The man who some believe is the leading candidate for Anchorage mayor is pondering a country where all drugs are legal.
Forrest Dunbar, running for mayor in 2021, said on Twitter recently that the war on drugs is linked to Jim Crow laws, that collection of state and local laws that legalized racial segregation.
“It’s been said before, but it’s worth reiterating: it’s not a coincidence that the ‘War on Drugs’ as we know it really got going at the same time that formal, De jure Jim Crow was ending. This is from a Harper’s Magazine piece by Dan Baum,” he wrote, linking to the article.
[Read the Harper’s Magazine story: “Legalize it all, How to the the War on Drugs” at this link.]
“And yes, this is absolutely relevant to the anguish and conflict we are seeing in the country at the moment. Politicians have been sending police down this road for two generations now, and it has been hugely destructive for the communities where they are deployed,” Dunbar commented, linking the race riots and protests against police brutality to the war on drugs.
Dunbar, a registered Democrat from East Anchorage, serves on the Anchorage Assembly, winning reelection unopposed in 2019 and taking 91 percent of the vote in his district, with 7,938 votes.
In 2014, he ran against Rep. Don Young for Congress, losing but getting 41% percent of the vote. With Mayor Ethan Berkowitz term-limited, Dunbar filed for the mayor’s race last October. At the beginning of the year he had over $48,000 in his campaign bank account.
Eric Croft has also filed to run for mayor. A Democrat, he served on the Assembly, and started the year with a little more than $18,000 in his campaign account.
The other well-known contender in the race is Bill Evans, who served a term on the Assembly but has mainly been an attorney. Evans, who is a registered “Undeclared” voter, had just $2,100 in his year-start campaign report.
Lesser known candidates include Darin Colbry, Nelson Jesus Godoy, and Jacob Kern.
