Dunbar looking likely for mayoral runoff. But will it be against Bronson or Robbins?

If you’ve been fixated on the Legislature and its Sen. Lora Reinbold problem, you might have missed it but there’s a big ol’ election on less than a month away in Anchorage, where the city’s moderate/progressive streak will be put to the test by several extreme-right candidates who’re sick and tired of all these efforts to help the sick and tired.

On the progressive side, Anchorage Assemblymember Forrest Dunbar is leading with former city manager Bill Falsey picking off some support after a reasonably strong policy-focused showing in recent forums and George Martinez also in the race. On the conservative side, there’s the extreme-right covid-denying Dave Bronson, similarly conservative candidate Mike Robbins and the practically progressive-by-comparison candidate Bill Evans.

With a crowded field on the ticket (those candidates mentioned above are just the six most-serious candidates among a 15-candidate field), the race is almost certainly headed to a run-off election on May 11.

We’ve got a peek at some numbers from a poll conducted earlier this month that puts the top-line numbers as follows: Dunbar 22%, Bronson 15%, Robbins 8%, Falsey 6%, Evans 6%, Martinez 2%, Heather Herndon 1% and a whopping 41% undecided. Dunbar (who didn’t provide us these numbers) happens leads in nearly every metric except for political affiliation we saw in the poll. At this point, he’s a likely a lock to head to the run-off election but the question is who will be on the opposite end of that ticket?

While Bronson’s overall numbers certainly give him the edge, Bronson and Robbins are much closer when it comes to support of Republicans voters, which may give Robbins a shot at eking out a victory over Bronson to get a place in the primary. What was particularly interesting out of the polling was the strong support Robbins garners from the Alaska Native vote.

According to this poll, he’s getting about 19% of voters from this group while Dunbar gets 22%. The two are also relatively close when it comes to support from traditionally conservative parts of town: Bronson leads Robbins by four points in Eagle River-Chugiak and eight points in South Anchorage while Robbins has 13 point on Bronson in Downtown Anchorage. (Notably, Dunbar leads in every area in terms of raw numbers.)

Fundraising by the numbers

Looking at fundraising numbers, here’s the latest top-level numbers from the latest report that covers the Feb. 2 through March 5 fundraising period with the obvious APOC errors corrected.

Name	Total income	2/2-3/5 income	Total Spend+Debts	Cash on-hand
Forrest Dunbar	$312,212.44	$252,216.43	$158,369.13	$102,775.23
Mike Robbins	$245,471.27	$210,057.50	$60,884.68	$81,392.93
David W Bronson	$224,201.41	$162,481.80	$48,568.03	$152,176.61
Bill Falsey	$130,184.01	$106,285.23	$61,409.41	$37,660.92
Bill Evans	$119,275.45	$98,480.00	$21,064.87	$52,193.86
George Martinez	$12,594.42	$60,085.00	$33,852.03	$38,827.39