Mayor election to be held Tuesday

November 7th 10:01 pm | Carey Restino    

Months of door-knocking, speeches, baby-bouncing and politicking will come to its natural conclusion next Tuesday as voters head to the polls to choose a mayor for the North Slope Borough.

George Ahmaogak is pitted against Charlotte Brower in the runoff election, with polls opening at 8 a.m. and staying that way until 8 p.m. at the Anaktuvuk Pass, Atquasuk, Kaktovik, Nuiqsut, Point Lay and Wainwright community centers, the Qalgi Building in Point Hope, the North Slope Borough Administration Building for the Barrow precinct, and the Inupiat Heritage Center, for Browerville voters.

Ahmaogak, who has already served five terms as borough mayor before taking a job with Shell Oil Co. in 2005, has campaigned on a reform platform. Brower, the top vote-getter in the initial election, took 640 ballots to Ahmaogak's 601.

In recent weeks, both campaigns have exchanged blows in the media, bringing up past political wrongdoings by family members. Brower's husband, Eugene, plead guilty to tax evasion when he was borough mayor in the 1980s. Eugene Brower cooperated with an investigation of his top two advisors, who were convicted for stealing millions in bribes. Ahmaogak has his own political troubles during his time as mayor, including a controversy over a month-long trip to Hawaii in the 1990s on the borough's dime. He repaid the borough that expense, but more recently, his wife, Maggie, has been charged with embezzling some $475,000 from the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission.

While both campaigns say the other camp threw the first stone in this now-contentious race, it is left to be seen where voters who wrote in the name of the third-highest vote recipient, Kaktovik whaling captain Fenton Rexford, will place their votes. Rexford won 27.14 percent of the vote, more than Sen. Lisa Murkowski's historic write-in campaign in 2010. Rexford's application for candidacy was delayed by the postal system, arriving too late for his name to appear on the ballot. Despite that setback, Rexford came within a handful of votes of beating Ahmaogak for a slot in the runoff election. He has yet to issue a public endorsement of either candidate, and appears instead to be focusing on the next mayoral election in three years.

Other candidates, including Deano Olemaun, who took fourth with 200 votes, have come out in favor of Brower.

The winner of this race will have arguably one of the more powerful mayor posts in the nation at a time when new developments in offshore oil drilling are underway. Air permits have recently been issued to Royal Dutch Shell in the Chukchi Sea for drilling activity next summer. Outgoing mayor Edward Itta led the borough in lawsuit against the Shell development back in 2007 because of concerns that it would harm the environment. But while development concerns many residents in the area, so do revenues. The vast majority of the borough's revenues come from property tax paid by oil companies.

 

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Carey Restino can be reached at crestino@reportalaska.com