Unelected by a landslide in the 2020 primary, former Rep. Chuck Kopp is making another try at state office.
He was beat by former Alaska Republican Party Chairman Tom McKay in 2020, but this year the district lines have shifted and he is taking on Craig Johnson, who serves as Rules Committee chair in the Alaska House for South Anchorage District 10.
Both are Republicans, but Kopp is considered a “Sen. Cathy Giessel” Republican, one who cannot be relied on to hold the line on spending. Kopp is known to have threatened Rep. Johnson this year, saying if he didn’t vote for Sen. Giessel’s defined benefits bill for state employees, Kopp would run against him. He’s making good on the threat.
Kopp is a former police officer who now runs a political consultancy company with Cherie Curry. He worked on the campaign of former Gov. Bill Walker, who was, by then, in opposition to Republicanism and in line with big government policies. He also worked on the campaign of Bill Popp for Anchorage mayor; Popp received 17% of the vote. Another campaign he worked on was John Coghill’s congressional run; Coghill got 2.4% of the vote in the primary.
Political observers note that Kopp would likely caucus with the Democrats to advance the public employee union agendas of fixed pensions rather than 401k retirement accounts.
Kopp served as an officer in the Anchorage Police Department and Kenai Police Department for a combined 20 years. He was chief of police of Kenai, and acting city manager from 2005 to 2006.
He was briefly Public Safety commissioner under Gov. Sarah Palin but forced to resign when a scandal followed him from his time as police chief in Kenai.
When he was a staffer in the House, he was one of the architects on Senate Bill 91, the catch-and-release, soft-on-crime bill, pass.
