What the latest fundraising reports tell us about Anchorage Assembly and school board races

Yahoo

28-03-2025

Mar. 27—The latest round of campaign finance reports ahead of Anchorage's municipal election deadline Tuesday includes a number of interesting clues about how this year's contests are playing out.
Overall, many of this year's Anchorage Assembly and school board races do not appear competitive, at least in terms of support from financial donors. Four of the six Assembly seats effectively have one candidate raising and spending campaign funds. The two school board incumbents on the ballot are massively outraising their challengers.
The two exceptions are the contests in downtown Anchorage, where both candidates are closely matched in terms of financing, and Eagle River, where one of three had been a near-total non-entity up until recently, when he received a slew of donations from union groups.
Voters in Anchorage were mailed ballots in mid-March and have until Tuesday to return them by mail or drop boxes around town, or at in-person voting sites.
[Anchorage vote centers now open in ramp-up to Tuesday's city election voting deadline]
Eagle River
Up until the latest round of financial disclosures, the race for the open seat representing Chugiak and Eagle River looked like it was effectively between two candidates, even though a third had technically filed to run.
Jared Goecker, who ran as a Republican for a state Senate seat last fall, has brought in almost $9,000 in donations, including $2,676 during the first three weeks of March. Almost all of his spending was on consulting and advertising services run by the Ritacco Group, a conservative campaign firm headquartered in Wasilla. Goecker's primary opponent appeared to be Kyle Walker, a civil engineer, who has raised a total of $3,211. In the latest reporting period, Walker's biggest donation was $946 from himself, which was used to pay for yard signs.
A third candidate, David Littleton, did not file any fundraising disclosures prior to the latest round. He had not put a campaign website online, nor responded to the Anchorage Daily News's candidate questionnaire. But on the last day of January he reported receiving $1,000 from Justin Weaver, a private asset manager in Anchorage who, since 2022, has become one of the biggest donors in local and state political races. In the weeks after, Littleton received checks from eight political action committees representing unions, including the Anchorage Police Department, state and public employees, laborers, and the Juneau Central Labor Council. In total, Littleton reported raising $8,275, almost entirely from organized labor. Besides Weaver, the only individual donor who shows up in his report is Littleton himself, with a $25 contribution.
"I'm a member of the laborers union," said Littleton, an instructor at the Alaska Laborers Training School in Chugiak, of the PAC donations. "The rest of them I filled out questionnaires, I was asked to do interviews ... I didn't approach them, they approached me."
Littleton's campaign website is very minimal. Instead of a page laying out policy positions, there are a few bullet points with proposals like, "Keep homelessness out of Eagle River and Chugiak," and "Fighting to reduce property taxes."
Most of the $5,148 he reported spending went to signs and printing campaign literature, which he's distributed during door-knocking in the district. But $784 went to the Ship Creek Group for campaign start-up costs. The Anchorage firm has represented a wide range of clients but leans progressive, and does a lot of work with union groups.
"They kinda just did all the little detail things I needed to get started," Littleton said. "They were a really big help on navigating all of the initial things I had to do."
Ira Slomski-Pritz is a partner with Ship Creek Group, and handles the firm's work on Assembly races. He said they had not been looking to take on the Eagle River race but were contacted by Littleton.
"He seems like a regular, working guy who seemed like he wanted to represent Eagle River," Slomski-Pritz said. "He seemed very reasonable."
He confirmed that Ship Creek helped get basic campaign infrastructure in place for Littleton, but said that any PAC contributions would have been handled by the groups themselves.
Littleton said one of his primary motivations to run was that he believed one of the other candidates had entered the race not to help the community but instead as a launch pad for his own political career.
"And I'm sick and tired of career politicians," said Littleton, whose background is in construction.
Downtown
The District 1 race, which includes downtown Anchorage and the surrounding neighborhoods, is between incumbent Daniel Volland and first-time candidate Daniel George.
The two are faring similarly in terms of their campaign fundraising and spending. Money in municipal races matters, but it is far from determinative: Recent cycles saw unprecedented levels of spending as conservative challengers tried to knock left-leaning incumbents off the body, but mostly failed, and in most cases without much of a change in turnout or vote share.
Volland brought in $15,500 in his latest report to the Alaska Public Offices Commission, which covers three weeks from the start of the month until March 22. George raised slightly more, $20,454. In the same time frame, they spent about $20,000 and $21,000, respectively. Over the course of the full campaign, Volland has taken in just under $53,000 to George's $38,585, though the latter entered the campaign later on. Volland's donors in his latest filing are a mix of labor union political action committees, current and former Democratic elected officials like Mark Begich and Forrest Dunbar, as well as former Mayor Rick Mystrom, a Republican. George has received donations from people all over the political spectrum, but his most recent filing saw a large number of established conservatives who have been active in recent years financing challengers from the right in local races, including former Anchorage first lady Deb Bronson and past Alaska Republican Party Chairman Randy Ruedrich.
Volland's largest expenditures during the reporting period were direct mail, and more than $4,000 for digital ads on Facebook and Google platforms. There was also a $500 payment for campaign consulting to Ship Creek. The majority of George's spending, close to $15,000, paid for work like signage and direct mail handled by Wasilla-based firm Optima Public Relations, which has worked with many of the most conservative candidates in Alaska politics over the last several years.
Asymmetrical races
Two of the most expensive races this cycle are the contests for the school board. Unlike the Assembly races, school board seats are "area wide," meaning all voters in the municipality, regardless of which neighborhood or part of town they live in, vote on them.
The two incumbents, Margo Bellamy and Kelly Lessens, have raised a total of $65,876 and $83,696, respectively, reflecting support from a mix of small individual donors and union PACs. By contrast, the two candidates running against them, Alexander Rosales and Mark Anthony Cox, have reported bringing in $2,548 and $7,425. In Rosales' case, however, much of that total came from self-donations or campaign purchases miscategorized as outside contributions. For example, $40 Rosales noted as campaign income appears to have been likewise listed as an expense: On the same day he reported spending $40 for premium account verification on the social media site X.
In four Assembly races, just one candidate reported raising most or all of the money.
West Anchorage incumbent Kameron Perez-Verdia raised $11,295 in the latest filing period, and $63,763 since the start of the campaign. Erin Baldwin Day, a first-time candidate running to take over outgoing vice chair Meg Zaletel's Midtown seat, raised $9,330 according to her latest report and has brought in a total of $48,896. Yarrow Silvers, running to take over the open East Anchorage seat currently held by Karen Bronga, has raised a total of $44,145, including $10,740 in the latest filing window. And Keith McCormick, running to represent South Anchorage, has raised a total of $28,753, with $7,705 of it coming in the first three weeks of March.
The candidates running against those four, along with a third candidate running for the downtown seat, either did not file campaign finance reports with APOC or reported no income. They include Nicholas Danger, Jonathan Duckworth, Amie Steen, Angela Frank, John Stiegele and Darin Colbry. After not filing any prior reports this cycle, Midtown candidate Don Smith submitted one showing $375 in outside donations that was applied to postage for a mailer.