But What Can You Do? tracks where 2026 candidates stand on U.S. weapons and funding for the government of Israel. How we check

Eric Hafner

Democrat · U.S. House, Alaska District 1
✓From their own words
How this mark works

We track key votes on sending U.S. weapons and money to the government of Israel. A check means every tracked vote they cast came down against sending more, on the side of peace and de-escalation. A question mark means a mixed record: they sided with sending up to half of the time. An X means they voted to send more weapons and money in over half of their tracked votes, even as the way those weapons and dollars were being used became more and more obvious. At exactly half, money this election cycle from a lobbying group we track, or an endorsement from a group that backs sending weapons, makes it an X. Only votes actually cast are counted. Where a candidate has no recorded votes on these bills, the mark comes instead from a reviewed reading of their public record (money from the lobbying groups we track, endorsements, and their own words since January 26, 2024). There an X also covers fully backing the conduct of the war by the government of Israel without significant reservations, and a question mark also covers speaking about Israel without saying clearly where they stand on U.S. weapons and funding. A dash means No Position Found: we found nothing in their own words about Israel, Gaza or the war.

See a dash? Ask the candidate where they stand, then send us their answer and we'll review it and update the mark. Or volunteer to help review candidates.

No recorded votes on the bills we track. In their own words on September 20, 2026.

Asked in 2026 what U.S. military aid to the government of Israel should be, Hafner answered in one word: “abolished”. In 2024 he said “I don’t think America should have started supplying arms” and called for an immediate cease fire. Nothing located has him addressing U.S. aid to Palestinians.

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Deep Dive

Eric Hafner's answer on this question in this election is one word. Alaska Public Media, KTOO, the Alaska Beacon and the Anchorage Daily News built a joint candidate questionnaire for this year's election and asked everyone running for Alaska's seat in the U.S. House to finish the sentence "U.S. military aid to Israel should be ____." He answered: “abolished”. He wrote nothing else in the box, and he set no condition and named no sum.

Eric Hafner is the registered Democrat on Alaska’s November ballot. He is serving a federal sentence in New York and is set to be released in 2036, having pleaded guilty in 2022 to charges of making threats against police officers, judges and others. In the candidate information he filed with the state he gave the same South Dakota mailing address and New York phone number as his mother, Carol Hafner, and the Associated Press reported that neither of them has any apparent ties to Alaska. On November 3, 2026 the seat is filled by ranked-choice voting, and the ballot carries Nick Begich, the Republican incumbent, Hafner, Jim McDermott, a Libertarian, and Bill Hill, who is registered nonpartisan. All four reached it through Alaska’s top-four primary of August 18, 2026, whose results were certified on August 31, 2026. Hafner finished fourth with 3.8 percent and reached the ballot when the third-place Democrat withdrew.

He said the same thing at greater length two years earlier, and that is where his reasoning is. The Alaska Beacon put the same fifteen questions to every candidate for this seat and printed the replies under each candidate’s own name. Asked what the United States should do to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict, Hafner wrote eight short sentences. “After involvement, it’s difficult to backpaddle,” he began, and “I don’t think America should have started supplying arms.” The government of Israel, he wrote, is very capable of defending itself & has a trained military to do so. He said the Middle East has been in conflict for generations, that we don’t want innocent individuals harmed or killed and have not prevented it, and that “Innocent children, especially those in hospitals have died.” He closed by calling for an immediate cease fire. He did not say what the United States should send to Palestinians, and the form asked him nothing else on the subject.

Those two answers are the whole of his record here, and they point the same way. Ballotpedia records that he has completed none of its candidate surveys in 2024, 2025 or 2026. He has no campaign site that opens: the site his earlier campaign used has been deleted by its authors, and the erichafner.com address now loads a search engine. The statement he filed for Alaska’s 2026 official election pamphlet is published by the Division of Elections at an address that will not open from here by any route, and it is the one place anything further from him in this cycle would most likely be found. Its address, and everything else our research reached, is on his research page.

The money

Checked the five lobbying groups we track; no direct 2026 support found

2026 support from the five lobbying groups we track
Nothing recorded (as of 2026-09-27) from the five lobbying groups we track; earlier cycles and earmarked donations not yet tracked.
Support-only OpenFEC data. Opposition independent expenditures are excluded.

In their words

“After involvement, it's difficult to backpaddle. I don't think America should have started supplying arms. Israel is very capable of defending itself & has a trained military to do so.”
Source ↗, 2024-07-25
“For generations, the Middle East has been in conflict. No, we don't want innocent individuals harmed or killed. But we haven't prevented that. Innocent children, especially those in hospitals have died. Call for an immediate cease fire.”
Source ↗, 2024-07-25
“abolished”
Source ↗, 2026-09-20

Research log

The notes behind this card: what we looked at, what we found, and where each item came from.

Every page named below was opened and read on 2026-09-20 unless the entry says otherwise. Bands: Position (2024-01-26 onward), Reaction window (2023-10-07 to 2024-01-25), Earlier record (before 2023-10-07), Undated. Hafner has never held office, so none of the congressional votes this site tracks is his, and no funding from the committees this site tracks is recorded on this record.

U.S. military aid and weapons to the government of Israel

  • [Position, read 2026-09-20; the guide published ahead of the August 2026 primary] His answer in this election, and it is one word. The joint 2026 voter guide built by Alaska Public Media, KTOO, the Alaska Beacon and the Anchorage Daily News asked every candidate for this seat to complete the sentence "U.S. military aid to Israel should be ____." His answer is: "abolished". Nothing else was written in the box: no condition, no sum, no timetable. The guide carries no publication date of its own and is dated here to the day it was read; the questionnaire was put to the candidates before the August 18, 2026 primary. This is the freshest and the most direct thing he has said on the subject, and it agrees with the longer answer he gave in 2024.
  • [Position, 2024-07-25] The Alaska Beacon's voter guide for this seat in 2024, which put fifteen questions to every candidate and printed the answers under each candidate's own name. Asked "What should the United States do to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict?", Hafner answered in full: "After involvement, it's difficult to backpaddle. I don't think America should have started supplying arms. Israel is very capable of defending itself & has a trained military to do so. For generations, the Middle East has been in conflict. No, we don't want innocent individuals harmed or killed. But we haven't prevented that. Innocent children, especially those in hospitals have died. Call for an immediate cease fire." That is one paragraph, printed unbroken, and it is the whole of his answer. The guide's live address refuses to open here. The Internet Archive's copy of July 25, 2024 and its copy of July 5, 2026 both open and carry the answer word for word, and Ballotpedia reproduces the same answer under his name, citing the Beacon guide as its source. On the date: the guide carries no published date on its face, Ballotpedia's footnote cites it as July 29, 2024, and the earliest archived copy that already carries this answer was taken on July 25, 2024, so that is the date used here.
  • [Position, read 2026-09-20] Nothing else in the 2026 cycle. Ballotpedia records that he completed none of its Candidate Connection surveys in 2024, 2025 or 2026. iVoterGuide's profile of him for this year's Alaska primary carries the question "Is the United States' relationship with Israel important, and if so why?" and every answer on the form, including that one, reads "Did not answer"; every biography field reads "Candidate did not provide". A form nobody filled in is a fact about the guide, not about the candidate.
  • [Earlier record] None located. He ran in Hawaii in 2016 and in Oregon in 2018; the answers he gave Ballotpedia's 2018 survey are about policing, drug policy, housing, banking and prisons, and none of them is about what the United States sends to the government of Israel or to Palestinians.
  • [Reaction window] Nothing located. He was not a candidate in Alaska in those weeks and nothing dated between October 7, 2023 and January 25, 2024 was found for him anywhere.

U.S. aid to Palestinians

  • Nothing located, at any date. His 2024 answer speaks about civilians and about children in hospitals but says nothing about humanitarian funding for Gaza, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or the aid pipeline, and no other source read for this card carries a statement by him on it.

Characterization of the conflict

  • [Position, 2024-07-25] From the same answer: "For generations, the Middle East has been in conflict. No, we don't want innocent individuals harmed or killed. But we haven't prevented that. Innocent children, especially those in hospitals have died. Call for an immediate cease fire." That is his whole characterization in his own words.

Related rhetoric and lobbying

  • Nothing located, at any date. No statement by him about the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, about any other advocacy organization on this subject, or about money connected to any of them was found.

Safety and antisemitism (context, not a position on what America sends)

  • Nothing located, at any date. No statement by him about antisemitism or about the safety of Jewish communities was found in any source read for this card.

What the campaign site and his own pages say

  • [Read 2026-09-20] His entry in the joint 2026 voter guide is the only thing he has published in this cycle that could be read here. The guide sits inside the page as a separate application and renders its text in the browser, so it is not in the page's own markup and a plain reading of the address does not reach it; the answers were read in a browser and from the application's own data at https://app.electup.com/api/v2/embed/fd4b753c-7235-4437-ba20-2f924a118266/ballot. He answered the Israel item and, on the same form, left every other item unanswered.
  • [Read 2026-09-20] There is no campaign site that opens. https://erichafnerforcongress.wordpress.com/issues/ , which Ballotpedia lists among his external links, returns 410 with the message that the authors have deleted the site; the Internet Archive holds copies of that address from 2018 and 2022 and both are the same 410 page, so there is nothing behind it to read. http://www.erichafner.com , also listed by Ballotpedia, is a 340-byte frameset that loads a search engine and carries no content of his; it is an http address in any case, which this site does not link.
  • [Read 2026-09-20] https://elections.alaska.gov/doc/oep/2026/HAFNER,%20ERIC_US%20Rep_Eng_06.25.26-PWeb.pdf , his candidate statement in Alaska's 2026 official election pamphlet, as iVoterGuide links it. The Division of Elections host refuses every way in that was tried, and a browser is met with a human-verification page. Nobody has read it for this card. It is the one document that could add a 2026 answer from him, and it is named here for that reason.

The race

  • [Read 2026-09-20] Ballotpedia's page for Alaska's at-large district: "Incumbent Nicholas Begich (R), Eric Hafner (D), Jim McDermott (L), and Bill Hill (Nonpartisan) are running in the general election for U.S. House Alaska At-large District on November 3, 2026." Its page for the primary gives the filing deadline as June 1, 2026 and the top-four primary as August 18, 2026, and records the results as certified: Nicholas Begich 44.6 percent and 72,696 votes, Bill Hill 32.5 percent and 53,008, Eric Hafner 3.8 percent and 6,175, Jim McDermott 1.2 percent and 1,951, out of 162,932 votes cast among fifteen candidates.
  • [Read 2026-09-20] The Alaska Beacon's account of how the field was settled, by James Brooks, published September 2, 2026 and read on https://www.ktoo.org/2026/09/02/in-alaskas-u-s-house-race-a-libertarian-and-a-federal-inmate-advance-after-late-withdrawals/, which carries it. Under Alaska's system every candidate runs in one primary, the top four advance, and in November voters rank them; if a candidate takes more than half of the first choices they win outright, and otherwise the last-placed candidate is eliminated and those votes are redistributed. If a top-four finisher withdraws, the next finisher takes the place. Matt Schultz, third with 8.1 percent, withdrew before the deadline, which moved Hafner into third place on the ballot; John Williams, fifth, Clay Strickland, sixth, and Yaquelin Reynoso, seventh, also withdrew, which is how the eighth-place finisher, McDermott, reached the ballot. The article says the official results were published that Monday, which was August 31, 2026.
  • [Position, 2026-08-26] The Guardian's report, from the Associated Press, of his advancing from the primary. It records that he is a registered Democrat serving a federal sentence in New York, set to be released in 2036, who pleaded guilty in 2022 to charges of making threats against police officers, judges and others; that he also ran in 2024 and reached that general election ballot despite a challenge from the Alaska Democratic Party; and that in the candidate information he filed with the state he listed the same Box Elder, South Dakota, mailing address and New York phone number as his mother, Carol Hafner, neither of them having any apparent ties to Alaska. It notes that his advancing is likely to draw a further legal challenge, because the Constitution requires a member to be an inhabitant of the state when elected.
  • [Position, 2026-06-02] The Alaska Story, "News of the weird: The Hafners are back on Alaska's ballot", by Suzanne Downing, June 2, 2026. It adds that he is serving a twenty-year sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, New York, that he has previously sought office in Hawaii and Oregon, and that his mother filed this year for Alaska's U.S. Senate seat. Nothing in it touches this subject.

Places that could not be read, so nothing is claimed from them

  • https://elections.alaska.gov/doc/oep/2026/HAFNER,%20ERIC_US%20Rep_Eng_06.25.26-PWeb.pdf , his own 2026 candidate statement. The host returns 405 to both retrieval routes and shows a human-verification page to a browser. Nothing is claimed from it.
  • https://alaskabeacon.com/race-details/u-s-house-of-representatives-candidates-election-2024/ , the live address of the 2024 voter guide. It refuses every way in that was tried and shows a security-check page in a browser. The Internet Archive's copies of July 25, 2024 and July 5, 2026 open and are what this page links.
  • https://erichafnerforcongress.wordpress.com/issues/ returns 410; the authors deleted the site, and the archived copies of that address are the same 410 page.
  • http://www.erichafner.com loads a frameset pointing at a search engine and carries nothing of his.
  • No social media account of his was found or read.

Not on the card, and why

  • His prison sentence, his release date, his mailing address and the legal challenges to his candidacy. All of it is set out in the deep dive and above because a voter deciding how to rank this ballot needs it, but none of it is an answer to what the United States sends. Nothing about it is on the fifty-word front.
  • His 2018 Ballotpedia survey answers about policing, drugs, housing, banking and prisons. Out of scope, and from a campaign in another state.
  • iVoterGuide's unanswered form. A page of "Did not answer" is a fact about the guide's coverage, not about the candidate.
  • The answers other candidates gave on the same Alaska Beacon page. Fifteen candidates answer the same question there; only the answer under his own heading is his.
  • The records of Nick Begich, Jim McDermott and Bill Hill. No one else's record is narrated on this card.

Sources retrieved for this card (address; opened or could not open; date)

  • https://alaskapublic.org/news/2026-alaska-primary#/alaska-us-house/candidate/eric-hafner (opened; 2026-09-20; his entry in the joint 2026 voter guide, read in a browser and from the application's own data at https://app.electup.com/api/v2/embed/fd4b753c-7235-4437-ba20-2f924a118266/ballot; the guide carries no publication date)
  • https://ballotpedia.org/Eric_Hafner (opened; 2026-09-20)
  • https://web.archive.org/web/20240725171647/https://alaskabeacon.com/race-details/u-s-house-of-representatives-candidates-election-2024/ (opened; 2026-09-20; copy taken 2024-07-25)
  • https://web.archive.org/web/20260705012501/https://alaskabeacon.com/race-details/u-s-house-of-representatives-candidates-election-2024/ (opened; 2026-09-20; copy taken 2026-07-05)
  • https://alaskabeacon.com/race-details/u-s-house-of-representatives-candidates-election-2024/ (could not open; 2026-09-20; read through the Internet Archive)
  • https://ballotpedia.org/Alaska%27s_At-Large_Congressional_District (opened; 2026-09-20)
  • https://ballotpedia.org/United_States_House_election_in_Alaska,_2026_%28August_18_top-four_primary%29 (opened; 2026-09-20)
  • https://www.ktoo.org/2026/09/02/in-alaskas-u-s-house-race-a-libertarian-and-a-federal-inmate-advance-after-late-withdrawals/ (opened; 2026-09-20; published 2026-09-02)
  • https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/26/alaska-us-house-primary-federal-prisoner-eric-hafner (opened; 2026-09-20; published 2026-08-26)
  • https://thealaskastory.com/news-of-the-weird-the-hafners-are-back-on-alaskas-ballot/ (opened; 2026-09-20; published 2026-06-02)
  • https://ivoterguide.com/candidate/31981/race/27433/election/1416 (opened; 2026-09-20; profile for the Alaska primary of 2026-08-18)
  • https://erichafnerforcongress.wordpress.com/issues/ (could not open, 410; 2026-09-20)
  • http://www.erichafner.com (opened and empty of content; 2026-09-20)
  • https://elections.alaska.gov/doc/oep/2026/HAFNER,%20ERIC_US%20Rep_Eng_06.25.26-PWeb.pdf (could not open; 2026-09-20)
  • This is a record of what was checked on 2026-09-20, not a claim that no other statement exists.

Also in this race

  1. ✗ Nick Begich III (Republican)
  2. ? Bill Hill (Independent)
  3. ✗ Jim McDermott (Libertarian)

All Alaska candidates.

But What Can You Do? tracks where 2026 candidates stand on U.S. weapons and funding for the government of Israel. Every claim on this page goes through at least two verification steps. Open Find Your Candidates for votes, funding and contact details.