A proposal to ban large cruise ships from visiting Juneau on Saturdays is underwater, according to preliminary election results.
Nearly 60% of Juneau voters voted against the initiative, which sought to limit the growing tourism industry has had on the city in recent years. Opponents said it would undercut the local economy, and city officials warned that it could lead to a litany of legal problems.
While potentially thousands of election-day ballots remain to be counted in Juneau, the proposition’s failure is one of the more apparent outcomes from the major contests in local elections held throughout the state on Tuesday.
In the Fairbanks North Star Borough, just 43 votes separated the leading candidates for mayor. Progressive candidate Grier Hopkins, a former Democratic state legislator, had 8,766 votes to conservative candidate John Coghill’s 8,723 votes. Coghill was a longtime Republican legislator before being defeated in the 2020 Republican primary, where he was attacked as too moderate.
The remaining uncounted ballots won’t be counted until 2 p.m. on Oct. 8. According to the Borough Clerk’s office, that will include 975 absentee ballots and 546 questioned ballots.
The narrow divide in the mayor’s race is mirrored down the ballot in the Fairbanks Borough, with two assembly and two school board seats within a few hundred votes. Former Republican legislator Tammie Wilson has a 301-vote lead over progressive challenger Garrett Armstrong, and incumbent Assemblymember Kristan Kelly has a 259-vote lead over conservative former Assemblymember Jimi Cash.
The races for school board seats are similarly close.
The only Fairbanks North Star Borough race that’s likely decided is the race for Borough Assembly Seat A, where incumbent Assembly member David Guttenberg (also a former Democratic legislator) has a 1,388-vote lead over his challenger, Miguel Ramirez.
The election is the latest push and pull between progressives and conservatives in the Fairbanks North Star Borough, where control of the Assembly has swung back and forth. Progressive candidates swept most races in last year’s elections, largely rejecting far-right culture-war politics targeting the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District.
Elsewhere
Back in Juneau, much of the legislative races were decided by large margins.
Juneau Mayor Beth Weldon has a nearly 1,300-vote lead over challenger Angela Rodell. Neil Steininger, who served as Dunleavy’s budget director, and Maureen Hall both had sizeable leads over their challengers in races for the Juneau Assembly.
The Kenai Peninsula Borough elections were a largely quiet affair, with nearly every race uncontested. The lone contested race was for the Kenai Peninsula Borough School Board, where candidate Sarah Douthit had a big lead over Jeanne Reveal.
In Sitka, KCAW reports that Mayor Steven Eisenbeisz “decisively” won a second term, while incumbents on the Sitka Assembly fended off their challengers.
Ketchikan will get a new mayor, KRBD reports, in Bob Sivertsen, who got nearly 600 votes. There’s also a tie in the race for Ketchikan City Council, with Dick Coose and Jai Mahtani each getting 381 votes. Both are set to get seats because the race elects the top two finishers from the field, and no other candidates are likely to make up the difference.
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.
