Day 81: Bronson's losing streak continues

Two years in and several elections later, Bronson has yet to get a boost in Anchorage Assembly races.

Happy Friday, Alaska! It’s Day 81 of the legislative session, and legislators have already gone home for Easter weekend.

In this edition: The dust hasn’t quite settled on this week’s municipal elections, but it’s looking like embattled far-right Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson will finish his term in office never making any gains with the Anchorage Assembly. It turns out several last-minute efforts to scare up support cannot erase two years of just terrible headlines. The GOP-led House moves forward with conditional school funding. Also, the reading list and weekend watching.

Current mood: 🫎

A quick programming note: Twitter is getting weird about Substack and, as of this morning, is blocking people from interacting with tweets that include any substack.com links. It’s yet another frustrating turn for Twitter, but a good motivator for me to finally get around to putting the domains I bought to use. So, moving forward, the newsletter’s website will be www.akmemo.com (all the old links should still be good and redirect to the new website, and your Substack login should work too). Nothing will change as far as emails or subscriptions go. If you run into any trouble, though, please let me know: matt@akmemo.com

Bronson’s losing streak continues

The dust hasn’t fully settled on this week’s municipal election in Anchorage. Still, it sure looks like a near-complete rout for any candidates that might have delivered embattled far-right Mayor Dave Bronson any semblance of a mandate heading into the final year of his three-year term. Moderates and progressives hold leads that range from healthy to utterly dominating in six of the seven Anchorage Assembly seats on the ballot, with the lone prevailing conservative assembly candidate coming from the dependably conservative Eagle River.

Incumbent Assemblymembers Christopher Constant and Felix Rivera handily won re-election and will be joined by new faces in Anna Brawley, Karen Bronga, George Martinez and Zac Johnson. Together with the Anchorage Assembly’s existing progressive/moderate members, they’ll maintain the supermajority needed to keep strict guardrails on the remainder of Bronson’s term.

And while this electoral drubbing has seemingly been the norm throughout Bronson’s time in office—he’s never made ground in the Assembly races or the two special recall elections against non-Bronson Assemblymembers—it honestly didn’t seem all that certain heading into the election.

There was heavy spending on Bronson-friendly candidates (some of whom attempted to distance themselves from the mayor), a late-in-the-race attempt by the Bronson administration to stir up ire against Rivera over a proposal to buy a neighborhood rec center to convert into a shelter (a plan that, unsurprisingly, originated from a Bronson request) and, of course, there was the specter of political violence over the signs.

I caught up this afternoon with Constant to talk about the results. While agreeing that it always feels like it’s going to be close—pointing out that “the reality is an election is an unknowable event” and that it leads to a lot of horserace-type thinking about elections—he said it’s hard to overlook the mayor’s track record of the past two years. It’s been one scandalous headline after another scandalous headline, he said, all while streets aren’t getting plowed and services are degrading.

“He’s failing right now, and he continues to point at everyone but himself,” Constant said, later adding, “There’s nothing in his bag of tricks or bag of skills to make things better.”

Since the election, Bronson has seen two more high-profile departures from the administration—Chief of Staff Adam Trombley and Solid Waste Services director Dan Zipay—continuing a long line of departures from the sinking ship.

Constant said the slate of victories means the public supports continued accountability for the conservative mayor. He also mused that there are probably quite a few people looking ahead to next year’s mayoral election and doing kitchen-table math about whether to get into the race but didn’t have anything concrete to share on that front.

Stay tuned.

House makes school funding conditional

After things ratcheted up to 11 in the House over the GOP-led Majority’s plan to make an extra infusion of money into public schools contingent on a vote to tap state savings to cover the roughly $600 million deficit in the state operating budget, things cooled down a bit on Thursday as everyone returned to work on the budget.

We heard a few legislators apologize for escalating the rhetoric over the past few days. Still, no one in the House Minority Coalition backed down from the position that tying much-needed school funding to one of the most politically fraught votes in the legislative process—the three-quarter vote to tap the Constitutional Budget Reserve—is a good idea.

“Spending from the CBR is going to be a one-time fix, and I’m concerned about what happens next year when we are stuck in this structural budget deficit dilemma again with a potentially more dire fiscal situation,” said Rep. Genevieve Mina, D-Anchorage. “Where the money comes from to fund public education perhaps is the most crucial thing that we can examine to figure out we can sustainably fund our schools in the long term. The funding source determines the long-term sustainability for our school districts, for our students, for our teachers.”

Even Rep. David Eastman voted against the amendment, arguing schools and families don’t deserve the uncertainty of a CBR vote.

Again, House Republicans reiterated that nothing was unseemly about the proposal tying school funding to one of the most contentious votes the Legislature will likely take this session and pledged that they are interested in eventually getting around to considering a fiscal plan for the state.

The House is expected to take up a vote on the budget itself—as well as the CBR portion of the legislation—next week. Then it’ll be the Senate’s turn.

Reading list

• Despite a clear call to action to address the state’s ongoing child care crisis, Gov. Mike Dunleavy says the best approach is a task force with a report due by the end of this year (meaning changes likely won’t be implemented until midway through 2023). From the Alaska Current: Dunleavy’s approach to Alaska’s child care crisis: Another task force

• There was a moose loose in a hospital on Thursday. From the ADN: How do you get a moose out of an Anchorage medical facility? Very carefully.

• And a Jan. 6’er from Wasilla says he needs a gun for moose defense. From Alaska Public Media: Alaskan sentenced in Jan. 6 riot at Capitol tells judge he needs a weapon for moose defense

• From ProPublica: Clarence Thomas and the Billionaire

• From the Associated Press: 660-mile rescue flight to reach pregnant woman highlights Alaska’s unique challenges

• From the Alaska Beacon: Three Southwest Alaska Native tribes sue federal government, seeking to block gold mine

• From KBBI: A Homer scientist is bringing changes in Arctic permafrost into high-resolution

Weekend watching

While on the road this week, my partner and I made a big dent in the audiobook version of the venerable Mary Roach’s “Fuzz,” which explores the nexus of law enforcement and wildlife. It had a lengthy section about the battle to keep trash under control in bear country and, what do you know, here’s a video from SciShow today about just that issue.

Have a nice weekend, y’all.