Suzanne LaFrance leads by nearly 5,000 votes in preliminary election results, making it almost certain that Anchorage will have a new mayor July 1.
LaFrance ran on a platform of bringing competency and effective, non-partisan government back to city hall.
“This election isn’t about red or blue, left or right. It’s definitely not about “woke” or “normal.” It’s about our community,” LaFrance said in campaign materials and during debates.
LaFrance received 54.88% of the vote, a nearly 10-point lead over Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson, who received 45.12%. With 51,019 ballots returned, LaFrance has 4,973 more votes than the embattled incumbent.
She will be the first woman elected as mayor of Anchorage if she maintains her lead, which looks almost certain.
“I’m feeling excited about the initial results and the great energy on Election Night,” LaFrance told The Current. “Our team will be tracking additional results over the coming days, but we’re feeling confident and optimistic about our position right now.”
In 2021, mayoral candidate and now State Senator Forrest Dunbar had a much smaller lead of 114 votes on election night. Dunbar’s early lead eroded to a loss of just over 1,000 votes by the time all the ballots were counted. During that election cycle, conservative voters emphasized voting in person on election day.
In the April 2 mayoral election, which resulted in a runoff between Bronson and LaFrance, the vote percentages remained virtually unchanged between the preliminary to the final certified results, indicating that late arriving ballots are no longer a factor at play in shifting election results as more votes are counted.
In 2021, Bronson ran on stopping covid mandates and solving homelessness, narrowly squeaking into office after campaigning heavily in deeply conservative Eagle River and building a coalition of voters who were angry about COVID-19 mitigation measures.
After three years of scandals and mismanagement at city hall, it appears that this coalition of Anchorage voters did not turn out for Bronson a second time.
The scandals at city hall started almost immediately after Bronson took office in 2021. Within four months Bronson had hosted an anti-vax summit and lied about his involvement in it, defended people wearing yellow stars to compare mask mandates with the holocaust, and unilaterally shut off the fluoride in the municipal water supply, before lying about it.
He filled his administration with unqualified partisans who brought culture wars and disfunction to city hall, including the disgraced Joe Gerace, who Bronson appointed as Anchorage’s Health Director after he lied about his qualifications; and Human Resources Director Nikki Tshibaka, who cost taxpayers almost $300,000 in a wrongful firing settlement after he ignored employee complaints about Library Deputy Director Judy Eledge, and fired the person who brought the complaints to his attention.
Bronson also fired his municipal manager, Amy Demboski, who wrote a scathing letter outlining unethical behavior, code violations and cronyism, and failed to plow the streets for two years, resulting in school closures and lost revenue for businesses over the holiday shopping season.
Bronson’s response to homelessness, which was a cornerstone of his 2021 campaign, is an objective failure, with large encampments proliferating throughout Anchorage’s parks and trails, record numbers of outdoor deaths, and a police department short staffed by over 50 officers and unable to stop the crime that has proliferated in and around the encampments.
If the election results hold, and they should, Bronson will be only the second incumbent mayor to lose re-election since the city and borough unified in 1975. For now, it appears that voters have had enough and are ready for city hall to throw politics aside and get back to the business of getting things done for the people.
“Local government isn’t about left versus right. It’s about working together to get things done. And tonight I’m hopeful we’re turning a corner on how we’re going to work together,” LaFrance said after the initial returns came in.
