Sources with knowledge
of the situation have confirmed that 2014 Democratic congressional candidate Forrest Dunbar will file a letter of intent to run for the East Anchorage Assembly seat within 48-hours. The assembly seat Dunbar will be seeking is currently held by Assemblyman Paul Honeman, who is eligible to run for re-election for another term. The same sources, however, have confirmed that Honeman will not be seeking another term.
Dunbar would be the first candidate to officially file a letter of intent to run for the East Anchorage seat on the Assembly. Even though the Muni doesn’t allow candidates to file for office until January 29th, candidates can file now with the Alaska Public Offices Commission (APOC) to begin raising campaign funds. According to APOC no one has yet done so.
In 2014 Dunbar challenged longtime Alaska Congressman Don Young for a Alaska’s only congressional seat. Like a long string of challengers to Young, Dunbar came up short. Unlike many of those challengers Dunbar wasn’t blown out, finishing with a respectable 41% to Young’s 51%. More importantly, the young Dunbar beat the elder Young in the precincts that make up the East Anchorage assembly seat.
Dunbar was then brought on full-time military orders by General Laurie Hummel in March of this year to reform the state’s Code of Military Justice. I’m told Dunbar has left this full-time position and returned to life as a traditional Guardsman in order to run for the Assembly. The ADN recently did a lengthy piece on the status of those military justice reforms, which cannot be passed until the Legislature is back in session.
According to a bio on his congressional campaign website, Dunbar is a graduate of Cordova High School, was an intern to then Senator Frank Murkowski, and received a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard and a law degree from Yale.
He is also:
“A lifelong Alaskan whose parents moved to Alaska in 1978. Forrest was born in 1984, and the family spent the next seven years living in Eagle, on the Yukon River. Eagle is near the range of the Fortymile Caribou Herd, and to this day caribou is Forrest’s favorite type of meat.”
The in no word yet on a campaign kick-off or fundraising events planned for Dunbar.
***UPDATE***
Thursday evening Dunbar announced on his Facebook page:
“Thank you to everyone who supported me this past year and who encouraged me to run again. Paul Honeman, my District’s Assemblyman–whose public service I respect greatly–recently informed me that he was not going to seek reelection. Therefore, tonight I submitted a Letter of Intent to serve and represent the people of East Anchorage on the Anchorage Assembly. Much more to come!”
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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.
