Report used to justify reinstatement of Alaska Republican governor candidate appears flawed

Rep. Andrew Gray of Anchorage is not a Swiss businessman. Speaker of the House Bryce Edgmon is not selling fire sprinkler systems. Lieutenant governor candidate Zac Johnson isn’t running an equestrian fox-hunting club in Indiana.

Days after the Alaska Department of Law said it found possible gaps in dozens of political candidates’ financial disclosure forms, a review by the Alaska Beacon and interviews with the affected candidates found many of the problems identified by the department either don’t exist, rely on old information, or amount to minor errors. 

“I’ve talked to probably 10 legislators, and probably eight of them had something on that list that was just bogus,” said Rep. Julie Coulombe, R-Anchorage and one of the candidates in the report, “property they don’t even own anymore, businesses they don’t own, and yet they’re on the list.”

The department’s errors matter because Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, who administers the state’s elections, used the Department of Law report on Sept. 4 as justification to restore Republican governor candidate Treg Taylor and state House candidate Jose Tagle to Alaska’s general election ballot. 

“On the basis of that additional information, the Lieutenant Governor will certify the two candidates,” said a statement released by Dahlstrom’s office at the time. 

That restoration reversed one Dahlstrom took just five days before. On Aug. 31, Dahlstrom followed recommendations from the Alaska Public Offices Commission and disqualified Taylor and Tagle based on the fact that they had not submitted full Public Official Financial Disclosure forms within a 30-day deadline set by state law.

Taylor, a former attorney general who used to lead the Department of Law, had been asked in 2025 to provide a list of tenants at his rental properties in Anchorage. He did not provide a partial list until late July, about three weeks before the primary election.

“My biggest issue is that APOC never reached out to me with any discrepancies when I filed the disclosure,” Coulombe said. “And so the difference with Treg (Taylor) is that he knew that there was an issue and chose not to change it.”

The Department of Law’s review was extraordinary. When they register to run for office, candidates are required to submit a form listing their personal finances from the previous year. If they don’t submit one, they cannot run. Normally, any gaps in a disclosure only come to light when someone files a complaint with the commission.

Officials with the Department of Law said at a Monday news conference with Dahlstrom and Gov. Mike Dunleavy that they initiated their review last week, expediting it ahead of ballot printing deadlines.

Rachel Witty, director of the civil division of the Department of Law, said the review was done in the course of a day and a half. 

“So I can’t emphasize enough that this is a preliminary review. We didn’t have time to contact candidates. We didn’t have time to verify every apparent match. Nor is it our role to do that. There might be mistaken identities. It was not conducted with the kind of due diligence that APOC would do before making a determination that someone had violated the law.”  

Witty said paralegals, not attorneys, conducted a search by reviewing business licensing databases, property records, and a large national database called TLOXP. 

It’s unclear whether APOC, the agency that regulates financial and political disclosures, will follow up with candidates or take any enforcement actions. 

Among the candidates flagged for review were all four lieutenant governor candidates and all four candidates for governor.

Republican candidates Dave Bronson and Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, through a campaign spokesperson, denied the department’s findings, and defended their financial disclosures. Kreiss-Tomkins immediately corrected one error that was identified.

Taylor and Republican Bernadette Wilson did not respond to requests for comment. 

“This is getting more absurd by the moment,” said Edgmon when informed by the Beacon that the Department of Law had identified him as director and president of Inland Empire Fire Protection, a fire sprinkler company in Spokane, Washington.

That company is a subsidiary of Choggiung, Ltd., an Alaska Native corporation based in Dillingham. 

Until 2017, Edgmon served as chairman of the board for Choggiung, but he hasn’t been in that role for almost a decade. 

“I’ve never had a personal relationship with them,” he said of the fire sprinkler company.

The Department of Law report also said Edgmon failed to properly disclose some rental properties in Dillingham — they’re listed, but in the “debts” section of the report, rather than under “interests.”

The Department of Law flagged Rep. Will Stapp, R-Fairbanks, as possibly being the owner of William B Stapp LLC but also noted that the firm was dissolved in 2015, five years before Stapp first ran for office.

“I’m not actually sure why they even flagged me,” Stapp said on Friday.

Rep. Andrew Gray, D-Anchorage, published a video on social media after the report listed him as owning a business in Switzerland. Gray said he’s both never been to Switzerland and never owned a business. 

In a comment posted by Fairbanks writer Dermot Cole, independent state House candidate Joy Beth Cottle of Fairbanks said that the Department of Law review incorrectly flagged her as having an out-of-date disclosure form. 

Cottle filed to run for office in 2025, a year ahead of the deadline, and thus filed a form covering the 2024 tax year. State law doesn’t require an updated POFD in that case. Several other candidates were dinged for the same reason. 

Cottle also noted that she was linked to a property she “sold in 2013 and has since burnt to the ground and changed owners several times. I drove by and took a picture of it — it’s a vacant lot.”

In Anchorage, Coulombe said she was faulted for not listing her husband’s last name. After 40-plus years of marriage, she said, she thought it would be assumed that they had the same last name.

She was also faulted for listing only the zip code of a rental property. She’s since submitted a revised form to fix the problem.

“If a mistake or something happened, then OK, email me and I’ll fix it,” Coulombe said. “But you know, the whole idea of putting this big list out like we’re all hiding something is just — I have no words for that.”

Coulombe and other legislators named in the report said they are suspicious of the way the Department of Law and Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration handled it.

Anchorage Republican Sen. Cathy Giessel was surprised to hear she was flagged by the review. The department said she failed to disclose being a director of Anchorage Community Mental Health Services, Inc., but that is the old name of the Anchorage Behavioral Health which was changed in 2020. Giessel is president of the board, which is listed on her disclosure report. 

“Well, see, the Department of Law is going after anyone that is not a staunch radical right Republican,” she said. “So that is really immaterial to me.”

The list of candidates in the department’s review include 24 Democrats, 49 Republicans and 17 independents.

“I have huge concerns about what the Dunleavy administration is doing with the departments under its control,” she said. “This is unbelievable — the overreach that’s happening, the inappropriate behavior, the obvious interference in elections. It’s no wonder, many of my constituents, as I knock door-to-door, don’t trust this election system because they’re seeing all of this, very — I’ll call it ‘very unusual’ in quotes — behavior by state government and the federal government.”

Witty responded to Giessel’s comment by email on Friday.

“I have worked for the Department of Law for 20 years, through five administrations, and I can tell you unequivocally, that what occurred last week was not motivated by politics. The informal review was done completely internally by line level staff who only want to do good work for the people of Alaska,” she said. “The list includes candidates from all party affiliations and does not target one political party over another. By its nature, it had to be done on an extremely expedited timeline and could not be as thorough as anyone would have wanted it to be. We have been very open that the list likely contained errors and we have consistently messaged this to the candidates and to the public. However, the preliminary findings contained enough potential discrepancies to raise questions about whether the law was being applied fairly across the field of candidates. The bottom line is that candidates were added back onto the ballot and the field remains broad — allowing voters to have the final say.”