By ALEX GIMARC
We are about five weeks from the Municipal Clerk (who works for the Assembly) mailing out ballots for the Anchorage Municipal Election in 2024. Voters will have until April 2 to return them for tabulation, so it is time to start considering candidates for mayor this year.
Mayor Dave Bronson completes his first term in office. He has nine challengers as of this writing. While I don’t want to discuss the entire field, I do want to mention a couple Democrats running this time around.
The two democrats with the best name recognition are former legislator Chris Tuck and former Assembly Member Suzanne LaFrance (who is technically independent). Both have strong union support. Both present well and are not publicly the typical frothing at the mouth Democrat we’ve come to know and love in recent years (Forrest Dunbar, Zack Fields, Chris Constant, you know who you are).
But any time we elect a seemingly moderate Democrat, awful things seem to happen. Our last Democrat mayor, Ethan Berkowitz, was one such example, needlessly locking down Anchorage for over a year, forcing mask mandates, social distancing, presiding over the wanton, senseless destruction of small businesses across town during that time, creating the current Homeless Industrial Complex, and spending as much money as humanly possible, all before resigning in disgrace over a sexual peccadillo that went public.
What has Suzanne LaFrance done to demonstrate that she would be a decent mayor? As with any political question, it all depends on which side of the political divide you are working. While on the Assembly, she did very little outside showing up for the meetings and being a reliable leftist vote until installed as Assembly chair in 2021.
LaFrance distinguished herself three ways during her two years as Assembly chair. She presided over contentious public comments triggered by the shutdown and attempts to put homeless shelters in residential neighborhoods. She also spent a lot of time conferring with her vice chair at the time, Chris Constant.
Public pushback against the Berkowitz hunker-down and masking mandates was significant and grew over time, especially when it became apparent that the public was simply being told to sit down, shut up and color.
Small businesses in town were particularly hard hit (Kriner’s Diner became a flashpoint), something of little matter to the union-backed Democrats supporting Berkowitz and his Assembly majority.
One of the few ways available to express that displeasure was public comments at Assembly meetings. The Assembly majority wasn’t much interested in public testimony that called them out and the Assembly took every avenue to limit or eliminate it. Assembly Chair LaFrance, in consultation with her vice chair, spent a lot of effort obstructing public testimony so they wouldn’t have to hear any or it.
The Berkowitz-Assembly effort to install a number of homeless shelters in various neighborhoods also triggered significant public pushback which expressed itself as very contentious comments by the public at numerous Assembly meetings, and two unsuccessful recall attempts for Assembly members. LaFrance and her majority weren’t much interested in this sort of feedback and did everything they could to make sure they didn’t have to hear it.
Somehow, it never occurred to LaFrance, her majority, or Mayor Berkowitz that if you don’t want the public to yell at you, don’t intentionally do what they don’t want you to do. What a concept.
Most notable during her time as Assembly Chair was LaFrance’s endless consulting her Vice Chair during meetings, particularly before ruling on anything. It gave the impression that she was not Assembly Chair at all. Rather, she appeared to be a conduit, a “Mini Me,” for whatever Chris Constant wanted her to do at the time.
From here, it looks like the Assembly majority and the unions that installed it are attempting to use LaFrance as their vehicle to regain control of the Hill Building. As her political career has paralleled that of Peter Sellers’ Chauncey Gardner character in Being There, I predict she would bring little to the office other than another compliant Democrat at the beck and call of the Assembly and the unions that put them in office.
If you want an actual mayor, there are a few good candidates this time around, starting with the current one, Dave Bronson. If you want a potted plant in office, Suzanne LaFrance would be a good, albeit expensive, choice.
Alex Gimarc lives in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disabilities policies. His weekly column “Interesting Items” is a summary of news stories with substantive Alaska-themed topics. He was a small business owner and Information Technology professional.A
