Nine different candidates have filed to challenge Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson in the city's fast-approaching April 2 elections, but while the contest is officially nonpartisan, battle lines have already been drawn—some ideological, and some personal.
Out of this large field, the Anchorage Daily News writes that three of Bronson's opponents are waging credible campaigns to deny him a second three-year term as leader of The Last Frontier's largest city. (Anchorage is the rare major American city where terms last an odd number of years.)
The only Democrat in this trio is former state House Majority Leader Chris Tuck, while the other two members—former Anchorage Assembly Chair Suzanne LaFrance and former Anchorage Economic Development Corp. CEO Bill Popp—aren't registered with any party. The local Democratic Party, however, endorsed both Tuck and LaFrance.
Anchorage, according to data from Dave's Redistricting App, favored Joe Biden 49-47 in 2020. But the hard-right Bronson, a first-time candidate who emphasized his opposition to the city's pandemic health measures, won the race for mayor 51-49 against Democratic Assembly member Forrest Dunbar six months later, when Biden wasn't on the ticket.
Bronson went on to generate widespread attention in the fall of 2021 after Dunbar, who is Jewish, denounced local anti-mask opponents for wielding yellow Stars of David. The mayor responded by insisting that "borrowing" the symbol was "actually a credit to" Jews. He later issued a non-apology saying, "I want to apologize for any perception that my statements support or compare what happened to the Jewish people in Nazi Germany."
That wasn't the last time the Republican made news outside of Alaska. He shut off the city's water fluoridation program later that year, a move Bronson's team said the mayor made after hearing that fluoride was "a health hazard for employees." But Bronson was forced to reverse himself almost immediately when he turned the fluoridation program back on just a few hours later, after his office "determined Municipal Code requires the fluoridation of Anchorage’s water supply."
The union that represents the treatment plant's employees shredded the mayor's purported rationale. "We have not had a single report from a member who works at the facility that this was of concern to them or that they had been harmed in any way by adding the fluoride to the water system," a representative told Alaska Public Media.
Bronson again made national headlines last year when he proposed giving the city's homeless population one-way tickets to warmer areas of the country during the winter. "I wouldn’t take it!" one homeless resident responded when Bronson tried to make his pitch. "Alaska’s my home. How dare you?"
That plan came about after the mayor closed a mass shelter in the city's major arena. Following that move, the Los Angeles Times reported, "homeless camps in Anchorage’s parks and greenbelts exploded in size."
Bronson's tenure has also been defined by his battles with Anchorage's Assembly, which is the equivalent of a city council. Progressives and moderates remain in firm control of the body despite well-funded Republican efforts to oust them, and they've used their power in December to override the mayor's line-item budget vetoes.
Bronson's biggest critic, though, may be one of his former top subordinates. In late 2022, Bronson fired Municipal Manager Amy Demboski, a fellow conservative who unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 2015.
While Bronson didn't offer a reason for the dismissal, Demobiski publicly accused him of retaliating because she'd tried to convince him to "cease unlawful and unethical activities using municipal resources," according to a letter from her attorneys. Among other things, Demboski alleged that the mayor had fired a city employee who wouldn't "swing" a contract to an ally.
Demboski also charged that Bronson had done nothing to address sexist behavior by two of his senior staffers, which she said "included passing out genitalia-shaped cookies to the staff." She further claimed that the mayor himself had treated her differently than the men who worked for him. Demboski went on to file a lawsuit in September alleging that Bronson had violated whistleblower laws and contributed to a "hostile work environment." The situation remains unresolved.
Despite the controversy, though, prominent Alaska Republicans such as Gov. Mike Dunleavy and Sen. Dan Sullivan have endorsed Bronson's bid for a second term. LaFrance, for her part, has the support of several unions, as well as the local Planned Parenthood affiliate, while the police union is backing both her and Popp.
Major candidates began campaigning well before Friday's filing deadline, with LaFrance launching her bid in May and Tuck and Popp jumping in over the following months. "This is the earliest I’ve seen this kind of ratcheting up," former state Sen. Tom Begich told the Anchorage Daily News at the start of the year. "This election really kicked off about eight months ago."
Should no one take more than 45% of the vote in April, a May 14 runoff would take place between the top two vote-getters. Such a runoff was required in 2021, after Bronson narrowly outpaced Dunbar 33-31 in a 15-candidate field.
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