LaFrance Receives Enough Votes to Secure Victory
PHOTO: courtesy Paxson Woelber, the Alaska Landmine
LaFrance leads BRONSON in the preliminary results of the second round. There are still many votes to be counted, but it seems that Anchorage will have its first elected female mayor.Former chair of the Anchorage Assembly, Suzanne LaFrance, is leading in the electoral results for Anchorage’s mayoral runoff. The last day to vote in the election was Tuesday, May 14th, and if the results continue existing trends, it seems that the city is approaching a significant political milestone: the first elected female mayor, marking the conclusion of a highly contested mayoral race. At the time of writing this article, with 32.97% of ballots counted, LaFrance is 5,847 votes ahead of the incumbent mayor, Dave Bronson. This does not mean that the race is settled. There are still thousands of ballots to be counted. However, according to Alaska Public Media, assuming that voting patterns remain consistent with previous mayoral elections, Bronson would need the rest of the ballots to favor him in a ratio of 2 to 1 in order to close the gap.
The runoff election is the culmination of a highly contested mayoral race, with LaFrance and Bronson emerging as the top contenders from a pool of ten candidates that included Bill Popp and Chris Tuck. In the initial April election, LaFrance held a narrow lead of fewer than 500 votes, which sent the city, once again, into a second round. Moreover, this election also represents the latest installment of a prolonged rivalry between LaFrance and Bronson, which dates to Bronson’s 2021 victory. During Bronson’s term, LaFrance served as the chair of the Anchorage Assembly for two-years, and she opposed multiple of his policies. This opposition to many of the administrative decisions of the mayor was the focus of her campaign, in which she refrained from politicizing the issues and maintained a nonpartisan stance. Nevertheless, she often aligned with the left-of-center majority of Assembly members on issues such as COVID-19 health mandates, homelessness, and budgetary matters and led in the polls and fundraising throughout much of the race. Bronson, a registered Republican, took a more ideological route and has campaigned on positioning himself as a conservative counterbalance to what he perceives as a predominantly leftist Assembly. On Tuesday night, according to Alaska Public Media, he urged his supporters to continue waiting for the results as many votes are still not counted. Nevertheless, if the trend continues, he’s poised to be the second incumbent mayor to fail to win a second term in nearly 50 years. |