It’s local election day for several municipalities around the state, including the Golden Heart City, where the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly’s 5-member conservative majority could be sent packing.
Three of the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly’s nine seats are on today’s ballot. Two are held by conservative incumbent Assemblymembers Tammie Wilson, a former state representative, and Jimi Cash, with the third being an open seat held by term-limited conservative Assembly Chair Aaron Lojewski that conservative Aaron Gibson is seeking.
Their challengers are Liz Reeves-Ramos (against Wilson), Nick LaJiness (against Cash) and Scott Crass (against Gibson). The three progressive-leaning candidates, endorsed by The Alaska Center, Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates and local unions, have each outpaced their conservative opponents by solid margins, according to campaign fundraising reports filed last week.
Crass, a computer scientist for the Alaska Volcano Observatory, tops the field at about $16,900 to the roughly $3,800 raised by Gibson. LaJiness raised about twice what Cash raised (about $10,800 to $4,700), and Reeves-Ramos just outpaced Wilson ($7,770 to $6,400).
The Borough Assembly’s conservative majority was described as “loud and proud” by an observer who talked with The Alaska Current on background. They’ve been adversarial with the local school district over funding and gutted the Borough’s climate plan that was started under the Assembly’s former progressive majority before rejecting it altogether.
However, the observer noted that not much of that has been reflected in their campaigns, which have cast the candidates as far more moderate on issues like planning and education.
A Cash campaign mailer arrived in Democratic voters’ mailboxes on Friday, calling himself a “Champion of Public Education.” It also extolled the benefits of an “education reserve fund” established by the Borough Assembly the night before (raising a question of timing given that the mailer would have had to be printed and mailed well before the vote was taken). That fund is cast as a patch for the Assembly’s refusal to increase school funding but isn’t expected to positively impact school funding for several decades.
A mailer by Gibson shows him posing with Democratic state Sen. Scott Kawasaki, even though Kawasaki did not endorse him and voted for Crass, according to the Crass campaign.
The race has taken a distinctly different tone from the races for the Fairbanks North Star Borough’s Board of Education, where right-wing candidates have leaned heavily into the national culture wars. Right-wing candidate Michael Humphrey created a stir earlier this year with a campaign float that featured a giant, inflatable walrus, an overt nod to right-wing media figure Matt Walsh and his transphobic children’s book “Johnny the Walrus.”
The conservative campaigns there have been far more open about attacking the progressive school board candidates over identity issues.
However, like the Borough Assembly races, the progressive-leaning school board candidates have far outraised their conservative opponents.
Polls are open in Fairbanks and close at 8 p.m. Initial results are expected to arrive around 9:30 p.m.
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.
