Finally, the last election in a seemingly never-ending series of them is over. If you’re a responsible citizen, it started with last April’s municipal assembly election, which shifted the balance of power on that body from right to left. Then the political parties had their primaries and caucus. November gave us Senator Mark Begich and President Obama, sent Don Young back to Washington and a host of fresh-faced and veteran legislators to Juneau. April narrowed our mayoral choices down to Democratic former legislator Eric Croft and Republican former Assemblyman Dan Sullivan. Tuesday that race was decided, and voters can relax until next April’s assembly election—maybe.

Like the newly temperate weather outside, Anchorage’s political climate changed as well, with Dan Sullivan running away with the mayoral race by a margin of 57.3 to 42.7 percent. Which raises the question of whether we’re more conservative than our assembly representation seemed to signify after last April’s votes, and the question of why Croft lost.

Although one political analyst told me that Croft had to throw everything at Sullivan he could, the strategy of repeating ad nauseum that Sullivan wanted to implement a 14 percent sales tax was a mistake. Hardly anyone believed that Sullivan would push such a tax, not to mention that any sales tax takes a 60 percent vote of the people. Croft’s attack plan might have been more believable if he’d pointed to the study commissioned in 2005 from Larry Persily, which estimated a five to seven percent sales tax could supplant our property taxes completely. Voters didn’t want that tax, so if Croft had pushed that message, instead of the ridiculous-sounding 14 percent, it wouldn’t have come off as disingenuous. Dave Dittman, the pollster and analyst for primarily Republican candidates, speculates that Croft could have suffered some backlash from voters pissed off that former Mayor Begich beat Senator Ted Stevens right after Stevens was convicted on a number of federal charges, charges that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder later had thrown out completely. “Former Mayor, now Senator Begich’s hosting of fundraiser for Eric Croft probably didn’t help Croft,” Dittman says. “In fact, in a hypothetical match-up, voters reported they would vote for Sullivan against Begich at about the same rate as Croft.”

Turnout was supposed to be the deciding factor; about 8,300 more people voted in the regular election than in the runoff, but in the past the opposite’s been true. The last time we had a mayoral runoff election, in 2000, between George Wuerch and Mark Begich, about 6,500 more voters showed up for the runoff than the regular, ensuring Begich’s victory.

As for the Anchorage Daily News’s endorsement of Sullivan, well, it probably wasn’t much of a factor. Although ADN is a frequent and often deserving target of the allegation that it’s a liberal mouthpiece, the paper couldn’t really have endorsed Croft since right before the regular election it endorsed both Sullivan and progressive Assemblywoman Sheila Selkregg, while criticizing Croft. The paper had painted itself into a corner there.

Sullivan will be sworn in as mayor on July 1, but even now, on the Anchorage Assembly, the political dynamic has shifted. What had been a six-to-five progressive majority on the assembly changed to an even five-to-five ideological split when Chairman Matt Claman became acting mayor after Begich’s senate win. Claman will return to the assembly July 1 to serve the rest of his term, but in the interim the power structure of the assembly has been reorganized.

At the last assembly meeting on Tuesday, April 28, the body reorganized as required annually no later than the third Tuesday following each regular election. There was some intrigue: Because of the even split amongst the liberals and conservatives, some haggling went on. The common—and eventually prevailing—wisdom was that Debbie Ossiander, a conservative, would become chair, and Harriet Drummond, a liberal, would become vice chair. Drummond had previously been vice chair after Sheila Selkregg stepped down from the post to run for mayor, and then Drummond was acting chair when Claman became acting mayor.

But Patrick Flynn, on the liberal side, had formulated an alternate plan where a progressive could retain the leadership post, a scenario that would have him as chair and conservative Dan Coffey as vice chair. “I just asked the questions, is this what we wanna do, or do we wanna do something different? I put together basically a ‘plan b’ if Debbie didn’t have the votes,” Flynn says.

Ossiander did have the votes, unanimously. But after Elvi Gray-Jackson, a progressive, moved to nominate Drummond for vice chair, with fellow progressive Mike Gutierrez seconding, conservative Jennifer Johnston moved to nominate Flynn as vice chair and conservative Bill Starr seconded the nomination.

Why would two conservatives nominate Flynn against Drummond? Flynn co-sponsored, with Johnston, an amendment in late March to cut the Anchorage School District’s budget by two percent, and swung the vote by voting with the conservatives. After that vote some liberals accused him of being a traitor. Claman ultimately vetoed the budget cuts. (Interestingly, Flynn was also the only “nay” vote on the new budget with an increased property tax at the last assembly meeting.)

So when the ten-member assembly, in a secret ballot, voted on the vice chair position, the results were five-to-four-to-one (one member voted for someone who wasn’t nominated), which did not result in the six votes required to seat a vice chair. Municipal Clerk Barbara Gruenstein announced a re-ballot was necessary, and in the resulting vote, Drummond received the six votes necessary to win the vice chair’s seat.

The assembly’s power structure grants the chair unilateral power to assign assembly members to the various committees, and choose the leadership for those committees. Ossiander has already done so, and many of the assignments have changed; Drummond says that Ossiander spoke with the members to “see what their passions were.” Selkregg describes Ossiander as a moderate, and now that the reorganization is complete, no one’s complaining—at least not out loud.

“The assembly is not about who’s in the majority, as much as it’s about working together,” Flynn says. “If you’re comfortable working with somebody, their ideology isn’t particularly important. It’s why you saw Jennifer [Johnston] and I offer that amendment to the school board budget.”

The intrigue isn’t over though. There’s a widespread rumor that if Sullivan, who was term-limited out of the assembly in April of 2008, won the mayoral race, as he did, conservative Assemblyman Dan Coffey would leave the assembly for a post in the Sullivan administration—city manager perhaps, or chief of staff.

Though the rumor is just that—Sullivan said on the campaign trail that he learned from his father, former Mayor George Sullivan, to make no promises of jobs to anyone—it sets up an interesting hypothetical. If Coffey were to vacate his seat, the assembly, which would then have a six-to-four progressive majority, may appoint someone to fill the seat within 30 days. If Coffey left in July, with nine months before the next regular assembly election next April, the charter dictates that a special election must occur within 60 days of the occurrence of the vacancy. That means that whomever the assembly appointed may be in for a short ride. If Coffey waited a few months past July, so that April’s election was within six months of his leaving his seat, the assembly’s appointee would retain the seat until that regular election.

So it’s entirely possible that our perpetual election series isn’t done quite yet. A special election would be a liability for the city budget though. “We’ve already gone over budget to pay for the runoff that’s today,” Acting Mayor Claman said on Tuesday. “Elections are not free.”

But Claman also points out that just as his constituents in West Anchorage complained that his seat on the assembly wasn’t filled when he became acting mayor, Coffey’s constituents would want their representation replaced as soon as possible. “I’m sure the assembly will be quick to want to address that in whatever way seems most effective,” Claman says.

That’s all speculation at this point, but it means that the political drama in our city government hasn’t ended just because the voters chose Dan Sullivan on Tuesday. Stay tuned.

bjk@anchoragepress.com