A third candidate is running for the Alaska State House district that includes the southern Kenai Peninsula and Kasilof. Alana Greear is a teacher at Kachemak-Selo School and lives near Homer. She filed a letter of intent on April 5 and is running as an independent.
Greear said she was considering getting a doctorate in education. However, Gov. Mike Dunleavy recently vetoed Senate Bill 140, which included a $680 increase to the base student allocation used to calculate education funding. When the state house didn’t override the veto, Greear decided to run for office.
“I realized that there was a lot of misconceptions about what a school district does and how public schools are so critical for the future of our state, for our state to remain the strong and dynamic place that it is,” she said, “I decided that it would be a wiser use of my time to run for office than to pursue my PhD.”
In addition to her experience as an educator, Greear also serves as a board member of the Kenai Peninsula Education Association, a teachers union for the area’s school district.
She says as a teacher, if elected, education will be a big part of what she will focus on. Greear also wants to put the Alaska Permanent Fund dividend into the state constitution in order to move on to other issues she believes to be important to people in the district. Fishing will also be a major issue she wants to focus on.
“I know that fishing is the heart of a big part of this district, and I would like to see some of the fishing policies become more in line with what's happening on the ground, in my district,” she said.
Greear is joining Anchor Point Chamber of Commerce president and business owner Dawson Slaughter in the race. Slaughter is running as a Republican. He announced his candidacy in January after Michael Daniel withdrew from the race. Slaughter says he is running in order to put his experience serving on various boards towards working with other legislators to pass policies that best represent the district.
“At the end of the day, it doesn't matter whether you're Republican or Democrat, undeclared, independent,” he said, “Representatives are supposed to represent all and then get that done down in, in Juneau.”
Incumbent Sarah Vance, R-Homer, filed her letter of intent to run last September. She has served as representative since 2019.
Vance could not be reached for comment at the time of airing.
The 2024 primary election for the state house race is on August 20, and the general election will be on November 5. Under Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system, the top-four vote getters in the primary advance to the general election where voters will rank each candidate.
