Anchorage Daily News

A fiery personality in Anchorage city politics died Tuesday morning, days after an 11-hour operation intended to repair his heart.

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Allan Tesche

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Allan Tesche, who was 60, served nine years on the Anchorage Assembly representing downtown. He left the job last year because of term limits, but not before a few final battles with his conservative foes.

"He was an incredible debater and he was not going to let anyone push him around," said Sen. Mark Begich, who met Tesche in the early 1980s when both worked for the city. The pair became friends and, when Begich was elected mayor, political allies.

Tesche once described himself as "a gut fighter for the left." His targets used other words.

A retired lawyer, Tesche represented downtown Anchorage from 1999 to 2008. He emerged as a passionate figure in Anchorage Democratic circles, often blogging with biting humor about Assembly meetings. His reports, sometimes drafted during the meetings themselves, became must-read material for local political junkies long before blogs emerged as a political force in Alaska.

"There was never a time when he was not political," said former Midtown Assemblyman Dick Traini, who served with Tesche for much of the decade. "Every response was measured and if he felt passionate on an issue, he would take it right to the wall."

Tesche fought the local liquor lobby, pushed to regulate big box stores and successfully championed bans on smoking in public buildings. In that time, one of his primary rivals was West Anchorage Assemblyman, now Mayor, Dan Sullivan.

"Allan and I spent many years on the Assembly together, and while we did not always agree, we respected each other's devotion to improving life for Anchorage residents," Sullivan said in a written statement. "His passion was apparent to anyone who met him, and he will be sorely missed."

Tesche was previously hospitalized for emergency heart surgery in 2006 to repair a ruptured aorta. The follow-up surgery last week was planned.

"As far as I knew, he was doing really great," said Midtown Assemblywoman Elvi Gray-Jackson, a close friend.

On Thursday, doctors at the Texas Medical Center in Houston replaced two valves in his heart, prepared him for a pacemaker and further fixed the ruptured aorta, said Tesche's longtime Assembly aide, Gene Storm.

Tesche's wife reported he appeared to be growing stronger, Storm said.

But on Monday night, Tesche showed "signs of distress" in the hospital's intensive care unit and doctors were forced to operate once again, Storm said. He never recovered.

WORK AND WIT

From 1970 to 1972, Tesche served in the Peace Corps in El Salvador, leaning to speak Spanish and getting a taste for public service, Storm said.

He worked as deputy municipal attorney in Anchorage and borough attorney for the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, going into private practice in 1988.

"He had a really dry wit," said Karen Russell, Tesche's former partner in a local law firm.

An example: Russell was once out of town talking to clients and awaiting an Alaska Supreme Court decision on an important workers compensation case. Suddenly someone interrupted her with an urgent fax. The message looked to be on Supreme Court stationary and it carried bad news, including how bad she was.

"It said that I not only lost, but that I lost big."

The date: April 1. Tesche, of course, was the author.

As a blogger and frequent radio guest, Tesche knew how to tell a story.

In 2005, he and Traini teamed up to propose a city rule requiring stores to keep certain meth ingredients, like cold medications, behind counters or locked away in display cases.

Traini was recovering from a stroke, he said, when the pair pitched the idea at a press conference.

"I was still gray from being in the hospital," Traini said. "He said, 'Just stand up there, if you pass out, it'll make good drama.'"

BATTLES WON AND LOST

The next year at an Assembly work session in City Hall, Storm said, Tesche felt something strange happening in his chest. He asked a security guard to call 911 and was raced to the hospital.

The doctors repaired his heart, while friends called him lucky to be alive.

Over his last year in office, Tesche sparred with East Anchorage Assemblyman Paul Bauer over Bauer's proposal to have police check for illegal immigrants during traffic stops. Writing about the proposal on his blog, Tesche illustrated the post with a picture of Adolf Hitler. Bauer's plan eventually failed.

He called on Begich to issue the first veto of the mayor's career, overruling a 10-1 Assembly vote allowing a strip club that hired teenage dancers to turn itself into an adult club that sells liquor.

Tesche loved a good fight, and he got one when his answering machine recorded three-minutes of a private and embarrassing chat between then-Assembly chairman Dan Coffey and Eagle River Assemblyman Bill Starr about fund-raising. Coffey had unknowingly hit the automatic dial for Tesche's number.

On his blog Tesche wrote that Coffey and Starr could be heard "boasting, cursing their enemies, and cackling like roosters over their political victories." The clip, played on the left-leaning KUDO 1080 AM radio station, ignited an Alaska Public Office Commission investigation.

APOC dismissed the complaint against Coffey and ordered Starr to pay $315 for failing to disclose certain donations and expenses.

When Tesche and Traini pushed for bonds to pay for deteriorating city pools, voters approved the bonds in April 2008, on the same ballot they chose Tesche's replacement.

Days later, Tesche posted a kind of goodbye blog item that featured a picture of himself standing on the beach, looking to the horizon with blue waves at his feet.

"My work there is done," he wrote.

Contact Kyle Hopkins at khopkins@adn.com or call 257-4334.

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