Updated 8 p.m. Saturday
Anchorage police charged a man who they said was trying to damage one of mayoral candidate Amy Demboski's campaign signs Friday, and Demboski was apparently the one who caught him.
In an emailed statement Saturday from her campaign, Demboski said she spotted a "man with a box cutter" approaching her 4-foot-by-8-foot campaign signs near the corner of East Fireweed Lane and Denali Street. Earlier in the day, the Demboski campaign reported to police that vandals had defaced 18 of their large signs between Chugiak and Anchorage.
The damage ranged from Demboski's face being crossed out in red paint to being cut out of the signs entirely, according to Demboski. The campaign said the vandalism has cost thousands of dollars.
:quality(70)/wp-adn.s3-website-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/image-archive/1004941/whittaker.jpg)
On East Fireweed Lane, Demboski confronted the man and recorded the conversation on video, according to the statement from the campaign. The campaign has posted the video, titled "Chauvinist Sign Vandal vs Female Mayoral Candidate," to YouTube.
In the video, the man tells Demboski, "If you'd have put 'Demboski' without the pretty face, the pink lipstick and the 'Amy,' you might've had a better chance of winning." The man also makes remarks about another female Anchorage Assembly member, Elvi Gray-Jackson, which Demboski characterized as "disparaging."
"The vandal's apparent motive was sexism," her campaign's statement said.
At 7:22 p.m. Friday, Demboski called an Alaska Dispatch News reporter to say that she had caught a man who was trying to damage one of her signs. Moments later, about 7:30 p.m., police were dispatched to 204 E. Fireweed Lane in response to a man who "appeared to be cutting an Amy Demboski sign with a box cutter," Anchorage police spokeswoman Jennifer Castro wrote in an email on Saturday.
Police cited the man, 54-year-old Joshua Whittaker, for criminal mischief. He has a court date set for May 8, Castro wrote. The city election is Tuesday, and a runoff election would happen May 5.
Whittaker, who ran for a Midtown Anchorage Assembly seat in 2010 against Dick Traini and Andy Clary, drove to the Alaska Dispatch News office to speak to a reporter in person. He acknowledged that he was cited but denied damaging the sign. He claimed the sign was placed illegally in an easement.
"What she's got is going to be dismissed," Whittaker said, speaking out of the window of his car. He called her signs and those of other candidates "basically litter."
He drove away before the interview could be concluded.
Demboski's campaign also posted surveillance footage on YouTube of someone apparently removing part of another Demboski sign elsewhere in Anchorage. The person in that video drives away in a car similar to the one Whittaker is seen driving in the other video and the car Whittaker drove to the Alaska Dispatch News office on Saturday.