Fact-checking Dunbar: Did he vote to open Anchorage due to election? (He says ‘no’)

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In a debate with mayoral candidate Dave Bronson on Tuesday, Assemblyman Forrest Dunbar said that his co-sponsorship of an ordinance that relaxed the Anchorage emergency order restrictions on businesses was not a calculated political move.

Dunbar said it was something he had been thinking about for some time and that he was encouraging the city to move from “mandates” to “recommendations.”

The Anchorage full vaccination rate for Covid is below 50 percent, and Dunbar had said two weeks earlier the rate needs to be 70 percent before he’d be willing to relax the restrictions.

Alaska’s News SourceKTUU’s Mike Ross asked Dunbar if, given the mayoral runoff in two weeks, Dunbar could understand how his vote looked political, rather than scientific.

Watch the video:

Dunbar replied, “The truth is, two weeks before that I was also having conversations with the health department trying to get these things turned into recommendations because we saw the trajectory of the vaccine.”

But two weeks earlier, Dunbar had a completely different story on the record at the Assembly. He spoke at length about the need for restrictions on businesses, gatherings, and sports, and he was hoping the city could open by June if everyone behaved. He said the State of Alaska was going to have an emergency declaration for most of the year.

“There’s no declaration at the state level. But the governor asked for one. The governor asked for one to go into the fall and even into the winter. But the Legislature was so caught up in partisan bickering that they failed to pass it in time.”

Dunbar wasn’t reading the political tea leaves. The governor didn’t want the emergency lockdowns to go into the fall or winter and neither did most of the Legislature. In fact, as soon as he signed the disaster declaration on April 30, he then signed a proclamation ending the disaster.

[Read: Governor signs disaster order, then proclamation ending disaster]

But Dunbar two weeks ago was prepared for a long emergency through the summer:

“So the state has asked for and is now moving towards a much longer emergency declaration than what we were asking for. I don’t think we need to go that long, because I actually do believe have we are going to get to 70 percent. We are going to be able to remove these E.O.s [emergency orders.] We’re going to be able to do it this summer. I hope we can do it before June, but even if we don’t I think we can move toward reducing these things,” Dunbar said of the restrictions during an Assembly meeting two weeks ago.

“But right now I don’t want to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. We have come so far. We’ve got our deaths down to zero per week, which is tremendous. I will support extending this because again, I think it makes sense,” Dunbar said. And with that, he said he would be a yes vote to continue the emergency orders that severely damaged businesses in Anchorage.

This week, he did a 180 and proposed to remove the restrictions except for the mask mandate, which is still in effect. The mayoral runoff election ends on May 11 at 8 pm.

Dunbar is running on a theme of fact-based leadership. Must Read Alaska rates this Dunbar statement as Fact-Free.

[Read: Dunbar: “I didn’t say that.”]

[Read: Is Anchorage safer with Dunbar at the helm?]

11 COMMENTS

  1. Forrest Gump Dunbar lacks character. He was “all-in” with the Left and the sanctions when he thought it was oh-so-virtuous. When his polling showed that Dave Bronson has gained significant traction with the voters with a promise to end the sanctions on individual liberty, he has scrambled to switch sides. This young, over-educated political opportunist is the worst. (Ordinarily, I do not like to name-call but in this case it is to convey my disgust…).

  2. Dunbar is first and foremost a politician, running on the idea that: 1. enough people will pay so little attention to what he says that it won’t matter because he smiles nice and wears a slick suit; or 2. enough people are so dumb that they won’t remember what he said yesterday so long as he says something nice today; or 3. he has enough mindless minions on the take that he could admit to being Satan’s dumber brother and they would still vote for him. Any other choices why anyone would vote for an America hating socialist?

  3. Did ignite into a ball of fire when he said “the truth is “
    Did anyone else catch during the lopsided debate. The antifa guy said the used the money from selling MLP to fight “homeless “
    Then at about the 9 minute mark said that money was invested in the market and dividends used to pay for other things.

  4. As an aside, has the national guard ever addressed his traitorous remarks about the US Constitution?

  5. Dunbar is a typical leftist fool, his word isn’t worth anything. As a veteran I believe he should be kicked out of the national guard, his is not officer material.

  6. If there was no mayoral election Dunbar will be supporting a long weening off covid restriction period going into the next year.
    Afterall he has never depended on a job where he has to wait on customers for his bread and butter.
    If Dunbar comes up short this election, I’d be most encouraged to hear the boy retired from civic and law duty and try his hands at scrubbing bathrooms and making beds in a hotel for a living. See how many of his “friends” will stick around him. He can see what life really is like living under Democrats poverty policies from a Housekeeper’s point of view.

  7. To be in the U.S. military, one has to swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Dunar took this oath and does nothing but piss on it. Dunbar – you do realize that it’s a verbal contract between yourself and Constitution. You have broken that oath over and over, thereby breaking your contract.

  8. “The average Public School Teacher salary in Anchorage, AK is $65,797 as of April 27, 2021, but the range typically falls between $57,440 and $75,960.” They’re near the bottom of union pay scales.
    Dunbar promises to be a friend of the unions … and the unions endorse him.
    Some corrupt union leaders and a lot of union workers seem to be part of the problem … everyone except them has suffered financially from the Covid crisis.

  9. JOSEPHDJ, even FDR opposed public unionization. When people on the take can vote their own salaries and benefits, citizens will always lose. It is very close to military dictatorship where the people with the guns decide who eats. The public unions have grown to the power level that they can hold a gun to all of our heads. Public unions must be broken and eliminated (good luck with that!).

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