From Unelected Mayor to Unelected Clerk and the Slow Rolling Coup

The messaging from pro-Bronson supporters associated with the far-right shadowy Save Anchorage operation has been consistent for over a year now — they would never recognize Austin Quinn-Davidson as the legitimate Acting Mayor of Anchorage anymore than they would be content to let the Municipal Clerk function as a non-politicized appointed position.

Paving The Way

Quinn-Davidson assumed office on October 23, 2020, after Ethan Berkowitz resigned following his admission of an 'inappropriate texting relationship' relationship involving Save Anchorage member Maria Athens. Athens posted a bizarre Facebook promo for an expose that promised to prove Berkowitz had been posting nude photos of himself on the website of an underage girl. Athens made the promo in response to false intel supplied by Save Anchorage member Molly Blakely during an interview at the diner of Save Anchorage member Andy Kriner.

The resulting scandal was trumpeted loudly by prominent Save Anchorage members Bernadette Wilson, Dan Fagan, and Assembly member Jamie Allard, all of whom had relentlessly assailed Berkowitz in the months leading up to his resignation over Covid-related city mandates and his desire to purchase four buildings to address homelessness.

Self-described "patriots" of Save Anchorage were whipped into a mouth-frothing frenzy by right-wing media who questioned the FBI's clearing of Berkowitz and the integrity of Anchorage Police Chief Justin Doll.

Before Berkowitz's resignation, Save Anchorage loyalists and other right-wing patriots confronted Berkowitz in the parking lot outside the Loussac Library one August evening after an Assembly meeting. A video of that night is a testament to what Berkowitz would endure in the coming months — and foreshadowed what lay in store for Anchorage in the wake of his resignation.

While the allegations put forth by Athens never materialized, the far-right cared not. Athens was revered as a saint for her self-sacrifice, which, as one person wrote, and many agreed with, freed Anchorage from its evil tyrant — Ethan the Shitbag.

The Unelected Mayor

With Berkowitz out of the way and Quinn-Davidson now Acting Anchorage Mayor, Allard, who repeatedly demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding about how an Assembly meeting is to function, was able to share a mostly coherent statement to Save Anchorage on October 29, 2020, — roughly a week after Quinn-Davidson assumed office.

Hand-feeding Save Anchorage members a morsel laced with doubt and fear, Allard argued in her post that the intent of the city's Charter necessitated a special election be held to fill the role of Mayor, claiming that she had been inundated with requests from her constituency in support of a special election. Allard knew her argument would be found lacking by outsiders, but that didn't matter. Save Anchorage latched on to her messaging — and it went exactly as you might expect.

"What can we do to help you force this issue?" asked a member in response to Allard's post.

Allard responded predictably, "Testify."

When pro-Bronson supporters realized that Quinn-Davidson wasn't going anywhere and were stuck with her until the following July, right-wing media began referring to Quinn-Davidson as 'unelected acting mayor,' and the phrase quickly caught on.

The carefully crafted phrase, designed to sow doubt about the legitimacy of Quinn-Davidson's office, spread like wildfire throughout Save Anchorage and has been parroted by Allard and her minions for over a year. The phrase was and still is regurgitated at Assembly meetings and across social media. As the nonsensical narrative goes, if you're 'unelected,' you are illegitimate. The more frequently uttered the false narrative is, the more likely it is to be believed.

Save Anchorage, indirectly and cleverly prompted by politicians, operatives, and right-wing media, set about sowing doubt over Quinn-Davidson's legitimacy. The messaging began in earnest in November 2020 and has continued mostly unabated.

Those associated with the group could be found participating in streamed COVID press conferences held by the Anchorage Health Department and the Mayor, where in real-time, they assailed Quinn-Davidson's efforts to keep Alaskans safe and keep the public informed about the public health crisis caused by the pandemic — a pandemic many of the group's members didn't believe existed or did believe that it had been overdramatized. According to the far-right, Quinn-Davidson didn't have the authority to enact COVID-related mandates because she was 'unelected' and therefore powerless.

Nothing Quinn-Davidson would do during her time as Mayor would ever be seen as legitimate or legal to those who became victims of mass hysteria — a far-right political brainwashing campaign, if you will, designed to erode faith in any effort she undertook as mayor and cement the idea that the democratic mechanism that catapulted her to the mayorship was rigged, broken, and not to be trusted.

Unelected Municipal Clerk

Perhaps unknown to the broader public is that Save Anchorage and the right-wing media, in lockstep with Allard, have also worked to sow doubt about Anchorage Municipal Clerk Barbara Jones and her office. Jones has served as Anchorage Municipal Clerk since 2012.

Far-right extremists, emboldened by baseless election fraud conspiracy theories trumpeted by Donald Trump, attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, seeking to overturn his resounding defeat in the 2020 presidential election. Five people died in the wake of the attack, and several people were injured, including 138 police officers. Four officers who responded to the attack took their own lives within seven months. It's a fact "Back the Blue" proponents don't talk a lot about.

Must Read Alaska referred to the January 6 attack as a "mostly peaceful protest" and told readers "there wasn't that much violence." In the weeks before the attack, they published a list of Alaskans who had signed a "Stop the Steal" petition, inferring that those who had signed it were patriots. Some of the names listed on the petition held Save Anchorage membership and believed the 2020 presidential election had been stolen.

In Anchorage, the far-right has consistently parroted these same narratives in an attempt to raise doubts about the integrity of our elections by claiming Dominion voting machines — already used for years by the Municipality — were suddenly untrustworthy. Efforts were made to paint election officials as "leftists" who could not be trusted. The tactics employed here are similar to tactics used against former Anchorage Mayor Austin Quinn-Davidson.

The effort to make the Municipal Clerk an elected position, as now proposed by Mayor Bronson, began as far back as August 24, 2020, when media posts shared to Save Anchorage served to paint Municipal Clerk Jones as dragging her heels on the Zaletel recall.

An administrator of Save Anchorage and purported mastermind of the two failed efforts to recall Assembly Members Rivera and Zaletel have shared posts to Save Anchorage that took aim at the Clerk's Office. The posts often appear to be critical.

On November 9, 2020, a post made to Save Anchorage detailed alleged issues with an inability to add sponsors to the Rivera recall petition. The post reminded Save Anchorage members that he had previously told them the entire process was illegitimate. He politely asked members of the group to email Deputy Clerk McConnell and asked her why the rules kept changing.

In a November 13, 2020, post made to the group, he took issue with a $1,200 price tag for recall petitions to be printed by the Municipal Clerk's Office. The post decried the recall process as a "never-ending clown ride" and encouraged his fellow patriots to be aware of the "unending ways the Muni Bureaucracy can, and will, attempt to scuttle valid citizen initiatives."

A November 30, 2020, post shared additional details with members of the group, asserting that the Clerk's Office had refused to accept over 25 registered voters' sponsor applications even though those individuals had all voted in the 2020 Municipal election.

"Do you ever wonder how votes get thrown out? Now you know."

In January 2021, just two days after the attack on Capitol Hill, far-right Matsu-based Alaska Watchman claimed in a headline shared to Save Anchorage that the Anchorage Assembly was looking to empower the Clerk to find dirt on potential political candidates. Easily influenced members of the group latched on to the spurious headline that painted Jones as a partisan pawn of the Assembly.

In a February 2021 post, Reclaim Midtown wrote that one of the biggest frustrations he had with the Rivera recall effort was the "obfuscation and outright obstruction of the process" at the hands of the Clerk's Office.

During the mayoral election, a member of Save Anchorage alleged Municipal Clerk Barbara Jones, Deputy Clerk Erika McConnell, and other individuals had stayed in the ballot counting building at the Election Center after Bronson campaign monitors had been told counting was over.

"Given Jones' flagrant leftist bias for MOA assembly & mayor, the 4 should be terminated & prosecuted," wrote the Save Anchorage member in May.

On May 27, Cecelia Donelson, who would later be nominated to the Election Commission by Mayor Bronson, shared a post to Save Anchorage which alleged "unvoted ballots in unsealed boxes" had been brought into the election center late at night and stored in the same room as voting ballots. She questioned why an Assembly member who worked on a campaign was allowed "special status" and permitted in areas where other observers were not.

"If the election workers aren't comfortable with observers, they should be replaced," Donelson wrote, also calling into question the integrity of the election being managed by Jones.

A report issued by the Anchorage Municipal Clerk about the Mayoral Runoff election noted that while many social media posts suggested Election Officials should be fired, one post on social media stated that Election Officials "should be publicly executed." The report also detailed an unprecedented level of harassment directed at Jones and other election officials, but Donelson claimed she didn't witness any intimidation.

A September 24 post made to Save Anchorage by Jamie Allard asserted that the Clerk's Office was "out of control" working in league with Assembly Vice-Chair Christopher Constant leading the charge. She said that Barbara Jones and Assembly members Dunbar and Constant had violated executive privilege and should be fired or resign.

"I will be contacting legal," Allard wrote to the group. The post received 59 comments and nearly 200 likes.

A November 18 post made to Save Anchorage suggested Jones was biased and that she shouldn't be the Municipal Clerk if she couldn't act otherwise.

In December, another member of Save Anchorage shared a post replete with misinformation over proposed minor changes to the Municipal Election Code. Members predictably chomped at the bit over the post, which accused Jones and the Assembly of attempting to make it legal to have a "closed building" during an election with "little to no transparency."

"We may never win an election again with these changes," claimed the post.

These are, of course, just some of the posts and comments in Save Anchorage which remain hidden away from public purview that contribute to the narrative heard in the form of public testimony at Assembly meetings and which spreads like a disease across social media. It's a narrative intended to sow doubt about the integrity of our elections.

The Slow Rolling Coup

In June, I detailed posts and comments about a proposed effort to rid Anchorage of its Vote By Mail System. Emboldened by their squeaker of a win in last year's mayoral election, activists associated with Save Anchorage announced they were mobilizing an attempt that, if successful, would ultimately disenfranchise Anchorage voters.

According to screenshots taken from the Save Anchorage group, moderator and Bronson supporter Julie Brophy encouraged group members to read a message from Reclaim Midtown that detailed an effort to kill the Vote by Mail system. Reclaim Midtown wrote that the Municipality sent thousands of ballots to out-of-state mailing addresses to voters in states other than Alaska, which they claimed was "illegal under Alaska law."

The message asserted that a legal team had already been hired to confirm the verbiage for the effort but that it would likely not happen unless enough people committed to stepping up. The post claimed a loophole for fraud in Alaska's vote-by-mail system, alleging many first-hand accounts of ballots being sent to local addresses where voters no longer reside. This, they claimed, raised questions about the integrity of the vote-by-mail system proven to be safe and accurate.

The likely upcoming war over Anchorage's Vote by Mail system isn't surprising. Republican gerrymandering and the disenfranchisement of voters is the only way conservatives, shy of Eagle River, stand a chance of winning in future Anchorage elections, given the city's progressive leanings.

Mayor Bronson has already signaled his support for an effort to get rid of Anchorage's Vote By Mail system, writing on Facebook in May that disenfranchising voters was precisely what he planned to do after getting his Save Anchorage-backed Assembly candidates into their seats. Bronson's thoughts on the matter should not be underestimated — this is, after all, the man with a history of espousing election fraud conspiracy theories.

It's all one deliberate and calculated attempt by the far-right to dismantle our local functioning government through sabotage and social media subterfuge.

Anchorage's Vote by Mail system is safe and secure regardless of who may refer to it as a "scheme" in a post shared with a group that serves as an echo chamber.

Steps should always be taken to ensure our elections remain safe and secure, but not at the prompting of those who believe that anyone who disagrees with their opinion on the subject has sinister motives.

The sooner Moderates and Progressives conclude that ending Vote By Mail is the far-right's endgame, the sooner they can come together in April to decisively defeat Mayor Bronson's Save Anchorage-backed candidates for the Anchorage Assembly.