Over the holiday weekend, Emily Goodykoontz and Kyle Hopkins of the Anchorage Daily News published yet another article on Mayor Bronson’s embattled administration that you don’t want to miss. Some of what you are about to read deals with domestic violence, stalking, and other dangerous behavior.
The article speaks for itself from the jump:
On the summer afternoon that Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson celebrated his inauguration, July 1, 2021, one of his top city staff members saw a familiar face in the crowd — the man accused in multiple court cases of domestic violence and of stalking her.
Among the food trucks and bouncy houses dotting the Delaney Park Strip stood the defendant, Brandon Spoerhase. He was under a court order to stay away from Kolby Hickel, the victim in the cases. Hickel was Bronson’s newly hired director of enterprise services.
The conditions of Spoerhase’s bail release required him to leave. But the 40-year-old real estate broker is also partners in a commercial real estate business with one of the mayor’s most trusted advisers, Larry Baker.
Larry Baker is front-and-center in the news following Amy Demboski’s 11 page letter that made it clear Baker seems to be somewhere between the city’s most notorious grifter and a shadow mayor unto himself. From scoring lucrative $29,500 (suspiciously exactly $500 below the contract amount that triggers mandatory review by the Assembly) contracts three times in nine days to green-lighting construction of the Tudor and Elmore Navigation Center without Assembly approval, there has been quite a lot of cause for concern over Baker’s dealings at City Hall, where he has an office despite being a contractor.
The ADN article goes on to focus on further revelations from Demboski’s letter, including “Baker tried to prevent Hickel from being hired to work at City Hall,” and “[Baker] twice used his influence to try to get then-municipal attorney Patrick Bergt to drop or reduce the criminal charges against Spoerhase.”
This has been an ongoing scandal since December, when Demboski told Anchorage’s ombudsman about Baker’s alleged impropriety.
“Mr. Baker also attempted to influence the mayor and me to not hire Kolby Hickel, who was the victim of stalking and domestic violence at the hands of his business partner,” Demboski wrote in the earlier letter to the ombudsman. “When that didn’t work, he went to the municipal attorney Bergt (both during the transition and during the term) to get the charges against his business partner dismissed.”
In case you’re not familiar with Spoerhase’s past, he was charged with three misdemeanors and one felony, all for actions and issues dealing with Hickel. While one of the misdemeanor charges was dismissed in its entirety, the other two were pled down, including Sperhase pleading no contest to violating the protective order he was once again seemingly violating during Mayor Bronson’s inauguration. The felony stalking charge, which will be prosecuted by state attorneys, is still pending trial.
You’d be well served to read the ADN piece in its entirety, and while it is certainly not a short read, it represents some of the best investigative journalism coming out of the city at the moment. So, please give your all important clicks to the journalists who are doing incredible work holding our public leaders accountable and exposing the things they’re trying to keep from the public.
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, please visit https://www.thehotline.org/, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233 or text START to 88788. Help is available.
