Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly President Brent Johnson has decided to challenge District 6 incumbent Sarah Vance for her Alaska State House seat. Assembly President Johnson filed his letter of intent to run for the seat on April 15.
According to Johnson, he will run as a non-partisan candidate. He said he did not originally intend to run for the seat, but felt compelled to after Rep. Vance cast a vote not to override Governor Mike Dunleavy’s veto of Senate Bill 140, which included a $680 increase to the state’s Base Student Allocation.
“I didn’t want to make the jump,” Johnson said. “I had a number of people asking me to, and I thought, ‘I’m on the assembly and I feel like I’m doing the world good here.’ I was following the education bill, and I saw that the governor vetoed it, and then I saw that the override failed by one vote. [Then] I saw that our District 6 representative voted not to override, and I said that’s it, I’ve got to get on board and get involved. And so that’s what pushed me over the edge.”
Johnson, a Clam Gulch resident for over 60 years, lives at the northern end of House District 6, which extends from Kasilof down to the southern end of the Kenai Peninsula.
The sitting assembly president says he intends to help the legislature protect the state’s education funding, specifically the Base Student Allocation, from inflation. “I’m just going to support education. I want to fund education adequately, and then I want to make the base student allocation inflation-proof so that it increases that as inflation increases so we don’t have to go through this nightmare every year.”
In 2009, Johnson was nominated to the Board of Fisheries by Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, but his appointment was not confirmed by the state legislature.
Two others have already declared that they will run for the seat against Vance. They are Anchor Point Chamber of Commerce president Dawson Slaughter and Kachemak-Selo School teacher Alana Greear.
The 2024 primary election for the state house race is on August 20.
