The four-way race to replace retiring West Anchorage Assemblyman Ernie Hall seat is shaping up as a hot contest, with familiar names and hefty fundraising.
Fears have also been raised by labor unions that two of the candidates, allies Eric Croft and Ira Perman, would both draw from the same moderate-to-progressive voter pool, splitting the vote and handing the contest to the conservative in the race, Adam Trombley.
Croft is a lawyer and member of the Anchorage School Board who served in the Alaska Legislature; Perman is director of the Atwood Foundation and Assembly aid to Hall; Trombley is an account manager for an oilfield chemical company and former East Anchorage Assembly member who lost a re-election bid in 2013 and moved to another part of town; a fourth candidate, Dustin Darden, is a city fleet maintenance worker.
Trombley, a fan of small government and lower property taxes, is touting himself as the race's only conservative candidate.
As he did when he ran for mayor last year, Darden is making quizzical statements about water fluoridation and putting little smiley faces on his campaign signs.
Meanwhile, similar positions taken by Perman and Croft on a number of big policy issues have stirred up concern among labor unions who have asked, unsuccessfully, for Perman to withdraw.
Croft and Perman live within blocks of each other in Spenard, a geographic coincidence that prompted a minor campaign sign war. Both have hosted political events at Tap Root, the Spenard bar and music venue. Perman, a longtime executive in the performing arts community, organized a "West Side Stories" event modeled after the popular Arctic Entries storytelling show. The event, which Croft attended, included a tale by Mayor Ethan Berkowitz and raised money for bike advocacy, not Perman's campaign.
A few days before Perman's Tap Root event, Croft hosted a live-music event at the venue called "Spenard Votes" and handed out T-shirts. The proceeds went to the artists who performed.
Both candidates have voiced support for organized labor and say they want to keep intact the Anchorage civil rights law that passed last year and barred discrimination against gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual people in housing, employment and public accommodations. Both are campaigning on turning Anchorage into a more bike-friendly place.
In the months since he launched his campaign, Perman said he's fielded entreaties to leave the race and endorse Croft. Shortly after Perman declared his candidacy last May, labor unions organized a meeting at the IBEW Local 1547 office and invited several people who had expressed interest in Hall's seat, according to Perman, Croft and Federation of Community Council manager Mark Butler, who all attended the meeting (Croft by phone). Kay Brown, executive director of the Alaska Democratic Party, was also present.
The discussion was over consolidating the "progressive" candidates in the race to avoid splitting the vote. In an interview, Croft recalled saying he would support some kind of process to winnow the candidates.
But, aware that Croft would likely be the preferred candidate, Perman said he told the meeting organizers that he wasn't interested in being culled.
"This took a long time for myself and my wife to come to the decision (to run), this was the time and place to do this," Perman said he told the meeting organizers. He's registered as a nonpartisan and doesn't see himself in a single political camp, he said.
Joelle Hall, director of operations for the Alaska AFL-CIO, said there was "definitely some concern" among unions that Perman and Croft would be drawing from a similar pool of voters.
Perman has "always been kind of passionately nonpartisan," Hall said. "That's the difference."
She said union leaders have no problem with Perman. Croft, she said, has an overall track record of supporting labor issues, particularly voting as a state legislator to retain the state's defined-benefit pension system for public employees.
"We wanted to make sure Ira understood … that while we don't have anything against him, we would be sticking with (Croft)," Hall said. "Our philosophy is that we don't trade old friends for new ones."
Croft — who lost to Dan Sullivan in a runoff for Anchorage mayor in 2009 and ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2006 — served as a Democratic state legislator for 10 years. This year, he's enlisted college Democrat groups to run a phone bank for his Assembly campaign. Unions have rallied to his side financially, and political action committees affiliated with unions have poured at least $14,500 into his campaign.
A radio and video ad released last week highlighted Croft's connection to city workers through Carol Bacon, a retired firefighter with the Anchorage Fire Department for whom Croft, as an attorney, won a settlement against the city over a work-related cancer.
In 2013, Ernie Hall, Perman's boss on the Assembly, nearly lost his re-election bid to a write-in campaign for Nick Moe. Moe gained momentum amid union anger about former Mayor Dan Sullivan's rewrite of Anchorage labor law, Anchorage Ordinance 37.
Moe is now Perman's campaign manager, and in early October, Perman sent out an emailed statement distancing himself from Hall's support of the labor law, saying that he would "vigorously oppose any repeat of AO-37."
Asked to sum up his rivals, Darden equated Croft and Perman and, saying he's a city union member, brought up Trombley's record on labor.
"Eric Croft … he's probably going to increase, be for increasing taxes. Ira Perman, more taxes. Adam Trombley, he's going to be against the working people, not labor," Darden said.
Trombley voted for the labor law rewrite when it first passed the Assembly. He later reversed his position and voted to repeal it several months later -- because, he said, he thought the city had botched the process of rolling out the law, and correctly assumed that if the measure went to voters it would lose.
"There's a reason they've never given me money," Trombley said, referring to labor unions. "I'm for smaller government, more limited government."
Trombley's financial backers in the campaign include developers and members of the local building industry; on the Assembly, Trombley introduced legislation aimed at expediting the building plan review process by allowing developers to send plans to private architects for review instead of the city.
On Facebook, Trombley's campaign page has been quiet, populated only by a few posts about fundraisers. As of Tuesday, Trombley had spent far less money than Croft and Perman. But Trombley said he'll be sending out fliers and rolling out radio advertising before the election.
He's hoping to rally voters around his support for an initiative seeking to undo an Assembly change last year to Anchorage's tax-cap calculation, which allowed the city to collect more in property taxes this year and has become a key campaign issue for conservative Assembly candidates. (Croft said he would have sided with the Assembly majority on the vote; Perman said he isn't for or against the initiative, because he doesn't think the change will have a significant impact on future budgets).
Marc Hellenthal, an Anchorage political strategist who has worked for Trombley in the past, said Trombley will need to overcome the issue of his residency and make it known to voters that he now lives in west Anchorage, not east. In an interview, Perman said he believed Trombley was too much of a newcomer.
Trombley said that when he lost re-election in 2013, he was living in a townhouse in East Anchorage, and his family was growing. He wanted a single-family home with a big yard.
He and his wife decided to build a house near Kincaid, a more conservative part of West Anchorage. But the decision that was motivated by lifestyle, not politics, Trombley said.
"At the end of the day, we all live in Anchorage," said Trombley, who pointed out that he also volunteers as a basketball coach at South Anchorage High School.
Tom McGrath, a conservative and longtime business owner in Spenard who closely tracks Assembly politics, is supporting Trombley in the race. With veterans set to leave the Assembly in the next two years, McGrath said Trombley's business background and prior experience on the Assembly count for a lot.
"We really need some help on the Assembly right now, experienced guys, between this year and next year," McGrath said.
But Butler, the manager of the Federation of Community Councils and a longtime neighborhood activist in Spenard, argued that experience in government unites all three top fundraisers -- Croft, Perman and Trombley.
In Croft and Trombley's case, that's experience in both local and state government, Butler said. In Perman's case, it's proximity to it. Butler said that reflects the community they'd be representing.
"We have a lot of qualified people in West Anchorage, lots of people very involved in the community, a lot of people who are knowledgeable about how government works," Butler said.
Butler wouldn't say who he's supporting. But the records show he didn't open his wallet too far. According to campaign finance reports, he gave two donations, totaling $70, to Croft and to Perman.
The four West Anchorage candidates are scheduled to face off during a forum March 23 at 6 p.m. at the Spenard Recreation Center.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly characterized an event at Tap Root as a fundraiser for Eric Croft. It was a campaign event but not a fundraiser. The story also misstated that Carol Bacon was a member of the Anchorage Police Department. She was a member of the Anchorage Fire Department.