Election Good News!
Yes. Election. Good. News. Let’s just sit with that for a moment. As always, there are the last ballots to be counted, and write-in votes to be scrutinized, but here’s where we stand so far: Bettye Davis for School Board handed Don Smith his walking papers (and his rear end) with a decisive 54-45 victory for the seat Smith currently occupies. Bettye is amazing in her own right, but Don Smith’s latest shenanigans and nastiness didn’t help his cause. Davis recently lost her established State Senate seat after Republican redistricting sliced up her former district. It’s good to have her…
The Many Faces of Ernie Hall
As Tuesday draws near, bringing with it the probable passage of Mayor Sullivan’s anti-labor “Employee Relations Act,” I still have a question for Assembly Chair Ernie Hall. Among the ardent supporters of Anchorage Ordinance 37, on which Chair Hall’s name is listed as the sponsor, are lawmakers who crusaded against unions during their campaigns. During his first run against Dick Traini, Andy Clary told a crowd that he felt limiting city contracts to the public sector was “wrong.” Back in 2010, he said: “I believe that excludes a whole crop of private contractors out there which, if we opened the…
Drummond. There Can Be Only One.
Well, this is a fine fix you’ve gotten us into, Harriet Drummond! One of our favorite Assembly members had the temerity to win the State House seat for her district. She also had the horrible lack of foresight to not stretch side to side until she divided like an amoeba in a spectacular display of binary fission, creating two Harriet Drumonds so both positions could be filled. More’s the pity. Now we have an issue – an empty Anchorage Assembly seat. By January 15, the first regular Assembly meeting of the new year, and until the next Municipal election (what…