Oct. 13, 2020, former Mayor Ethan Berkowitz resigned, after nearly five and half years serving as mayor of Alaska’s largest city. He has barely been seen or heard from since.
The day before, he had admitted to engaging in a salacious relationship with then-news anchor Maria Athens, who posted a photo on Facebook that looked like the bare-naked backside of Berkowitz.
She also accused him of posting nude selfies on a website for older men interested in dating underage girls.
“It is with profound sadness and humility that I resign as mayor of the municipality of Anchorage,” Berkowitz said in a statement that night. He didn’t actually read the statement himself; it was read into the Anchorage Assembly record by his Chief of Staff Jason Bockenstedt. “My resignation results from unacceptable personal conduct that has compromised my ability to perform my duties with the focus and trust that is required.”
The Assembly chambers were filled that night with residents protesting the mayor’s dire restrictions that were killing businesses and ruining people’s lives. The crowd sprang to their feet, clapped and cheered at the news of his departure.
Berkowitz would remain mayor for another week and a half, while a transition took place to make Assemblywoman Austin Quinn-Davidson the acting mayor, a role she held onto for eight months, after the Assembly refused to hold a special election for mayor.
Soon, the disgraced mayor used the power and privilege of his office to attack Athens. Anchorage Assemblyman Forrest Dunbar joined him in attacking the woman:
While Dunbar attacked Athens and Must Read Alaska, and strongly encouraged people to delete any of their shared social media posts about the incident, the mainstream media stayed quiet for days, unwilling to touch the story about a man who many journalists considered an ally and a friend.
“Do not give this lie oxygen it needs to live, and let us try to leave this, and other shameful, public slanders of this past summer, behind us,” Dunbar wrote.
The media complied. More than 50 hours after the story first broke of the sexting relationship, the mainstream media still had not written a word about the matter. Instead, the Anchorage Daily News ran a story about the mayor’s proposed budget.
Also defending the mayor was Eric Croft, another political ally of the mayor who had already announced his candidacy to take over after Berkowitz was scheduled to be term-limited out in June, 2021.
The response from the Left — not believing a woman in this “believe all women” era — and the silence from Alaska’s largest newspaper, became the hot the topic of discussion in many conservatives circles in Anchorage.
The reporter who blew apart Berkowitz’ political aspirations for governor — or for finishing his term as mayor — ended up leaving the state and has disappeared from public life.
Read War of the Roses meets Fatal Attraction
By Oct. 21, the Left-stream media, the Anchorage Press, had written a feature blaming the mayor’s demise on Must Read Alaska and Save Anchorage, titled, “Save Anchorage, Must Read Alaska and the plot to overthrow the mayor.”
