Participants at the 2026 Alaska Republican Party State Convention at the Soldotna Field House in Soldotna on Saturday, May 9, 2026. (Iris Samuels/ADN)
SOLDOTNA — Alaska Republican Party leaders on Saturday reelected Carmela Warfield to continue serving as chair, two years after she was first chosen for the role.
The vote took place during a statewide convention in Soldotna, where more than 200 delegates from across the state gathered under garlands of Alaska and U.S. flags to update the party platform and hobnob with both elected officials and candidates.
Warfield was challenged for the chairmanship by Zackary Gottshall, who called on Alaska GOP leaders to do more to oppose elected Alaska Republicans who work across the political aisle.
Warfield beat Gottshall in a 165-45 vote, after Gottshall accused Warfield of appearing “more focused on building personal political visibility and securing endorsements for another term than organizing a serious effort to replace the seven Republican legislators caucusing with Democrats or challenge Sen. Lisa Murkowski.”
Warfield, ahead of Saturday’s vote, said “the Alaska Republican Party is stronger when we focus on what unites us instead of what divides us.”
Alaska Republican Party leaders on Saturday reelected Carmela Warfield to continue serving as chair. (Iris Samuels/ADN)
Warfield now enters her third year at the helm of Alaska’s largest political organization. She has tightly controlled the party’s public image, declining numerous interview requests from the Daily News during her tenure.
In a departure from the norm, Warfield allowed reporters to attend only five hours out of the two-day convention, denying reporters access to debates on the party rules and a forum featuring several gubernatorial candidates.
Cheerful party staffers were stationed at the entrance to the Soldotna Field House to ensure no reporters had access to the building beyond the allotted window.
But during a brief window of access, divisions over the GOP’s direction and operations were on full display. Delegates spent roughly an hour debating whether to add a sentence to the party platform supporting “granting personhood of the unborn at conception.” The motion ultimately failed 89-109.
Factions of the Alaska GOP have long been critical of elected party members who work with Democrats or deviate from the party platform, which already formally opposes same-sex marriage and abortion access, and supports teaching “the historical Judeo-Christian foundation” of the U.S. in schools.
The party has a long history of attempting to keep its elected members in line and punishing those who stray.
Party leaders in 2021 censured Murkowski, a Republican who has served in the U.S. Senate since 2002, after she voted to impeach President Donald Trump. They also voted in 2021 to censure Republican Eagle River state lawmaker Kelly Merrick after she supported a bipartisan coalition in the Alaska House. But after both Murkowski and Merrick won reelection in 2022, defeating party-backed challengers from the right, party leaders promised to turn away from censuring GOP candidates for a period of at least two years.
Since then, the number of Republicans in the Legislature joining bipartisan legislative coalitions has grown, despite party leaders’ consternation.
In the Alaska Senate, a 14-member bipartisan majority includes five Republicans. In the House, the 21-member majority includes two Republicans. Republican leaders of the bipartisan coalitions did not attend the Saturday convention.
Under Warfield’s leadership, the Alaska Republican Party has aligned itself closely with Trump, who in turn has endorsed Warfield, along with U.S. Rep. Nick Begich and U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, who are running for reelection this year.
Trump has also voiced support for the repeal of Alaska’s open primary and ranked choice voting system, which has weakened the party’s tight control over candidate selection.
Both opponents and supporters of Alaska’s voting system, which was adopted by Alaskans in 2020 and withstood a repeal effort in 2024, say it had aided moderate political candidates who are willing to work across the political aisle, ensuring they can more easily withstand challengers from the right.
The Alaska GOP has made repealing the voting system a key tenet of its efforts in the 2026 election. A successful repeal would enable the party to again assert more control over the Republican primary process,
Party leaders on Saturday also elected Jason Perry, a Baptist pastor, as the new Alaska GOP vice chair. Perry received 161 votes in a three-way race against Paul Bauer Jr., a former Anchorage Assembly member who received 23 votes, and Jeanne Reveal, a party district chair on the Kenai Peninsula who received 22 votes.
Voting on party leaders and resolutions was almost derailed — again — by party leaders’ concerns over using an online system to tally the votes of more than 220 delegates.
Several party members said they wanted to use paper ballots instead of “clickers” that allow delegates to cast votes in real time. A similar motion was made during the 2024 convention.
But the idea this year was met with exasperation and outright derision from some longtime party members. Brett Huber — state director for Alaska’s chapter of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative advocacy group — openly chided some of the delegates.
“Everybody agrees on God and country. Everybody. And then we forget that and fight amongst ourselves,” said Huber.
“If we remember what brought us here — God and country — and we quit misbehaving, we may win,” he added.