Jay Sterner Hammond (July 21, 1922 – August 2, 2005) was an American politician of the Republican Party, who served as the fourth governor of Alaska from 1974 to 1982.

Hammond was born in Troy, New York and served as a Marine Corps fighter pilot in World War II with the Black Sheep Squadron.

One was a reversal of roles of sorts, where Hammond and his running mate Lowell Thomas Jr. were identified as conservationists, confusing and splitting the traditional party base.

Since the early 1980s, the Permanent Fund has paid annual dividends to Alaska residents, under a program in which credit has been variously given to, or taken by, Hammond, Malone, Libertarian state representative Dick Randolph and numerous other Alaskan politicians of the day.

[2] The elimination of the income tax was actually championed by Randolph, who persuaded his fellow legislators to pass the bill after mounting an initiative to force a public vote should the legislature not act.

This was mocked by one legislator as "Spendy Limitation," with an accompanying elegant and obfuscatory statement mimicking Hammond's unique way with the English language.

While greater aspects of the program have been variously condemned as a "boondoggle" over the years, Delta Junction has managed to emerge as one of the larger agricultural producing communities in Alaska.

He also vigorously fought with the legislature over power struggles between the two branches of government, culminating with four proposed constitutional amendments on the 1980 ballot, all of which failed by large margins.

Hammond survived a rafting accident on August 6, 1988, while shooting an episode of the series on the Tana River in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park.

Apart from launching the political career of Mark Neuman, who proclaimed himself to be one of the few ordinary people amongst the delegates[6] and who was elected to the state house later that year, little was accomplished by the conference in the end.

Hammond spent much of the conference holding court outside of the Wood Center ballroom where sessions were held,[7] espousing his own solutions, which included doubling the amount of the Permanent Fund dividend and restoring the state income tax, the latter of which was strongly opposed by Murkowski.

[9] Several weeks after the conference, Hammond spoke before Commonwealth North, proclaiming that he would spend $50,000 of his own money if necessary to campaign for his dividend and income tax plan.