Mayoral runoff candidate Amy Demboski went after some members of the media Thursday night after the moderator in a KTUU debate asked her whether she thought her opponent Ethan Berkowitz supported incest.
Host Steve MacDonald presented the bizarre question during the station's one-hour "Decision 2015"debate after saying he had ditched his plan to start by asking about candidate qualifications. Instead, he wanted the two finalists in the race for mayor to address the "800-pound gorilla" that had recently entered the campaign.
Demboski and Anchorage Baptist Temple's chief pastor, the Rev. Jerry Prevo, have recently suggested that Berkowitz said on his former KFQD radio talk show last year that he supports a father's right to marry his son. No record of the conversation exists, station officials have said, because show archives are not kept for more than six months.
In a recent radio interview, KFQD talk-show host Casey Reynolds asked Demboski if she thought Berkowitz supported incest. Reynolds said radio hosts sometimes make sarcastic comments and expected she would denounce the accusation. Instead, Demboski told Reynolds she believes Berkowitz said he thinks a dad should be able to marry a son. Reynolds has suggested Demboski is trying to start a whisper campaign against Berkowitz based on "lewd innuendo."
In Thursday night's debate, Demboski again did not answer whether she believes Berkowitz supports incest. She said that's a question for Berkowitz, and added that maybe the comment was a joke or taken out of context.
She took aim at Reynolds, saying he is the longtime live-in boyfriend of a paid staffer for the Berkowitz campaign.
Demboski said later she was referring to Amy Coffman.
Asked for comment after the debate, Berkowitz' campaign manager Susanne Fleek-Green said Coffman is field director for the Berkowitz campaign. She said she would not address staffers' personal living situations.
During the debate, Berkowitz was asked if he made the statement last year, and if he did, would he like to put it into context. As he has said before, he responded that he would not dignify that "ridiculous accusation" with a response.
"There's too much politics of personal destruction. What I'd like to see is politics and governance that's about leadership and solving problems."
He said he's run a positive campaign. "The way I've conducted myself I think is the way a mayor should conduct himself," he said.
MacDonald, noting that KTUU and Alaska Dispatch News had reported on the incident, held up a copy of the ADN story, titled "Demboski implies opponent is OK with incest unions."
Demboski said she never used "that word" -- referring to "incest" -- and that she found it disappointing the way the newspaper "spun" the story.
"I just found it was disappointing of the ADN to run the story the way it ran it, because I'm not the one who'd ever used that word, and I felt it was inappropriate," she said. She didn't explain the difference between incest and the marriage of a father and son.
Asked if he'd like to give a final comment on the topic, Berkowitz refused.
"I'd like to actually talk about the things people in Anchorage care about, which are police forces and economic development," he said.
With that, MacDonald then turned the debate, held on the fourth floor of the Anchorage Museum, toward more standard municipal topics. Both candidates sought to paint themselves as fiscally conservative and supportive of more police and public-private partnerships to enhance economic development.
The third debate before Tuesday's runoff election, MacDonald allowed one-minute responses unless the candidates wanted to explore issues.
At one point when candidates could pose questions to each other, Demboski asked if Berkowitz would veto items in the Anchorage Assembly's narrowly passed $484 million budget.
Berkowitz didn't answer, but asked that if she thought it was too high, why she didn't propose decreases.
Demboski said she would veto items if she were mayor, such as positions in the health department she says are not needed, a planning department position that the law department has said it could handle, and several other employees who were added.
She said she didn't vote for the budget, and that the municipality shouldn't be raising property taxes 5.6 percent.
Property taxes are actually lower, but assessed property values are higher. As a result the city will collect $270 million, up 5.6 percent from last year.
Berkowitz shot back that on Demboski's watch, the city's software upgrade project has ballooned from $10 million to $35 million and is now projected to cost at least $73 million, he said.
Demboski said that as a member of the assembly, she was not in charge of the project -- but the city administration was.
"So you can say what you like, but I know you don't attend assembly meetings, so you know, you probably didn't know that," she said.
Berkowitz replied that Demboski had opposed initial efforts calling for an audit.
Demboski agreed that she had, but said she changed her position after the Sullivan administration failed to meet promised benchmarks.
MacDonald asked both candidates if they would pay for new police officers by raising property taxes or implementing a sales tax. Both candidates said now was not the time to take those steps.
Demboski said the city and Anchorage School District need to look at consolidating services, including combining purchasing, payroll and project management departments. She said about $70 million in tax exempt property for nonprofit organizations also needs to be reviewed for the first time in 15 years, because potentially $30 million worth of property may not qualify for the break anymore.
"It means before we go to the taxpayer with our hand out, we have to do our job first," she said.
Berkowitz said the city has to maximize its services before it begins to contemplate raising taxes. Ideas include making city and school buildings more energy efficient and selling some of the city's land in the Heritage Land Bank.
"Some of that should return to the private sector and be a constructive part of our development and be part of our housing solution," he said.
Also, with the state increasingly in a position where it may not be able to share as much oil wealth with local governments, the state should instead turn over land to the city, he said.
In the candidates' oft-repeated battle over gay rights, Demboski said Anchorage is a tolerant city and she fears that making sexual identity a protected status in Anchorage will restrict religious freedoms.
Berkowitz said those freedoms won't be affected because they are protected in the U.S. Constitution.
"I reject the characterization of it as special rights," he said. "I know the concern that people have that it somehow impinges on religious rights. When you understand how the Constitution works, you cannot pass a law that abridges someone constitutional rights of the free exercise of religion."
Alaska Dispatch News reporter Devin Kelly contributed to this story.