In the same week that Alaska U.S. Senate candidate Dan Sullivan flew to Washington, D.C., to help pick Republican Party leadership, Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan was also in D.C., lobbying for federal funding for projects including the Port of Anchorage and a new Midtown transit center.
Bryce Hyslip, a spokesman for Mayor Sullivan, said the mayor has been in Washington since Tuesday, meeting with members of Alaska's congressional delegation and various government agencies "on potential port funding and potential federal transit funds/grants."
Through Hyslip, Sullivan declined to discuss details of the meetings until after his return to Anchorage on Friday. The mayor, who is trailing in a tight race for lieutenant governor, went on a similar lobbying trip to D.C. in December 2013.
Hyslip did send a text message outlining the mayor's schedule for Wednesday and Thursday. It showed a meeting Wednesday with Don Norden of the Washington lobbying firm Chambers, Conlon and Hartwell, followed by a meeting with members of Gov. Sean Parnell's Washington-based staff.
On Thursday morning, the mayor met with representatives of the National Archives and the Canadian Embassy. In the afternoon, there were scheduled meetings with Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act loan office director Duane Callendar and Henrika Buchanan-Smith, an associate administrator for the Federal Transit Administration.
The meeting with Callendar was for discussion of funding for the Port of Anchorage project, and the meeting with Buchanan-Smith was to discuss transit funding, including for the proposed Midtown transit center, according to Hyslip.
The city recently relaunched an effort to complete the Port of Anchorage expansion project. An initial attempt cost more than $300 million and left the city with an unusable new dock to the north of the current port.
Construction halted in 2010, and the project is expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars more to complete.
Meanwhile, the Sullivan administration has for months eyed a Midtown Anchorage property owned by the federal government as the potential site of a new municipal transit center. The administration has maintained that Midtown would be a better location for the city's bus hub, which is currently located downtown.
Construction of a new transit center will come with a price tag of at least $8 million, according to Lance Wilber, city transportation director.
The trip concluded Thursday with back-to-back meetings with Sen. Lisa Murkowski and newly re-elected Congressman Don Young, according to the schedule sent by Hyslip.