Mike Robbins doesn’t shy away from his wild Spenard youth. In fact, he leads with it.
On the Must Read Alaska Show, Robbins said that from the moment he considered running for mayor, he knew transparency would be his strength.
“One of the things we don’t see in our politicians right now is transparency,” Robbins said. “Everybody thinks that you’ve got to be perfect. Everybody thinks that you can’t have any blemishes, and I really feel like it’s the things we go through in our life that shape us and make us into who we are.”
Robbins has been married for 18 years, and has three children. He is a practicing Christian, and a business owner who has been through Anchorage’s boom and bust cycles. But he persevered, paid his debts, and was proud to be able to retain most of his employees, even when things were really tough.
Adversity “gives us our character, and gives us our ability to handle situations,” he said.
Raised by a single father in what was the rough-and-tumble Spenard, he started his first business at age 17. He now runs a marketing and advertising business, and recently exited the radio business, selling his two remaining stations.
He said he loves Anchorage and wants to make it a safer, cleaner, and more prosperous place. “I love this city, I really do. I feel like it’s given me the opportunity to build a life I could not have built elsewhere,” he said.
Robbins got his interest in politics at a young age, reading the biography of President John F. Kennedy. He’s been a Republican his entire life, but reading about JFK inspired him.
As an owner of a radio talk show station up until last year, he was exposed to politics constantly. But he never got involved in the political fray until 2016, when he jumped onboard the Trump campaign and decided he needed to be part of the solution. He gave it his all.
He’s excited for Anchorage’s future, and says addressing crime is a big priority for him. His business has been the victim of crime three times in the past 18 months, and he wants a safe city that supports its police, one where petty crime is prosecuted, and prosecutors have manageable workloads.
On Day One of his administration, Robbins plans to open the city up and get the economy going. The emergency orders have to end. “We can pay attention to science, we can take care of people. We can be very safe about this. We have the best medical care in the world. It’s important for people to know, and not these fear tactics.”
A concern he has is the policies that went into effect during the pandemic drove so much local commerce to Amazon, cutting out the retail sector in Anchorage. It’s a hidden effect of the pandemic. “It’s very very hard to get them back. It’s the city’s fault. they kept these oppressive orders in place for too long. I know from being in the radio business and marketing business, it’s tough to get customers back once you’ve lost them.”
As for homelessness, Robbins believes that Anchorage under the current leadership has simply not shown the will to stop the spread of encampments and vagrancy. Instead, the city has showed enabling behavior.
Anchorage spends $52,000 every year on every single homeless person, he noted.
Hear Mike Robbins talk about the economy, the homelessness problems of Anchorage, and why he is the best person to compete against Anchorage Assemblyman Forrest Dunbar for mayor, at the Must Read Alaska Show.
Okay sounds like a nice guy. I hope he doesn’t have any skeletons because they’ll certainly be turning over everything. At least he doesn’t hook up with coworkers or reporters in unscrupulous motels, and he hasn’t resorted to blackmail to quiet opponents. He hasn’t been bought out by various corporations. He doesn’t appear to be a trojan horse. Yes, I think he could be our man.
Yes, he has skeletons and the ADN is already throwing them out. The stuff is probably not that important to the situation but the public will make hay out of it. I can’t think of a single person alive who is absolutely perfect and never made mistakes or had problems. And when the media decides to target you, they can make it sound as bad as they want.
All I ask is whichever R is leading, the other ones drop out before the election so we can actually win the city back.. if not? We get what we deserve.
And hope the leading R is really an R. (Respectfully). Campaign signs, name recognition, and political ads mean nothing when it comes to integrity these days.
We were bamboozled many years ago when a young candidate for the State House came to the door with a pitch we really believed. He told us what we wanted to hear, and we fell for it. He was subsequently elected to represent the district and got in serious trouble in the CBC era as I recall. I don’t remember if he went to jail, but I think he did. We were young then, politically dumb, and times were different. My, how time gets away.
I absolutely agree- but I would at this point roll the dice, over splitting the vote and letting a D win again and take the city further down the socialist drain.
Anchorage leaders and non profit executives can’t solve the depression, addictions, homeless, traumatic abuse, and criminal obsession and EGO-fights, when leaders and social service employees have never gone through it themselves.
I had never seen one current Assembly member nor their “friends” SEE, actually see them, the addicted, abused, neglected, and depressed members nor seen leaders even knowing how to talk to them like a human being adult not as a child needing your attention.
Our leaders prefer hanging around the perfumed suits but look down on the stinky disheveled wearing all your hand me downs homeless. I try telling one Assembly member, he put his campaign signs on the bus, but he’ll never learn to ride the bus!
How can today’s current leaders help broken people if they do not know what they are going through, if the only people they talk to are board members and employees who have a home, a new car, food on the table, family and friends they can choose to see or not see?
For starters leaders elect and non profit board members, executives, and social service employees want to know the people they want to help: what will help and what will not help? Sell your cars and learn to ride the city buses! Go where they go. Anchorage leaders can’t help the people who don’t know how to help themselves if leaders can’t see them, can’t sit next to the people you want to help them regain their independence.
Jen, you’re clueless. Go back to San Francisco, or wherever you or your parent’s/parent came from. Or lay off the wine, or both. So many lower 48 dysfunctional cities await you with open arms. Please go. You’re just clogging up everything here with your nonsensical rambling foolishness. Makes no sense. Wish you well.
Rather harsh. Like the Priest and the Levite, do you just turn your head and think that these people do not exist, or, like the Samaritan, do you take some action within your means. Progressives are the most hypocritical of all, turning their heads, then loudly lamenting and throwing other peoples’ money to those in need.
1. To remain civilized, communities need to set and maintain civil standards for everyone residing there.
2. To maintain our humanity, each of us should take effort to empathize for our fellow beings.
3. The two are not mutually exclusive.
It is guilt. By throwing massive money (that belongs to someone else) they can alleviate their own guilt and say “What a good person I am.” For the most part you are right on. The first responsibility needs to come from family, then community (as in churches), then government. Money will never solve the problem and often actually exacerbates it by enabling destructive behavior. Worst of all, enabling destructive behavior only causes it to spread and worsen. I am dated on this, but when I worked in the arena I recall that the very demanding programs of the Salvation Army proved the most effective at the lowest cost to lift people from dysfunction. The city can either set standards for the community and demand at least minimal compliance or let everything go, and as my son objected: “Hey, that guy is pooping on the sidewalk.”
And a final note. These are people mostly with tragic life stories. Many times they just need a hand up. They may not want to go to the Captain Cook, but spending an hour over a meal at a fast food restaurant just listening sometimes does wonders. Time is our most precious commodity and the most precious thing we can share with those who do want to improve their situation.
I Agree
Well said, you can tell which politicians really want to help in a profound way and who is paying lip service to a problem. This is the problem with politicians today, it is about them and what they can gain by being in politics rather than attending to the peoples needs. Murkowski is a prime example and needs to be out of politics permanently!
Any kind of a comeback for Anchorage is a good thing. A Strong Comeback?
Mr. Robbins has our family vote in the bag!
This guy sounds like he is exactly what Anchorage needs. I would vote for him because Anchorage needs a complete change in direction to heal itself from the damage done by elite liberals who throw around bad decisions one after another totally oblivious to the damage they are causing.
To Mike… talk about these things, commit to doing them… energy’s out there, fire it up, give voters something to believe in, they’ll turn out in droves, might even overwhelm Anchorage’s easily corruptible mail-in vote system and elect you! What the hell do they have to lose?
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Commission an outside forensic audit of city finances and management practices, eliminate funded but unfilled positions; return “slush funds” to taxpayers, terminate all executives and consultants hired during the Berkowitz and Q-D administrations;
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terminate the City’s state lobbyist contracts;
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veto upcoming sales-tax ordinances;
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sponsor ordinances repealing city alcohol and fuel taxes, stop collecting them, decline to enforce plastic-bag ban;
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sponsor ordinance requiring payment-in-lieu-of-taxes for city-based non-profit organizations;
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reform building-code permit and building-code enforcement processes to make them less expensive for customers, less adversarial, less vulnerable to chronic, spurious complaints;
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verify annually that city voter rolls are accurate, enforce strategy for limiting effects of fake ballots, postal fraud, nursing-home resident coercion, ballot harvesting, voter impersonation, voter bribery;
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sponsor ordinance to: repeal mail-in voting, stop mailing unsolicited ballots, remove mail-in vote machinery, restore traditional signature-verified, polling-place balloting with verifiable ballot chain of custody, restore election-reporting deadline;
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sponsor ordinance to withdraw Anchorage from the Alaska Municipal League, withdraw Anchorage’s share from the $600M Alaska Municipal League Investment Pool, return it to taxpayers;
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divest the City from buying or administering homeless housing, restore and sell city property occupied by squatters;
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cancel China flu “mandates”, cancel “emergency powers”, require verifiable China-flu reporting statistics, rebate property taxes paid for in-school services which school-district officials did not provide;
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share post-Eaglexit vision for Anchorage, what policies and practices will be changed to persuade other groups not to secede, what will be changed to lessen the risk of another 1980’s-style exodus;
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veto budgets which clearly “rubber stamp” school-district and public-employee union demands;
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sponsor ordinance tying school-district funding to school children’s academic performance;
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veto ordinances which undermine or defund Anchorage Police Department arrest and enforcement processes, reassure APD and the public that Anchorage is not a sanctuary city for illegal aliens;
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refuse to attend, direct city executives not to attend, Assembly meetings conducted in violation of Alaska’s Open Meetings Act (AS 44.62.310-.312);
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enforce strict private-property rights;
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make time for weekly call-in radio “fireside chats” on the state of the city;
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use Art Chance’s “Red on Blue: Establishing Republican Governance” as the essential operating manual for city-government officials.
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What say you, Mike?
He just looks the part too. Unlike Dunbar and his rainbow coalition attire.
Are you saying that Mr. Dunbar has the look of someone that might think a Johnson were delicious but Mr. Robbins does not?
I’m not sure you’re supposed to be judgmental based solely on appearance.
I like to judge a book by its cover.
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