Alaska News

Mayoral candidates campaign to the end

The two candidates in the runoff to be Anchorage's next mayor are hitting the homestretch this weekend on what could be a muddy last few days of the campaign.

Both say they'll be hitting familiar themes in familiar ways as the Tuesday election approaches. Eric Croft expects to spend a lot of time on the phone chatting up potential voters.

"We've concentrated in our campaign about direct contact, with volunteers and in particular, me, knocking on doors, calling voters, and we intend to keep that up right to the end," said Croft, a former 10-year state legislator making his first bid for a city office.

Dan Sullivan, a former three-term Assemblyman, said he might be spotted at a few community events over the weekend. Maybe at the Kids Fun Run this morning at the Alaska Zoo. Probably at church on Sunday.

The weekend's big event is tonight's 6 p.m. KTUU Channel 2 debate at Cafe Del Mundo on Benson Boulevard, surely a more relaxed setting than the dark, bare stage where the station staged its last candidate forum.

Their last joint appearance likely will be at the Chamber of Commerce at noon Monday. The chamber meets at the Dena'ina Center.

The campaign's latest big blowup erupted Thursday, when former Assemblyman Allan Tesche put out a statement lambasting Sullivan over the DUI conviction of a waitress at McGinley's Pub, the bar and restaurant he co-owns downtown.

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The waitress was involved in an accident at around 4 a.m. in October 2006. Tesche said court documents he'd recently received show the waitress testified at trial that she'd shared a pitcher of beer with Sullivan at McGinley's after clocking out that night.

Tesche is a Croft backer who said he's donated the maximum allowed to Croft's campaign, but he said that has nothing to do with his outrage about the incident, which he said shows poor judgment on Sullivan's part. "I call on Dan Sullivan to explain the management practices of his bar that apparently enabled one of his employees to leave work unable to drive safely, endangering her life and those of other drivers on the road," Tesche's e-mailed statement said.

On Friday, Sullivan responded.

"Tesche is clearly working to do last-minute smears on behalf of the Croft campaign," Sullivan said. "We follow the strictest rules in terms of service of alcohol. ...

"If something happened to someone after they left our facility, we don't know where they went or what they did after they left, but while they were in our facility whether it's a patron or an off-duty employee, they're subject to the strict rules that we adhere to."

FAMILIAR GROUND

Croft has advocated saving money by consolidating some city and School District work, and finding other ways to shrink spending in a time of shrinking city revenues. He also wants to increase the city's property exemption from taxes from the present $20,000 to a maximum of $50,000.

"We can overcome these short-term economic difficulties by finding efficiencies and saving money," he said. "But long term, what we want to build here is a great community. It's the challenge of who do you trust to work with everybody to both find the efficiencies and get targeted property tax reduction."

Sullivan said it's easy to talk about reducing property taxes, but that he has specifics in mind.

"First, you've got to prioritize your spending, you've got to make sure you present realistic budgets, which we didn't see over the last budget cycle, and then you implement tools to make sure you deliver services as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible."

One such tool Sullivan has touted recently is "managed competition" -- putting some city services out for competitive bid.

That won't work for all kinds of public services -- public safety, for example -- but it's been shown to work great in others, such as the limited road service areas in parts of the Hillside and Eagle River, where neighborhood residents agree to tax themselves to plow and maintain roads, and hire private contractors to do it, Sullivan said.

"You'd be hard pressed to find anybody who lives in those areas who would want to switch back to any other method," he said.

City elections are nonpartisan, but Croft is a Democrat who has support from his party and many of the lawmakers he served with in Juneau, as well as former Mayor Mark Begich. Begich and Democratic Party Chair Patti Higgins were two of the hosts at a mid-month fundraiser for Croft.

On the other side, former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, a Republican, headlined a fundraiser for Sullivan, as did former Gov. Bill Sheffield, a Democrat and executive director of Anchorage's port.

Sullivan, who filed paperwork allowing him to begin raising money 18 months ago, has accepted more than $460,000 and had spent about $376,000 by the end of last week. Croft entered the fundraising fray a few months after Sullivan, and had spent about $304,000 of the $352,000 he had raised.

Sullivan reports another $7,000 in contributions since those reports were filed, and Croft another $5,000.

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Contact reporter Don Hunter at dhunter@adn.com or 257-4349.

How to vote early

People who want to vote early can do so this weekend on the second floor of Loussac Library, 3600 Denali St. The library will be open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. today and from noon until 5 p.m. on Sunday. Early votes also can be cast on Monday: from 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. on the second floor of City Hall; from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. at Loussac; and from 8:30 a.m. until 5 p.m. at Chugiak Senior Center.

By DON HUNTER

dhunter@adn.com

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