Chris Tuck, the only Democrat running in the Anchorage mayor’s race against incumbent Dave Bronson, has a history of going against his political party on core progressive issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage.
In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court declared same-sex marriage bans are unconstitutional. The court’s decision led to a rift between Tuck and his fellow Democrats. In the lead up to the final ruling, 15 states joined together in an amicus brief to ask the Supreme Court to uphold their bans. Signers of the legal brief included Alaska’s Attorney General designee, Craig Richards, an action that the Democrat party described in a press release as “embarrassing.”
However, in a press conference a few days after the party’s statement, Tuck stated “I do support his action” because Richards was “upholding the constitution of the state of Alaska.”
“There’s members of our caucus that are upset with that,” Tuck said. “His oath of obligation is to uphold the constitution of the state of Alaska and right now the constitution says that marriage is between one man and one woman.”
State law must adhere to the U.S. Constitution. In a situation where there is conflict between a state constitution and the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Constitution always takes precedence.
Another issue where Tuck has been in conflict with fellow Democrats is abortion rights. Tuck has stated openly that he is personally pro-life and has allowed his views to spill over into policy action on several occasions.
With the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade last year, the right to abortion is a hot button issue. The majority of Americans support the right to abortion, but that hasn’t stopped many red states from passing extreme anti-abortion laws, including near total bans with no exceptions for the health of the mother or rape and incest.
In 2020, Tuck joined with Democrats For Life of America to sign onto a letter opposing the party platform on abortion. The letter called for the platform committee to “avoid divisive policies, such as passing a law in Congress defining a right to abortion (codifying Roe v. Wade)” and warned against repealing the Hyde amendment, which bars the use of Medicaid funding for abortion, reducing abortion access for low-income women.
A year after the fall of Roe v. Wade codifying the right to abortion has become a bipartisan priority, with many states, including several Republican-led states, moving to protect the right to abortion through citizen-led voter initiatives.
Prior to this, in 2009, Tuck joined with Alaska House Republicans in voting yes on a bill requiring parental notice and consent when minors seek an abortion. While the bill passed in the state House, it failed to move forward in the Senate. A separate parental notification law became effective in 2010, but was struck down by Alaska’s courts in 2016 for violating equal protection and privacy clauses in the state constitution.
Tuck also has a history of pushing fringe theories. He fought the implementation of REAL ID, saying that it “opens the door for the Department of Homeland Security, the TSA, and outside private organizations to control the identification cards we need to exercise our inalienable rights of work, travel, gun ownership, and privacy.” He accused the TSA of taking and storing naked pictures of airline passengers in a bizarre TSA PSA video that received national attention.
In 2016, he joined up with Dustin Darden, who has frequently been arrested at Anchorage Assembly meetings, to co-sponsor a ballot initiative to have fluoride removed from the water supply.
Bronson, after his election, broke municipal law by having the fluoride turned off in the municipality’s water supply and then lied for several days, saying through his spokesperson that he hadn’t done it.
Concerns over fluoride isn’t the only issue where Tuck and Bronson have aligned.
Prior to Bronson’s election, in 2020, Tuck testified at an Assembly meeting against using hotels and other buildings to provide homeless services, a plan that included turning on the muni-owned Golden Lion as a treatment facility and purchasing the Alaska Club to use for shelter, saying that the process was flawed. After his election, Bronson blocked the purchase of the Alaska Club and refused to use the Golden Lion for treatment. The municipality still lacks a permanent shelter.
Tuck is campaigning as someone who can “bring people together,” but he has spent much of his campaign attacking not just Bronson, but also the progressive to center-left Assembly majority that he would be required to work with as mayor.
In a recent campaign email, Tuck stated that Bronson and the Assembly spent the recent snow storm “finger-pointing.”
“It’s just occurred to them now that to deliver reliable municipal services (like snow removal), we need our departments fully staffed and equipment maintained?” he wrote.
On social media, he stated that the Assembly has a track record of failing to stand up to Bronson, even though they had a veto-proof majority. He questioned whether they would override Bronson’s latest round of budget vetoes, despite the fact the Assembly has overridden every major veto to date. When he faced blowback over the post, he quietly edited it.
Tuck’s campaign for mayor comes one year after he announced he wouldn’t seek reelection for Alaska House. Two other candidates, former Assembly chair Suzanne LaFrance and former head of the Anchorage Economic Development Corp., Bill Popp, are challenging Bronson, whose term has been marked by incompetence, lawsuits and cronyism.
