Alaska gubernatorial election, 1998
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The 1998 Alaska gubernatorial general election took place on November 3, 1998. The election resulted in a landslide for the Democratic incumbent, Tony Knowles, who had won the 1994 gubernatorial election by only 536 votes.[1][2] Knowles was the first incumbent governor to attain re-election since 1978.[3] As of 2016, this is the most recent election in which a Democrat was elected Governor of Alaska.
Incumbent Democratic governor Tony Knowles was up for re-election. On the Republican side, three major candidates jockeyed for the nomination: businessman John Howard Lindauer, state senator Robin Taylor, and Wayne A. Ross. Lindauer won the open primary election, with Taylor coming in second. Jim Sykes, founder of the Green Party of Alaska, ran on that party's ticket, but Desa Jacobsson later replaced him on the ballot. Ray Metcalfe, a defecting Republican who had founded the Republican Moderate Party of Alaska, also ran.
Lindauer's campaign faltered late into the race as a result of his failure to disclose that his wife, a wealthy Chicago lawyer, had financed the bulk of his campaign.[4] As a result of this revelation, the Republicans withdrew their support of Lindauer [5] and backed Robin Taylor, the runner-up of the Republican primary, as a write-in candidate. Due to the lateness of this change, the Republicans unsuccessfully attempted to obtain a court order to delay the election.[6] The collapse of Lindauer's campaign resulted in a three-way split of the Republican vote between him, Taylor, and the Republican Moderate Metcalfe.
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