Anchorage Daily News

WASILLA -- Two years ago, Michelle Church's nomination to the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Planning Commission sparked a protest by property-rights advocates.

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Her nomination by Mayor Tim Anderson was hotly debated; the Borough Assembly voted 4-3 not to seat her.

Last week, Church won a seat on the Assembly itself with 47 percent of the votes cast, according to unofficial results. She expects to take her seat later this month, along with two other new Assembly members and a new mayor, who all support land-use planning for future development.

Politicos say her win shouldn't be surprising; the Valley is changing. But don't try to extend that connection to the November statewide election, they said. Valley voters might be more liberal at home, but they're still plenty conservative in their statewide views.

"What you're looking at here is people voting for people inclined to look after the community from a planning perspective," Anchorage pollster Ivan Moore of Ivan Moore Research said Monday. "Just because a community votes very right wing on state races doesn't mean it will vote that way on local races."

Church has for years been the face of planning in the Mat-Su. The group Friends of Mat-Su started in her kitchen in 1998, and she served as its executive director for five years.

"I think the demographics out here have changed. You have new people out here voting and people who are seeing what they love about the Valley disappear, and they don't want to see that," Church said.

In months of door-to-door campaigning, she said, she counted only five people who said they didn't want zoning or land-use regulation. Things weren't so different in 2004 when Anderson nominated her for the Planning Commission and the Assembly turned her down, she said.

"I think the folks on the Assembly were misreading the community. They felt they had to acquiesce to this no-planning voice out there. I think that was incorrect, and I think my vote proved that was incorrect," Church said.

Anderson agreed.

"In my six years, as I've talked to people about planning and zoning, it's never been a conservative or liberal issue. It's 'I'm concerned about what's happening in my neighborhood,' " Anderson said.

David Dittman of Dittman Research Corp. said Church's win and that of Assembly candidates whose signs weren't emblazoned with the word "conservative," might simply point to shifting views on community issues.

As the area grows, Dittman said, more people who are used to zoning are moving in. Finding out there's nothing to prohibit the land next to them from becoming the next Wal-Mart Supercenter might be driving the change, he said.

"I think you could probably find that in any growing community. The rebels and rascals who were there first become diluted," Dittman said.

As that happens, some members of the old guard change their point of view, he said.

"Eventually, the public will have its way. Their views will be reflected at the ballot box. That's what's happening, certainly, in the Valley," Dittman said.

Lucille Frey is one of those "rebels and rascals." She's lived in the Valley a little longer than 50 years and has been fighting for private property rights with her group Mat-Su Property Owners Association for decades. She said she was surprised by Church's win, as well as by the overall election turnout.

"I thought she was going to be an also-ran," Frey said.

Frey called the election a "Friends of Mat-Su sweep." Mayor-elect Curt Menard and Assemblyman-elect Tom Kluberton were both appointed by Anderson to serve on the Planning Commission and are more pro-planning than Frey's group would like. So is returning Assemblyman Rob Wells, she said.

The election results, Frey said, indicates that Mat-Su Property Owners Association has to fight harder to protect private-property rights. The fight has been getting steadily more difficult, she said, and some property-rights advocates are getting burned out.

"It's a harder fight because the public apparently is satisfied to turn the management of their property, and essentially their lives, over to the government," Frey said. "We have so many new people here ... I think they get a little frightened about having to make their own decisions (about land use)."

Church said it's a trend she's seen since 1998. Every politician who opposed planning has failed to get elected, she said. Anderson said he's witnessed it too. Party politics seems to work against candidates on a local level, he said.

"Look at the history of our local elections. Since I was elected in 2000, it's pretty much been that you get conservative candidates on a state level and nonconservatives on a local level," Anderson said.

Moore said political party registration bears out the conservative view in state politics. In three of four Mat-Su districts, he said, registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats three to one. In the fourth district, the number is 2.5 to one.

"Obviously, you've got a population, possibly the most conservative population in the state," Moore said. "There aren't party labels on the ballot. There's no R after people's names and no D."

Church agreed that local elections are a different standard.

"It's not about party politics. It's about your roads and your taxes," she said.

Daily News reporter Rindi White can be reached at rwhite@adn.com or 352-6709.