Gov. Mike Dunleavy loves issuing press releases, appearing on right-wing TV, and having state employees front for him.

But he invents, or has the state employee who speaks for him invent, one excuse after another for why he can’t defend his record and debate former Gov. Bill Walker and former Rep. Les Gara. He claims to be too busy, which is laughable.

We’ve never had a governor in Alaska who was so afraid to engage in real give-and-take on the campaign trail or defend his record. We’ve rarely had a governor with so much to be defensive about. And we’ve never had a governor who has so blatantly used state employees and state resources as campaign tools, ignoring the state ethics law.

Dunleavy ducked another opportunity to discuss real issues Wednesday at the Southeast Conference meeting. Dunleavy claimed that his participation at the ground-breaking for a solar project in Mat-Su Wednesday morning kept him from taking part in the forum Wednesday afternoon electronically. He could have easily made this work.

Here is the Alaska Beacon coverage of the event. My one criticism of the coverage is that the Beacon and other news outlets need to stop treating Dunleavy underling Andrew Jensen as someone worth quoting and demand that Dunleavy speak for himself.

Jensen, a state employee, is not the candidate. The candidate is the guy hiding behind Jensen, a former editor of the Alaska Journal of Commerce who loves being the Dunleavy attack dog. Dunleavy’s inability or refusal to speak for himself is an untold story of the 2022 campaign.

In contrast to the no-show, watch the video below for what Gara and Walker, the two other leading candidates for governor, have to say about their vision for Alaska.