East Anchorage Intelligencer Exclusive: Has Dan Sullivan been influenced by Mr. Whitlock?
In this August 22nd article in the ADN Dan Sullivan put forth ideas for local electoral reform; of his three pronged approach 2 of the prongs are identical to ideas proposed by yours truly in a compass piece that appeared in the ADN on April 12th. While I doubt my article had that much influence, it is still fun to think about. Both the August 22nd article and the April 12th article are enclosed below, with key passages in each being underlined.
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Sullivan wants a majority vote to elect Anchorage mayor
3 PRONGS: The potential candidate also pushes for changing Assembly districts and School Board seats.
By KYLE HOPKINS
published on 22 August 2007
West Anchorage Assemblyman Dan Sullivan wants big changes in local elections, including a proposal that drew sharp criticism from Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich on Monday.
Sullivan, a likely candidate for mayor in 2009, said he will announce a three-pronged plan today. His proposal calls for:
• Requiring candidates for mayor to win more than 50 percent of the vote before being declared a winner. Today, anyone who gets 45 percent of the vote can win without a special runoff election.
• Carving Anchorage into 11 separate Assembly districts, up from today's six. In other words, no two Assembly members would represent the same part of town.
• Changing School Board seats from citywide to regional posts, so School Board members would represent different slices of town rather than the whole municipality.
Begich, who won election in 2003 with just a little more than 45 percent of the vote, said the rules don't need changing. The 45 percent threshold for winning the mayor's seat has saved the city money by avoiding costly runoff elections, he said.
And doesn't Sullivan have a conflict of interest? Begich asked. "He's running for mayor, and he's trying to manipulate the process for his benefit."
Sullivan replied in a phone interview, "Man, that's quite a shot."
Sullivan said he doesn't know whether changing the threshold for winning the mayor's job would help or hurt his chances, and said the Anchorage charter makes the mayor one of the most powerful politicians in the state.
"If you're going to invest that much power in someone, it should be done with a majority vote," he said.
Assembly and mayoral campaigns are supposed to be nonpartisan, but Begich is a Democrat, Sullivan is a Republican and the two often clash on local issues.
The percentage an Anchorage mayor needs to win office has bounced back and forth several times in city history.
When voters unified the old city and borough governments in 1975, a mayor needed only 40 percent of the vote to win. Even then, five of the first eight mayoral elections ended in a second vote -- a runoff involving the top two vote-getters -- because so many people ran that it was tough for anyone to get enough votes initially.
In 1999, voters approved an initiative that required the mayor to win 50 percent of the vote. Four years later, voters knocked the requirement back to 45 percent, allowing Begich to win without a runoff.
All three of the changes Sullivan says he will propose this week require an amendment to the city charter, he said, meaning he needs to win over at least seven other Assembly members.
Even then, Anchorage voters would have the final say.
Asked if has the votes on the Assembly, Sullivan said he might for two of his ideas but he's not sure about the proposal on mayoral elections.
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Big bucks meant business as usual in local campaigns;
COMPASS: POINTS OF VIEW FROM THE COMMUNITY
By JOHN GROVER WHITLOCK
published on 12 April 2007
In the days before the election, I did some volunteer work on behalf of an Assembly candidate who had limited financial resources. When riding through the district, I realized how large it is and how difficult it is for those who do not have a lot of resources to get their message out.
Looking at the other candidates in my district, I saw that their messages did not consist of ideas for change but were vague mailers and radio and television advertisements. It is apparent to me that municipal Assembly and School Board races are based more on name recognition than on issues.
The issue of property taxes has been a hot one in the past few election cycles, with each candidate acknowledging the issue as important but not having the courage to come forward and propose any new ideas for change, or even to stand up in favor of the current system of taxation.
A discussion about a property tax freeze in the spirit of California's Proposition 13, which would disallow property tax value reassessments until the selling or transfer of one's property, would be a productive dialogue our prospective elected officials could have with the people of their districts.
We get instead "promises to be cautious" with property tax revenue, and reminders of the impact of state revenue sharing on property tax rates. Some even bring up the unpopular idea of a municipal sales tax, which has been overwhelmingly rejected by voters in the past.
A conversation like this is a difficult one to have with a constituency composed of more than 40,000 people; it is even more difficult to have a conversation with the whole city, like those who run at large for the School Board have to do. How many voters could honestly tell you any differences between Chris Tuck and Ryan Sharratt?
The one thing that each Assembly and School Board seat winner had in common was the money. The big money won in each Assembly and School Board race on election day, which sends the message that friends-and-neighbors politics (knocking on doors, talking to the public) is not what matters most.
Local reforms are needed to bring friends-and-neighbors politics back to prominence in our city. A good start would be to divide the Assembly districts in half, giving each smaller area one representative. Another would be to divide the School Board seats into districts instead of having them selected at large.
There are many intelligent, well-intentioned members of our community who rule out running for public office because they feel they don't have the political connections needed to launch an effective name-recognition campaign. Scaling down the size of the Assembly districts and converting the School Board from its current at-large system to a district system could possibly put friends-and-neighbors politics and discussion of issues ahead of money and sound bites.
John Grover Whitlock is an intellectually curious political observer who lives in Anchorage.