No major changes in Valley races following updated Alaska primary count

A handful of Valley candidates who jumped out to a lead on election night have a stronger advantage with the latest list of numbers released by the Alaska Division of Elections Tuesday evening.

House Republican incumbents David Eastman, George Rauscher and DeLena Johnson, and Senate Republican incumbent David Wilson have extended their leads in the Alaska primary. Eastman, who currently holds the District 10 seat in the Alaska House of Representatives, is part of the most contested battle in the Mat-Su Borough. Following election night, Eastman held a mere 79-vote advantage over his challenger, Mat-Su Borough Assemblyman Jesse Sumner. Eastman has stretched his lead to 125 votes, with 1,459 votes compared to Sumner’s 1,134.

Rauscher added 20 votes to his lead over challenger Luke Howard in the House District 9 race. The incumbent now has 1,26 points, compared to Howard’s 857.

Johnson added about 300 votes to hear lead over challenger Alex Fetta in the race for House District 11, and now has 1,740 total votes.

In the six-horse race for the Republican nod in Senate District D, Wilson added to his lead over Stephen Wright, who has stood in second place. Wilson now has 1,643 total votes. Wright has 1,241. Wilson pushed his lead from 249 votes on election night to 402. Loy Thurman has 1,070 total votes. The remaining three candidates have less than 500 votes each.

Kevin McCabe is another step closer to upsetting incumbent Mark Neuman in the race for the Republican nomination in House District 8. McCabe now has 1,694 votes, and extended his lead from 568 on election night to 740 Tuesday night.

In the race for the spot outgoing representative Colleen Sullivan-Leonard has held in the House District 7 Republican race, Christopher Kurka now has 1,626 votes and a 912-vote advantage over Lynn Gattis, who served in the House from 2013-2017.

The Alaska primary included several uncontested races in the Mat-Su Borough.

In the House, Republican incumbent Cathy Tilton earned her spot on the general election ballot once again in District 12. Democrats Alma Hartley (District 8), Bill Johnson (District 9), Monica Stein-Olson (District 10), Andrea Hackbarth (District 11) and Danny Gray (District 12) will also be on the ballot in November.

In the Senate the list includes Thomas Lamb in the Democratic race for Senate District D, and Republican incumbent Shelley Hughes in Senate District F and Democrat Stephany Jeffers in Senate District F.

Alaskans cast 57,097 ballots in person on primary Election Day, accounting for 9.7 percent of the 588,341 total registered voters in Alaska. However, the Division of Elections provided 62,498 total absentee and absentee by mail ballots during this election cycle and accepted 30,793 in full out of the 31,523 total ballots that were received. The largest number of absentee ballots cast in Alaska history could have an effect on numerous races once counted.

Ballots will be counted until Aug. 28.

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