By GREG SARBER
There will be statewide borough elections held on October 7th, and Homer voters will have the chance to flip the city council from a liberal majority to a conservative one. This is an opportunity that doesn’t come along very often, but could very well happen this year, thanks to excellent candidates and a motivated conservative base.
There are six seats on the Homer City Council, and five of them are currently held by individuals with a left-of-center worldview, giving liberals a 5-1 majority. However, the election will fill three open seats this year, and the liberal incumbents are facing serious conservative challengers. If all three center-right candidates win, the majority would flip to 4-2 conservative. The three challengers all have legitimate conservative pedigrees, which offer them an excellent chance to win their contests. These individuals are in alphabetical order.
Homer City Council Candidates Mike Jones, Elias Garvey, and John Mink
Mike Jones – Mike has lived in Alaska for several years, moving here after he retired from working in the power industry. He spent his career working as a professional engineer and managing technical teams on major fossil fuel and hydro power plants. Mike has the expertise needed to help the city government understand difficult technical subjects, such as the construction of the proposed deep-water port expansion. His candidacy was covered in detail in a previous article, which can be found here.
Elias Garvey – Elias is a lifelong Alaskan with experience in the commercial fishing and construction industries. Mr. Garvey is a thoughtful individual in public, who feels his job as a councilman would be to protect the public from government overregulation. He also believes in avoiding unnecessary spending and supports freedom and liberty. He wants to avoid the distractions that come from spending time in council debating frivolous items, which are not the purview of government at the local level.
John Mink – John has lived in Homer for over a decade. He has been heavily involved in civic activities, with the Homer Hockey Association and the Kachemak Jr. Nordic Ski Association. He has served as the Economic Development Commissioner for the City of Homer and also works as a substitute schoolteacher. Mr. Mink believes in sustainable growth and fiscal responsibility. In one of the candidate forums, he mentioned that the primary goal of city government should be to provide the core services needed by the community before exploring spending on other nonessential items.
All three of these candidates are more qualified than the incumbents they will be running against. However, the biggest challenge they face is the voter apathy that impacts off-cycle elections in Homer. That is illustrated in Table 1.
Unfortunately, in borough elections, the voter turnout is typically low, averaging only 19.77% of the registered voters. Only the most motivated individuals bother to vote, and in Homer, they tend to be the same rabid partisans that you see waving protest signs on Homer street corners. They vote when conservatives do not, so Homer ends up electing a city council with 5 of the six seats filled by individuals with a left-of-center worldview.
However, it doesn’t have to be that way. There are enough conservative voters in Homer to elect center-right candidates. Data from the last four elections in Table 1 shows that the average margin of victory in city council elections is only 285 votes. There were more than that number of conservatives who turned out for the Charlie Kirk memorial in Homer on September 17th. If all of the memorial attendees voted, they could swing elections in favor of conservative candidates. If conservatives are motivated, Homer could elect the three conservative challengers in this year’s election.
Local elections are more important than most people think. On October 7th, there will be elections held in boroughs around Alaska. In addition to local governance, some of the people getting their start in city councils around the state this year will be the same candidates running for legislature in ten years and for governor in twenty. If you are a conservative who complains about the liberal and RINO politicians who run our cities, our legislature, and represent us back in Washington DC, it can all change if you start electing conservative politicians at the local level.
Be sure to get out and vote on October 7th. Absentee voting is now open, and you have 10 days to do so. If you are a conservative, use the memory of Charlie Kirk’s murder as motivation. It is time for conservatives to take back Alaska from the leftists running our state, and it all begins 10 days from now, on October 7th.
Greg Sarber is a lifelong Alaskan. He is a petroleum engineer who spent his career working on Alaska’s North Slope. Now retired, he lives with his family in Homer, Alaska. Greg serves as a board member of Alaska Gold Communications, Inc., the publisher of Must Read Alaska.
If I were a wagering person, I would bet NO!!!
There are chronic complaints about municipal elections having very low voter turnout. One ‘solution’ recommended by groups formed to study this problem is to resort to mail in ballots. However, the public has consistently rejected widespread mail-in ballots in various voter initiatives. One solution is to eliminate the October municipal elections and align them with the state elections in November. That is the norm in most states. It would incentivize people to turn out to vote on local as well as state/national issues. A great step in that direction is to vote for Proposition 5 on October 7th to align local elections with that of the state elections.
Everyone get out and vote. Just do it and create your voice and purpose! Its a good thing because one vote can make all the difference in the world in an election.
Thanks MRAK for a really great article. Homer needs to go RED. Make Homer Great Again. End the Liberal Malaise, and become a City where young people want to STAY and WORK, and have FAMILIES. VOTE, OR GO WOKE.
Good luck, Homer. Thanks to the candidates for stepping up and offering their precious time.
By this election let’s hope that the Homer City Council turns to common sense. One way to do that is to elect Mike Jones. He has an extensive engineering background. He is a proven problem solver and cares about his community. He is a good listener and would be an effective persuader toward conservative values on the Homer City Council. Go Mike Jones!
rename the homer split to The Charles Kirk Projection. turn out the vote, the hippies of the 80’s have left. it’s MAGA time on the south peninsula
Homer is over-populated by hippies so don’t get your hopes up.
Let’s hope it gets some common sense soon. Homers been going downhill for some time now.
“…….Will Voters Turn the Homer City Council Red?……..”
The quaint little drinking village with a fishing problem?
No.
Do they use mail in voting? Do they use the machines? Any of those 3, and NO, they will not win against the left.
Go Homer!
Let’s bring coal back to the spit (kidding)
Absolutely YES!!!
Another age-old battle in the making – the ultra conservative Christian Zionists vs. the ultra-liberal blue haired retired government workers and their prodigy! Once again, the losers are the normal everyday citizens who just want their roads maintained, affordable harbor fees and a fiscally conservative City budget!
A great group of common sense candidates!
We will have to see if voters bother to show up for common sense or more of the same sitting back and lighting up in the morning for a day of peaceful tranquility on the spit.
Mink and Garvey were obviously too stupid to consolidate into one conservative candidate and split the vote.