Anchorage mayor, school board election results largely unchanged in Thursday’s updated count

In updated ballot counts posted Thursday for the Anchorage election, races for mayor and school board remained largely unchanged, and two of nine ballot propositions continued to fail.

Incumbent Mayor Dave Bronson and former Assembly Chair Suzanne LaFrance are poised for a May runoff election. LaFrance had 36% of the vote and Bronson had 35% in Thursday’s preliminary results. Under municipal rules, if no candidate receives more than 45% of the vote, then the top two candidates advance to a head-to-head contest.

Trailing LaFrance and Bronson were former Anchorage Economic Development Corp. leader Bill Popp, who had about 17% of the vote, and former Democratic state Rep. Chris Tuck, who had 8%.

In the Anchorage School Board races, three incumbents held leads over their challengers.

Board incumbent Pat Higgins carried 55% of the vote against challenger Kay Schuster in the race for seat E.

For seat G, incumbent Carl Jacobs had 57% of the vote, holding a wide lead over first-time candidate Chelsea Pohland.

And incumbent Dora Wilson, with 63% of the vote, was winning the race for seat F against first-time candidate Angela Frank.

Proposition 8, the $5 million area-wide bond for adding 10 public restrooms around the municipality, was failing with 61% of voters against it. Proposition 7, a $4.1 million bond for creating two new cemeteries in Girdwood and Eagle River, was failing with about 56% of voters against it.

The Anchorage School District’s $62.3 million capital improvements bond was passing by about 4-point margin, with just under 52% of voters approving it.

All other capital improvement bonds were still passing Thursday; those are bonds for city parks, roads and storm drainage, public safety and transit, police, and for improving access to Chugach State Park.

Voters were also approving Proposition 2, a ballot measure to require Anchorage Assembly confirmation of the Health Department’s chief medical officer, which had 55% of the vote.

Mark Littlefield ran unopposed for the only Assembly seat on the ballot and will represent District 2, Eagle River/Chugiak.

Election officials had counted an additional 7,992 ballots Thursday, for a total of 60,653 counted so far. That’s a little under 26% of Anchorage’s registered voters. Thousands more ballots have not yet been counted, and more will arrive by mail in the coming days.

During the 2021 regular mayoral election, Anchorage saw about a 32% voter turnout.

While percentages will likely shift as more ballots are tabulated over the next several days, it’s unlikely that most election outcomes will change in a meaningful way.

Election results won’t be final until certification of the regular election by the Assembly on April 23.

Ballot packages for the mayoral runoff election are scheduled to be mailed on April 30, with the final day to vote on May 14.