A competitive set of races for the Oct. 1 municipal election appears likely with two candidates for mayor, two for the District 1 Assembly seat, five for the District 2 Assembly seat and six people seeking three Juneau Board of Education seats, according to the City and Borough of Juneau municipal clerk’s office shortly after Monday’s filing deadline passed.
Among the first-time candidates for mayor and Assembly are two former state agency leaders fired in recent years due to what some people alleged were political differences with Gov. Mike Dunleavy. Another first-timer seeking a school board seat is a foremost critic of the Juneau School District’s recently enacted consolidation plan stemming from a budget crisis.
The two incumbents for the Assembly seats on the ballot — Michelle Bonnet Hale and Wáahlaal Gíidaak Barbara Blake —opted not to run for reelection. Incumbent Mayor Beth Weldon is seeking another three-year term, as are school board incumbents Amber Frommherz, Will Muldoon and Elizabeth Siddon.
Several candidates waited until the final day to file, including a literally last-minute submission at the 4:30 p.m. Monday deadline by school board candidate Jeff Redmond, who got one of his final 25 qualifying signatures on his application from competing candidate Michele Stuart Morgan who also submitted her paperwork in the closing minutes.
“This is my style,” she said about helping to add an extra opponent to her race. “You just work with other people.”
Candidates have until 4:30 p.m. Friday to withdraw their name from the ballot, according to the clerk’s office. Eligible residents can also file to run as a write-in candidate until Sept. 24.
The following candidates were listed as certified by the clerk’s office at 5:05 p.m. on Monday — 35 minutes past the filing deadline:
MAYOR
• Beth Weldon (incumbent): a retired Capital City Fire/Rescue division chief and current owner of Glacier Auto Parts, Weldon served two years on the Assembly before successfully running for mayor. She announced in June she is seeking a third term, citing new development and stabilization of municipal services following the COVID-19 pandemic, along with a just-passed historically low mill rate, among the achievements she helped the Assembly pass.
• Angela Rodell: Former CEO of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp. where her tenure ended with a controversial firing, as well as a former commissioner for the Alaska Department of Revenue who most recently was a staff member for state Senate Majority Leader Cathy Giessel (R-Anchorage) during the legislative session that ended in May. In an interview Sunday, Rodell said she’s running for office for the first time because “I just don’t hear that pro-business, pro-private enterprise, pro-jobs voice anywhere in either from the mayor’s office or from the Assembly.”
ASSEMBLY DISTRICT 1
• Neil Steininger: A former state Office of Management and Budget official for several years until being fired as the agency’s head last year by Dunleavy for alleged differences in budget philosophy. Steininger said Saturday his work for the governor isn’t a reflection of his political ideology — rather, he’s running for office for the first time because he believes his lengthy background as a financial and public policy analyst will serve the Assembly when dealing with key issues such as the budget shortfalls recently faced by the school district.
• Connor Ulmer: Served as the youth advisor for Sealaska Corp’s board of directors in 2022-23, and graduated from the University of Alaska Southeast in 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a concentration in management. Ulmer, 26, said Monday he is running for the first time because he believes the Assembly will benefit by having a younger representative as well as one who is an Alaska Native. He said homelessness is one of his priority issues and would have urged other Assembly members to consider vacant buildings where people without housing could have stayed this summer instead of the “dispersed camping” policy now in place.
ASSEMBLY DISTRICT 2
• Emily Mesch: President of the Southeast Alaska LGBTQ+ Alliance and a board member of the Congregation Sukkat Shalom. She said she feels better prepared than last year to campaign when she faced nine opponents, and her intentions haven’t changed. She said her three main focuses include managing school funding, lowering housing costs and finding a balance when it comes to cruise ship tourism. She added while she believes LGBTQ+ representation is important to have in government, her main reason for running is “to represent all of Juneau.”
• Nathaniel (Nano) Brooks: Owns multiple businesses in town, such as Hi-Fi Senpai, Alaska Hydropower, Alaska Property Management, Alaskan Mini Golf, Alaska Crime Labs and various laundromats. He said he’s especially passionate about implementing renewable energy and sees the potential for Juneau to be an industry leader when it comes to hydropower. He also expressed interest in dock electrification, education, Bartlett Regional Hospital, and “wanting to champion diversified revenue streams for the city” through a land raffle and his alternative energy ideas. He believes his business experience can be an asset to the city’s finance management.
• Maureen Hall: A first-time seeker for public office who is a registered nurse with the primary focus of her career in pediatrics. She served as a Juneau School District nurse for the past 17 years. As she transitions into full-time retirement, she said she believes her experience as a school nurse will allow her to contribute to the health and education needs of the community. For the past nine years, she has served on the board of directors for St. Vincent de Paul, including three years as board president. She said her top three focus areas are the sustainability of Bartlett Regional Hospital, a strong public school system that can support a future workforce, and housing – particularly for the disabled and the elderly.
• Dorene Lorenz: A fourth-generation Alaskan who previously served on the city council in Seward. She is a communications consultant with experience as a former television talk show host, broadcast journalist and news director. She said that she wants to bring strategic solutions to the Juneau Assembly and invest the resources they have available toward the best solutions for subsidizing housing and lowering property taxes. She also expressed the need to retain first responders in Alaska and provide adequate long-term housing for them. Lorenz is coming up on her seventh year living in Juneau and said she loves the sense of community. Lorenz added she looks forward to listening to what the constituency feels needs to be addressed and an open discourse with her opponents.
• Mary Marks: a tribal citizen of the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, and delegate for the Juneau Community Council. According to an online profile, she is the first Tlingit woman to be elected to the Anchorage School Board, is lifelong teacher, has owned a childcare business, and worked for Head Start and the Juneau School District.
JUNEAU BOARD OF EDUCATION (THREE SEATS)
• Elizabeth Siddon (incumbent): First elected to the school board in 2018, she previously worked with the Juneau STEAM coalition in K–12 education and outreach programs. She also taught as an adjunct professor at the University of Alaska Southeast during graduate school and, after finishing her Ph.D. in 2013, she began working as a fisheries research biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Auke Bay. She has said her priorities are centered around STEM fields, special education and the school board’s budget.
• Amber Frommherz (incumbent): Elected to her first term in 2021, she currently works as the outreach and development program manager for the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium. Her past experience also includes managerial positions for the Sealaska Heritage Institute, and Tlingit and Haida. During the budget crisis this spring she advocated for an alternative to the consolidation plan approved by the board that would have kept both high schools open by incorporating a larger span of grades (either 7-12 or 7-12). The plan, while favored by some parents critical of the consolidation plan, was voted down by the board.
• Will Muldoon (incumbent): Was elected as a write-in candidate to the school board in 2021, and currently serves as its clerk and Finance Committee chair. He is a data analyst for the state of Alaska, and has served on numerous boards and commissions at the local and state level. During this spring’s financial crisis he played a central role in the board’s drafting of budgets for the past and current school year using data provided by district administrators and other officials.
• Jenny Thomas: A first-time candidate for public office, she is a leader of an effort to recall school board President Deedie Sorensen and Vice President Emil Mackey, with petitions for both getting enough signatures to appear on the Oct. 1 ballot. Thomas on Monday said she is running “to hopefully make some positive changes and ensure some oversight in the administration, and hopefully to prevent any future chaos for students and parents that they experienced this year because of the consolidation, and just try to be more proactive and not make abrupt sudden decisions out of panic.” She said she also wants to encourage like-minded people to run as write-in candidates to expand their presence on the board.
• Michele Stuart Morgan: An unsuccessful candidate for Assembly in 2023, she said Monday she is seeking a school board seat this year because of her experience working at Gastineau Elementary School for five years after retiring from a longtime career in the healthcare field. She also in 2015 launched a grass-roots movement called “Juneau – Stop Heroin, Start Talking” intended to bring addiction awareness to the community. She said she expects the school board to be busy with post-consolidation adjustments such as resolving availability of student transportation and trying to reduce increased class sizes.
• Jeff Redmond: Previously ran for school board in 2015. He said in a short video posted online Sunday he is running this year because decisions made by the board “brought it to the brink of bankruptcy,” and resulted in decisions such as the consolidation that were harmful to educators and students. He said he wants to emphasize transparency and community engagement as a board member.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.
