Dec. 31—With less than a month to go before the Jan. 24 filing deadline, only six candidates have expressed formal interest in running for six of the Anchorage Assembly seats up for grabs in April.
One of those candidates recently indicated on social media that he has reconsidered.
South Anchorage member Randy Sulte, whose first term ends in the spring, is not running again.
The six seats represent half of the Assembly’s 12 members. Two of the candidates who have filed official letters of intent with the Alaska Public Offices Commission are incumbents: Daniel Volland and Kameron Perez-Verdia of the North Anchorage and West Anchorage districts, respectively. If they win, it will be Volland’s second term and Perez-Verdia’s third, the maximum allowed under municipal rules.
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Several current members have opted not to run for reelection. Karen Bronga ran in 2023 to fill out the remaining two years of Forrest Dunbar’s term and represented East Anchorage after Dunbar was elected to the state Senate. She announced in September she did not plan on running again and simultaneously endorsed a potential successor, Yarrow Silvers, a writer and activist. So far, Silvers is the lone candidate for the seat, according to APOC records.
It is a similar dynamic for the seat representing Eagle River. Mark Littlefield was elected in April to finish out the last year of former member Kevin Cross’ term after Cross said he was resigning. Littlefield said Monday he will not run again. The only person who has registered intent to run for the seat is Jared Goecker, who ran for the Alaska Senate as a Republican in November and lost to incumbent Kelly Merrick, also a Republican.
Assembly Vice Chair Meg Zaletel of the Midtown district is not running for a third term. Erin Baldwin Day, who has a background as a community organizer, policy advocate and pastor, is campaigning for the seat. Nobody else has filed to run for it.
There is currently no candidate for the open South Anchorage seat, a huge area extending from Dimond Boulevard across the Hillside and all the way to Girdwood. Sulte, who was elected in 2022, is no longer eligible for the seat after district boundaries were redrawn that same year. His residence is now technically part of West Anchorage. Sulte said he plans to leave the body once his term ends rather than run against Perez-Verdia in a part of town he’s less familiar with.
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“I’m happy with the changes I’ve seen on the Assembly,” Sulte said Monday. “I think people are putting their party lines aside more.”
In 2022, Sulte was the lone challenger elected to the body in a cycle when a slate of insurgents went up against sitting Assembly members who were regularly at odds with then-Mayor Dave Bronson during the first year of his term. Races that year were unprecedentedly expensive and acrimonious, with city politics still roiling from fights over pandemic lockdowns, business closures and mask mandates. A similar dynamic played out in 2023, with huge levels of campaign spending that ultimately changed the Assembly’s political composition very little.
In 2024, local political attention was on the mayor’s race, which ultimately went to a runoff between Bronson and former South Anchorage Assembly member Suzanne LaFrance, who won. Littlefield’s race to fill out Cross’ term was the only Assembly seat on that year’s ballot, and as he was the lone candidate it was hardly competitive.
A sixth resident, Robert Rubey, filed an intent letter with the state to run for the West Anchorage seat. However, in a Facebook post earlier in December, Rubey said that the expanded scope of Assembly members’ work in recent years made it impossible for him to square that with his job obligations. Rubey did not return messages Monday seeking clarification on plans for his potential candidacy.
The official window for candidates to file paperwork with the municipal clerk’s office is Jan. 10 to Jan. 24. Ballots for the municipal election will be sent out in mid-March. The final day to submit ballots will be April 1.
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