not a lot.

And the vote no people, had a ton of money to spend.

Their campaign was very, very active.

It, maybe they really encourage people to vote early and by mail.

So maybe the outstanding ballots lean a little bit, against repeal.

It was I found it significant.

I recall back to four years ago when Alaskans adopted ranked choice voting.

It was failing.

That ballot measure was failing on election night.

And I recall Scott Kendall, the architect of Alaska's ranked choice voting, saying, I know it looks like it's failing now, but it's not failing.

And, he was correct about that.

And he's, you know, said something similar this time.

So I tend to think it's possible that that race could flip, that, repeal could fail.

But right now it's passing.

It's passing.

Yes.

And the other ballot measure voters weighed in on would raise the minimum wage and mandate sick leave.

For many workers, this is passing by a wide margin.

Do either of you have a sense as to.

I mean, I can see why it's popular with with employees, of course, but the business community had to vote on this too.

And it's it's, seems popular, a sense of why my sense is that the opposition really organized too late.

There wasn't a ton of, organized opposition, earlier in the campaign.

But, you know, towards the end of the campaign, we did see business groups get together to oppose the measure.

But at that point, I, you know, it seems like it it it just came together too late.

And, you know, maybe, maybe their message didn't really break through.

Okay, let's talk about where things stand with the Alaska Legislature.

Eric, the bipartisan coalition announcement, what has the reaction been to this early plan more broadly?

And does it look like coalitions of the past, of past legislatures, or are there new dynamics at play?

You know, it does look, pretty similar to some past coalitions that we've seen.

It is a largely Democratic and independent, majority, at least as far as we know at this point.

All we know is that there are two Republicans in there.

So it's I would say it's it's somewhat similar to, but majorities that we've seen in the House previously.

But, you know, it's it's very different from, the current Republican led majority.

And, yeah, as I said earlier, the there are there has been some, skepticism from House Republican leaders, you know, that the majority will hold.

But, you know, at this point, it looks like, it looks like it will hold.

There are some very close Anchorage area House races, but, yeah, they're they're they're pretty confident that the House is going to, standard bipartisan control for a move to bipartisan control, I should say.

What kind of dynamic do you think this sets up with?

Governor Dunleavy?

So, you know, that's a very interesting question.

Last session, we saw the Senate majority frequently finding itself at odds with Governor Dunleavy, specifically over education funding.

There was a bill that would have boosted long term education funding by $680 per student.

And, that, that got a lot more support in the Senate than it did in the House.

And, you know, it ultimately fell short of an, veto override, because members of the House didn't, you know, it failed by one vote because, a lot of members of the House that initially voted for it didn't vote for it a second time.

So I suspect that we could see, you know, some more vetoes this year if the two chambers are in alignment.

On some issues, one thing I want to highlight is, the potential move to a pension system.

There was Senate Bill 88 last session, came out of the Senate with with support.

Never really made it to, the House floor for consideration.

There were attempts to bring it up.

They all failed.

And Governor Dunleavy expressed a lot of skepticism about, you know, the value of a pension system, basically saying that, he wasn't confident that workers wanted a pension, especially younger workers.

So, that will be a very interesting issue to watch this session.

As we noted earlier, Alaska politics have mirrored the nations more closely in recent years.

But in this election, it they trended differently, than most of the national results.

Talk about that.

Such an interesting dynamic.

It is so interesting, to see Alaska, at least with the votes that we have so far voting for Trump in larger numbers than in, 2020.

And yet having bipartisan majorities take control of both bodies.

And, the sense that I get is that national politics are different from local politics because, the issues are different.

Number one, you know, education funding is very close to home for a lot of people.

But also, you know, it's a lot more personal, right?

You know, our districts are pretty small.

It's possible for candidates to go around and knock on doors and have, you know, face to face conversations with people.

And I think that makes a big difference in a lot of these races in.

I was going to ask you both, and, Liz, please follow up here.

You spent a lot of time talking to voters throughout the summer across the state.

And did you hear from them, reasons as to why they would choose a very conservative candidate like Trump for president, but then pick more moderate choices in state races?

Well, I just wanted to say that, also, Mary Pell Tola, a Democrat, won by a greater margin in Alaska, substantially greater than, Kamala Harris did for president.

So it's, not just the, smaller legislative races.

Also, you know, there's a statewide trend there, too.

So what do people say about, some of those peculiar decisions?

One, I want to highlight one conversation I had with a voter in, in Selma.

She expressed a lot of very conservative opinions, you know, was a very strong supporter of Donald Trump.

But she was a she, she, she greatly preferred, the more moderate coalition, bipartisan coalition member for Senate, Jesse Bjorkman, because of sort of that one on one contact they've had, because, you know, she said that, you know, Jesse Bjorkman would, drive business to her booth or, you know, help her work through problems that she was having.

So that that dynamic, I think, is really something that we saw play out, in the race for legislature, face to face contact makes a difference.

Well, and that constituent service that the incumbent really has a chance to win over voters with good constituent service.

So Liz Donald, Donald Trump is again president elect.

What do you expect this could mean for future development here.

The Biden administration just this week announced new restrictions on a lease sale.

And and we're releasing the minimum number of acres for it.

Could the incoming administration revise that in the new year, or would it take a would it take longer to do something like that?

There's a back and forth every time the administration changes and it's, often not as easy as just, you know, reversing what the previous, president did, an environmental study, which this and my decision is based on, it has to stand up to a legal challenge.

It's, and I'm sorry to make a football analogy, but it's more like each administration tries to move the football down the field a little bit or a lot, get as far as they can, and then the next administration comes in and makes some gains of their own.

And sometimes there's the decisive, progress on a, on a project.

And more often we just see these sort of incremental changes on many, many of the Alaska, the big Alaska projects.

It'll be interesting to watch.

I imagine, and what I'm really interested in now is what's going to happen during the lame duck.

I know there are several projects around the state, several issues that advocates are gearing up to try to get, the Biden administration to take action on.

On the other hand, I, everything that the president can take quick and easy action on the next president can undo those things much easier if it requires a public process or administrative, you know, agency action.

It it, it's harder to undo.

But if, groups advocates are asking the Biden administration to, you know, do something quickly, those are the sorts of things that the next president could more easily undo.

Liz.

Senator Lisa murkowski finds herself in an interesting position with a second Trump term.

What do you think will play out with this dynamic?

Well, she is in a just a very interesting position because, she voted, of course, to convict, President Trump after January 6th.

And, he called her disloyal.

He tried to end her political career, you know, so she could be again in the crosshairs of the most powerful man in the world.

On the other hand, she got a lot of her, political agenda accomplished under the first Trump administration.

And, you know, a world of possibilities opens up for her as well.

So she's in an interesting spot.

And then because the US Senate has, flipped to majority Republican control, she is in the majority.

That's a huge difference, from being a minority senator.

And, you know, she's in a position to be a, chair of a committee again, possibly also a subcommittee.

This really ranges raises her stature and ability to get things done, as long as she can stay out of the crosshairs of the the president.

Russia, China and North Korea are increasingly aligned as interests in Arctic resources and transportation routes grows.

What could this new administration mean for military buildup here?

Well, I think that this, I think both, administrations were, waking up to the strategic importance of Alaska.

And I think that the Trump administration is likely to continue that, I don't know that the Trump administration, feels as much, the, you know, that the new administration will feel as much, incentive or ambition to hold Russia back.

Eric, turning to you, reporting by the Anchorage Daily News today raised the possibility that Governor Dunleavy may be offered a position in the new administration.

Former Governor Wally Hickel left state leadership to be interior secretary under Nixon.

What?

What are you hearing about this?

And whether Dunleavy would accept it?

What are your thoughts there?

Well, I mean, he has been a vocal supporter of Donald Trump in, some, some key areas.

He, I look back to 20, 20, we saw, you know, in sort of the chaos that followed, the, the election there as far as the stop the steal movement and things like that.

Don't leave.

His administration joined a lawsuit seeking to overturn the presidential election in some key states.

He's also, you know, been seen at campaign events.

He was at the rally at Madison Square Garden.

In fact, just this morning, we saw a, video from, President elect Donald Trump saying, you know, basically, saying that Governor Dudley V is doing a great job.

So it's, you know, it's definitely something that's that's possible.

And he as, as you said, has not ruled it out.

He did an interview with Alaska's news source, just after the election where he said, you know, I haven't been in touch with the Trump administration.

I haven't been in touch with, Trump or his people.

But, you know, if they if they called, I would be interested in having those discussions.

So it'll be interesting to see, whether he's offered a position or whether, you know, he's offered a position that he would take.

It's it's not, you know, necessarily clear to me that, he would be offered a position that, would be high enough on the org chart necessarily to, for him to, to step away from being governor.

But that's it's definitely something to watch.

Yeah.

Really an interesting dynamic playing out for sure.

And and Liz, what about Senator Dan Sullivan?

Do you think he may be under consideration for defense, State Department?

Well, this is all just speculation.

I suspect that no one really knows except for Donald Trump.

But, there I have heard speculation that he might be considered for appointments at, high level appointments at the Pentagon and the, state Department.

He was, an assistant secretary of state under George W Bush for economic matters.

He has, Senator Sullivan has, preserved his good relationship with, Donald Trump.

So, yes, he might be offered something.

Well, will, we'll wait and see what happens.

Thank you both so much for being on hand this evening.

The essence of democracy is compromise.

Many Alaskans are elated about the election outcomes.

Others will be disappointed.

But the way forward is the same as it always is, and the importance of coming together to find common ground for the future is how our country and our state gets things done.

That's it for this edition of Alaska Insight, visit our website.

Alaska public.org for breaking news and reports from our partner stations across the state.

While you're there, sign up for our free daily digest so you won't miss any of Alaska's top stories of the day.

Thanks for joining us this evening.

I'm Lori Townsend.

Good night.