East Anchorage Assembly candidate Spencer Moore says he’s running to be East Anchorage’s “voice to the Assembly,” but he testified in favor of an unconstitutional political gerrymander that would have reduced East Anchorage’s voice and given more power to Eagle River in the state legislature.
Gerrymandering is described by the Brennon Center for Justice as a deeply undemocratic process giving an unfair electoral advantage to one party or group of people, allowing politicians to choose their voters, rather than voters choosing who represents them.
This is what the Alaska Redistricting Board majority attempted to do by combining East Anchorage and Eagle River into a senate district that the Superior Court found “intentionally discriminated against residents of East Anchorage in favor of Eagle River” and further deemed “had an illegitimate purpose.”
Judge Matthews also found “substantial evidence of secretive procedures, regional partisanship, and selective ignorance of political subdivisions and communities of interest” between the three majority members of the board who voted to approve the map.
On Nov. 9, 2021, Moore wrote a letter to the redistricting board revealing that his motivation for supporting the gerrymandered pairings was state representation. His East Anchorage neighbors pleaded with the redistricting board not to gerrymander their district.
“I’d like to write in to voice my support for the combination of East Anchorage and Eagle River for the State Senate portion of the redistricting, as was proposed yesterday,” Moore wrote. “We are already connected as the Municipality of Anchorage and our east side community is well connected to Eagle River. I have been an east sider for seven years and believe connecting Muldoon and Eagle River for the Senate portion is vital for our state representation.”
The court found that the map supported by Moore was “discriminatory” in order to “maximize senate representation for Eagle River and the Republican party,” at the expense of East Anchorage residents. Indeed, when proposing these maps, Gov. Mike Dunleavy appointee Bethany Marcum stated, “This actually gives Eagle River the opportunity to have more representation, so they’re certainly not going to be disenfranchised by this process.” The map proposed by Marcum would have given Eagle River two safe Republican senate seats while leaving East Anchorage unrepresented.
Now, Moore wants to be the voice for those same East Anchorage residents he testified to discriminate against for partisan purposes.
Assembly candidate George Martinez was a plaintiff in the court case against the gerrymandered map, which was ruled by both the Alaska Superior and Supreme courts as unconstitutional. A later replacement map that attempted to pair Eagle River with South Anchorage was also ruled unconstitutional. Both maps were supported by the three Republican members of the redistricting board, while two members, Melanie Bahnke and Nicole Borromeo, opposed both gerrymanders.
Throughout the redistricting process, various Eagle River/East Anchorage combinations were proposed by the Republican members of the redistricting board, prompting close to 200 people from both communities to testify in opposition to being paired together. Testimony was impassioned and well-reasoned, describing the many ways in which the affected communities would be harmed by the proposal.
Meanwhile, a handful of Republicans motivated by partisan politics sent testimony in favor of the pairings. Moore was one of them. In total, he sent three testimonies to the redistricting board supporting various proposals that combined East Anchorage with Eagle River, as well as one testimony supporting the second gerrymander that would have combined Eagle River with South Anchorage.
Moore is not the only current Assembly candidate that testified in favor of community-splitting gerrymanders. South Anchorage candidate Rachel Ries and Eagle River candidate Scott Myers both sent in testimony supporting the second map that the Alaska Supreme Court struck down as an unconstitutional gerrymander.
Leigh Sloan, candidate for the other East Anchorage seat, was also involved in the process and sent in testimony supporting an earlier house map that was not adopted, but which would have combined large portions of Muldoon with both Eagle River and South Anchorage. This map would have resulted in a severely diminished voice for East Anchorage residents, who would have been placed in Eagle River and South Anchorage house districts instead of with their East Anchorage neighbors. Her opponent, Karen Bronga, testified against that proposal alongside many of her neighbors, and assisted in bringing a resolution to the Scenic Foothills Community Council in opposition.
At a Scenic Foothills community council Thursday evening, all four East Anchorage candidates introduced themselves to the residents in the area that would have been most affected by the gerrymander. Both Sloan and Moore discussed the importance of listening to their community.
“What motivated me to run this time around was just a need for, just a voice for the people,” Moore said to the gathered residents.
He didn’t say anything about the East Anchorage gerrymander that he testified in favor of, or how it would have silenced the voice of the people he was speaking to, had it been successful.
