Friday was the first day when candidates for Anchorage mayor could officially file for office.
At 10 am, Dave Bronson arrived at City Hall with his wife Deb Bronson, and campaign manager Bernadette Wilson. Bronson is running for mayor. He then did his requisite interview with reporters and finished the day with a fundraiser with key supporters, including campaign consultant Art Hackney.
Next into the office was Bill Evans, who arrived with campaign manager Cale Green, to file. He, too, made the rounds with the media and finished his day with a discussion on Zoom with Alaskans for Open Meetings, a grassroots transparency advocacy group.
Mike Robbins came shortly thereafter with his wife, Tetyana and his campaign Brian Mentzer. Running on a populist platform, Robbins spoke to the media and had a fundraiser with two dozen business owners at the Peanut Farm that evening.
But the man to beat filed elsewhere on Friday at 8 am.
Wearing a Carhartt jacket and hoodie, Assemblyman Forrest Dunbar filed his candidacy at the Division of Elections office in at the Ship Creek Avenue office in downtown Anchorage, right next to the far-left campaign headquarters of the Ship Creek Group, which is providing Dunbar with campaign services. It was an entirely different look from his garb at the Pride parade in Anchorage a couple of years ago.
Dunbar is a liberal’s liberal. Three years ago, he, John-Henry Heckendorn of the Ship Creek Group, and Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tompkins were credited by Politico for turning “a red state purple,” by getting candidates to shape-shift as moderates and registering some as “nonpartisans” in conservative districts.
The progressive posse of young Turks ushered three new liberals to the House of Representatives, all of whom got caught up in “me-too” scandals and ended up leaving office in various degrees of disgrace. The fourth they aided and abetted, Jason Grenn, served just one term in the House before voters in his district booted him and elected Republican Rep. Sara Rasmussen.
Dunbar, a lawyer with the Alaska Army National Guard, where he serves as an assistant judge advocate, is part of a clique of downtown radicals up-and-comers on a mission to turn Alaska Democrat.
How radical? So radical, Dunbar is on record saying the U.S. Constitution is “shot through” with racism.
A guy like that, with his Berkowitz-supporting baggage, should be easy to beat in Anchorage, one might think.
But Anchorage is now Biden Country. Oil patch workers have left by the thousands, as the economics of oil changed, and now government and nonprofit workers represent a greater majority. Anchorage gained thousands of blue-voting health care workers, funded by the Obamacare expansion. Many conservative voters have fled to the Mat-Su Valley.
Every district in the municipality –15 through 28, except for the two in Chugiak-Eagle River — voted a majority for Joe Biden for president this past November. And Anchorage voters cast their ballots for Ethan Berkowitz for mayor, not once, but twice, even though there were solid fiscally conservative choices during both the 2015 and the 2018 races.
Also filing at the Ship Creek office on Monday was was liberal Bill Falsey, former municipal city manager under Berkowitz, who will appear less radical than Dunbar, but who also has the “Berkowitz baggage” in spades. Falsey has been a functionary, rather than a lawmaker, however. His problem is more of “what did he know and when did he know it” about Berkowitz’ proclivities and bathroom nude selfie. Few expect Falsey to go the distance, but he’ll get his name out there, get some experience under his belt, and decide if elected office is really for him.
Part of the hardline shutdown bloc on the Assembly, Dunbar has been locked-and-loaded in favor of former Mayor Berkowitz and Acting Mayor Austin Quinn-Davidson in the scorched-earth policy against private businesses in Anchorage. Lately, he mostly phones in his appearances at the Assembly meetings, unwilling to face the wrath of the public and its harsh condemnation of many who have started attending the meetings.
A man who has been a public servant much of his career (he was briefly a lawyer for Stoel-Rives), Dunbar is an experienced campaigner, having run unsuccessfully against Congressman Don Young in 2014, and for Assembly twice. He’s playing the long game to take another shot at Congress in 2022 or perhaps the governorship. But running Alaska’s largest city? That’s a plum position, which governs 40 percent of the state’s population and will launch him to the next level.
Dunbar knows he is the one to beat, and said that’s why his signs were vandalized over the winter. He blamed Must Read Alaska and its readers for vandalizing them and made it clear he’ll be running against Must Read Alaska as much as he’ll be running against candidates:
“My campaign is, right now, the most successful on the progressive side. For months, Must Read Alaska and other Republican mouthpieces have been attacking me. They know I’m the one most likely to draw together a moderate and progressive coalition that can beat them. It’s sort of a trickle-down vendetta,” he told the Anchorage Press.
He can’t seem to resist criticizing Must Read Alaska during Assembly meetings and in the leftist press.
Dunbar has the support of the usual suspects of Democrats, with endorsements from Sen. Elvi Gray-Jackson, Sen. Bill Wielechowski, Rep. Harriet Drummond, Rep. Zack Fields, Rep. Liz Snyder, and Rep. Andy Josephson. Also, former Sen. Johnny Ellis gave him the nod.
These are powerful endorsements as all of them have won in their districts and can get their voters out. They have enormous pull due to their own campaign infrastructures, lists, and ready-and-willing lieutenants.
With a city that is more resembling Seattle and San Francisco than Anchorage in its heyday, will center-right Bill Evans be an acceptable alternative as a moderate, or is Anchorage ready for a Mayor Dunbar, who would be even more radical than Berkowitz?
Like former Mayor Berkowitz, Dunbar attended Harvard University and earned his law degree from Yale University. He worked as a public defender, and for the Peace Corps in Kazakhstan. He was born and raised in Alaska, and graduated from Cordova High School.
In his campaign literature, Dunbar lays out his vision for Anchorage:
1. With the cooperation of the business community, we should turn portions of Fourth Avenue and E Street into pedestrian promenades. Other cities have done this with great success, and studies have shown that boosting foot traffic in this way increases safety and commerce, particularly in the evening.
2. We need to take advantage of the $40 million investment toward homeless services promised by our private partners over the next five years, and make our own commitments to substance abuse treatment, behavioral health, housing and other initiatives — such as early childhood care and education — that get to the core of this and other problems. Those private funds must not be seen as a replacement for state or municipal support, but rather as a complement to what we can do. We have a unique window of opportunity; we must not let it pass us by.
3. We should work to strengthen the city’s sense of indigenous place, in part through acknowledging original Alaska Native place names. We should improve signage, and continue to build better relations with the Eklutna Dena’ina and other tribal entities. Aside from being the right thing to do, this approach is also the economically smart thing to do; surveys have shown that the No. 1 desire from tourists in Anchorage is greater immersion in Alaska’s rich Native cultures.
Finally, it’s important that Anchorage avoid some of the chaos and division we have seen in Juneau and Washington, D.C. Through a combination of good people, structural advantages and institutional investment, the Anchorage Assembly remains a comparatively well-functioning body. We generally maintain a sense of cooperation, avoid grandstanding and strive to uphold the public interest. Our municipal government delivers basic public services such as snow removal, police protection and emergency medical services, and that will always be my primary goal.
Bill Evans, a lawyer and former Assemblyman, appears to be positioning himself as the candidate who most in the middle can support. Robbins, a business owner, and Bronson, a pilot, are appealing to those who are truly unhappy with the direction of Anchorage and are seeking a measurable change in direction.
Those who are studying the past two mayoral elections watched as the conservative and moderate candidates lost by 18 or more points. Mayor Berkowitz beat conservative Amy Demboski by 20 points in the runoff in 2015, and bested moderate-conservative Rebecca Logan by 18 points in 2018.
Since 2018, Anchorage has gotten even more blue, with Democrats gaining registrants in every House district in the city limits, as every district is losing Republican registrants. The Alaska Democratic Party will be fully engaged in this “nonpartisan” election.
The candidates know that April 6, 2020 is the “primary” and that with 10 candidates or more likely on the ballot, getting that magic 45 percent support is unlikely for any of them, and a runoff has to be factored into their race plans.
Political analysts presume Dunbar will be in the runoff, that the Alaska Demcoratic Party machine will bring its forces to bear, and that anyone who didn’t vote for Dunbar on April 6 will either stay home and allow the government and nonprofit workers to decide the outcome, or will settle for the alternative.
And that gives the three leading contenders — Robbins, Bronson, and Evans — much to consider as they try to define themselves and their opponents, in advance of the ballots being mailed to voters on March 15 — just 58 days from now.
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“We were together, I forget the rest.” – Walt Whitman”
