Alex Gimarc: Dave Bronson for governor? Probably not

By ALEX GIMARC

July 30, 2026 – Former Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson is positioning himself as the conservative alternative to Bernadette Wilson for governor this year. He has a strong, loyal following of supporters who admire him for his no-holds-barred knife-and-razor-blade fight with the leftist Anchorage Assembly every second he was in office Jul 2021 – Jul 2024.

Granted that it is difficult to get anything done when the political left and their union supporters are ready, willing and able to literally crawl through broken glass to ensure he had no success while in office, I must however respectfully oppose his candidacy for Alaska governor.

As background, we both come from a similar background, former military with aviation experience. We are both conservative in varying degrees. I really liked his conservative approach to governance, particularly that of his attempted approach to homelessness.

We diverge on one very big military consideration: threat identification, analysis and response. This is the basic approach, a continuous cycle of detecting potential adversaries, evaluating intent and capability, and executing measures to neutralize that risk.

In other words, if Mayor Bronson identified the Anchorage Assembly, installed with a veto-proof, union-backed majority under former mayor Ethan Berkowitz as a threat to Anchorage, what did he do about them?

Zip.  Zero.  Nada. Which ultimately killed his administration. Worse, on his way out of office, he managed to install one of the members of that Assembly, Suzanne LaFrance, little more than a puppet of the Assembly and its union backers, as Anchorage mayor.

Once you identify a problem, you ought to address that problem by taking steps to mitigate it or make it disappear. As Bronson never had the Assembly votes to pass anything, rather than spending all his time and political energy butting heads with Chris Constant, Felix Rivera, Meg Zaletel, and Forrest Dunbar, why didn’t he publicly go after them, and run a continuous political campaign to replace as many of those bozos as possible in subsequent elections?

If you don’t go on offense, you are always in a defensive crouch and will eventually get steamrolled into oblivion. Think of it as political prevent defense.

With that lesson in mind, look forward to a possible Bronson administration as Alaska governor. He will be in precisely the same position as he was as Anchorage mayor, a conservative governor locked in a cage death match with a democrat-led legislature. What makes any of us think the outcome this time around will be any different than it was in Anchorage, where he handed over complete political control of the city to democrats on his way out of office?

I like Mayor Bronson.  I like him a lot.  I like his policies.  I don’t like his political approach, as he never properly identified the threat (democrat majority on the Anchorage Assembly) nor did he do anything about it.  If you are in a cage death match and know you are political roadkill, sooner or later you need to put a knife in your teeth, grab a chainsaw, light your hair on fire and remove as many of the Other Side from the political gene pool as possible on your way down.  Bronson didn’t and probably won’t next time around.

What makes you Bronson supporters believe the results as governor will be any different than his results were as Anchorage mayor?  Worse, should he make the top four for the RCV runoff, what makes you think his stubbornness won’t hand the Alaska governorship over to Tom Begich, JKT or both, when they combine campaigns in September?

At this point, I would suggest the Bronson candidacy is fool’s gold, an exercise in doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result, or a self-serving vanity project. There are other conservative candidates out there who are far better choices in the primary and general election, ones without a history of political failure in one of the highest political offices in the state.

Maybe we ought to consider one of them instead.

Alex Gimarc lives in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disabilities policies. His weekly column “Interesting Items” is a summary of news stories with substantive Alaska-themed topics. He was a small business owner and Information Technology professional.