The Anchorage municipal election day is tomorrow, where voters will decide six assembly races, two school board races and a dozen propositions.
Progressive-leaning coalitions hold majorities in both bodies, thanks in large part to a string of elections where progressive and centrist candidates have expanded their hold on the city. Conservatives, meanwhile, are hoping to re-establish a foothold in the state’s largest city with some questionable campaign tactics.
In this edition, let’s examine some of those tactics as well as the bigger issues at play in this year’s election. Ballots can be returned via mail or drop box through 8 p.m. Tuesday.
Playing both sides
In an attempt to oust centrist South Anchorage Assemblymember Zac Johnson, a Republican-linked independent expenditure group has launched attacks on the first-term politician from both sides. Friends of the Good Guys has taken the unusual strategy of attacking Johnson as both too conservative in mailers aimed at propping up supposedly leftist candidate Janelle Sharp and too liberal in mailers aimed at propping up conservative candidate Bruce Vergason.
The claim is essentially that conservatives are hoping to prop up Sharp to siphon votes from Johnson, making it easier for Vergason to flip the seat into reliably conservative hands. In a telling connection, the group’s administrator, Cheryl Frasca, a longtime Republican activist in Anchorage politics, is also the treasurer for Sharp’s campaign.
“The dishonesty of it is really upsetting,” Johnson told the ADN. “This attitude that in politics, the ends justify the means and do whatever it takes to achieve your desired outcomes.”
Residency rumblings
In East Anchorage, incumbent progressive-leaning Assemblymember George Martinez has been complaining that his conservative opponent, Cody Anderson, doesn’t even live there. Armed with property tax records, Martinez and others have charged that Anderson is actually a resident of Eagle River — where he had been claiming a resident property tax exemption for many years — and not East Anchorage. Anderson claims that it’s all just a paperwork error — specifically, the city’s error, he claims — and that he definitely does, in fact, live in East Anchorage because he needs to be close to his church work. The city, meanwhile, has said that it never got any of the necessary paperwork.
Anderson, in classic conservative fashion, argues that it’s all a good example of why municipal government isn’t working. It’s their fault, he claims, that they missed out on the property taxes he should have been paying on the Eagle River property.
Still, even if he lives in East Anchorage, he’s not paying property taxes there because the $525,200 home is owned by Mountain City Church (nee Anchorage Baptist Temple). Martinez said it’s frankly nothing new for a church with a long history of boosting Republicans.
“The name of the place today is a different name,” Martinez said. “This is old shenanigans. Another year, same kinda thing.”
With friends like these
One of the big problems for Anchorage conservatives is that they have an identity crisis. Conservatives have increasingly drifted to the right with reflexive opposition to anything and everything to do with progressives, which has seen them welcome in some particularly odious extreme-right candidates into the fold. And there’s no better example of that than extreme-right school board candidate Alexander Rosales, who has used his social media to post a litany of bigoted screeds with thinly veiled threats of violence towards people he doesn’t agree with.
His position has left conservative political groups unsure how to navigate it, with some, like the Anchorage Republican Women’s Club, rushing to his defense. Others have simply bowed out of endorsing the school board races. And yet there are a few, like Trump-backed former U.S. Senate candidate Kelly Tshibaka, who’ve ultimately staked out opposition to him. In Tshibaka’s case, she posted a copy of her ballot showing she had voted for Rosales only to retract her support a few hours later.
“I went and looked myself,” Tshibaka wrote. “Some of what was alleged wasn’t accurate — but some of it was. I’m concerned about racial comments I saw, including a post normalizing racial slurs. I believe in accountability — including my own. When new information changes the picture, you say so. So I’m saying so: I’m withdrawing my support.”
Rosales’ entry into Anchorage politics has also drawn some attention away from perennial candidate Dustin Darden, who has often blended right-wing conspiracy theories into his platform. Darden, who is running for the other school board seat, announced on Friday that he was stepping away from the race and endorsing conservative candidate Sharon Gibbons, who would probably have appreciated his withdrawing before the ballots were finalized.
Departing incumbents
The Anchorage Assembly is set to lose Assemblymembers Christopher Constant, the current chair who represents North Anchorage, and Felix Rivera, who represents midtown Anchorage, to term limits. Eagle River Assemblyman Scott Myers has also decided not to seek re-election.
All three open seats have attracted considerable attention.
In the race to replace Constant, progressive candidate Sydney Scout has raised more than $81,000, compared with conservative candidate Justin Milette’s $60,200.
In Midtown, the leading candidates to replace Rivera are longtime conservative politician Dave Donley, who hit his term limit on the school board, and progressive candidate Janice Park. Conservatives are betting big on Donley, who has raised $83,000 to Park’s $78,000.
The race to fill the Eagle River seat vacated by Myers also drew an unusually competitive haul in an area that routinely votes conservative. There, conservative Donald Handeland has raised $59,000 to labor-backed Kyle Walker’s $47,000.
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 Bluesky.
