Shelley Hughes

Shelley Hughes (born January 6, 1958) is an American politician who served as a Republican member of the Alaska Senate from 2017 to 2025. Hughes represented Palmer and other parts of the southern Matanuska-Susitna Borough. She was a member of the Alaska House of Representatives from January 18, 2013, until January 22, 2017.

Career Hughes has an AA from Cuyahoga Community College and a BA from the University of Alaska.

Alaska House of Representatives Hughes was appointed to the Alaska State House of Representatives by Governor Sean Parnell, succeeding the late Representative Carl Gatto, who died on April 10, 2012. Hughes was then elected to the Alaska House of Representatives in 2012, beating Daniel Hamm in the primary election.

Alaska Senate Hughes was first elected to the Alaska Senate in its 2016 election. In 2021, she was chosen to be the majority leader of the Alaska Senate. She resigned from the Senate in November 2025 in order to focus on her gubernatorial campaign.

Health care In September 2021, Hughes was part of a panel of Alaska legislators focused on health care. Hughes argued that Alaska was "the highest cost location on the globe" for the cost of drug and medical treatment, and said she was looking at pharmacy benefit management and increased price transparency as ways to keep costs down.

Transgender athletes In May 2021, Hughes introduced a bill into the Alaska Senate that would ban transgender women and girls from playing in women's sports. The bill required that public schools, or private schools with teams that compete against public schools, have gender-segregated sporting teams and that any participant on the girls' team "must be female, based on the participant's biological sex." Because the bill was introduced in the final few weeks of the legislative session, Hughes announced that she would push for it in the next legislative session instead.

Electoral history

2020

2016

2014

2012