Democratic state Senate candidate aims to flip Anchorage GOP stronghold

A Democratic state Senate candidate has an outside chance of winning a Lower Hillside seat in Anchorage that has long been a Republican stronghold.

Democrat Janice Park finished ahead in August’s primary for Senate District F with just under 49% of the vote. Republican Sen. James Kaufman, who has served in the Legislature since 2021, was 174 votes behind with 46%. Third-place finisher Harold Borbridge, a Republican, had less than 6% of the vote. No one else ran for the seat.

Park, a paralegal, has run for office in each state election since 2018 and is running for a second time this year against Kaufman for Senate District F. Until this year, she had never finished with more votes than her Republican opponent in a primary election. She attributed her success to hard work and having a paid campaign manager and several volunteers.

“It’s a big change,” she said, comparing this race to others she’s run. “Oh my gosh, I did everything myself.”

Kaufman, who retired in 2017 from a decades-long career in the oil and gas industry, said that he felt confident he would be reelected. He said the primary election result brought greater attention to the race. And he said many more voters would cast a ballot in November than in the primary.

“I think the turnout was not reflective of what the general will be,” he said.

Former Democratic state Sen. Tom Begich, who served in the Legislature from 2017 to 2023, said he has long supported Park and has known her for decades. But Begich said even he was surprised by the primary results.

“I honestly did not expect her to do as well as she did,” he said.

Senate District F encompasses the wealthy Lower Hillside in Anchorage. Residents there have the fourth-highest median income in Alaska at $110,200 per household, compared to the statewide average of $86,370.

The district currently leans Republican. For decades, though, it has been a GOP stronghold. Former Gov. Sean Parnell represented the district in the Senate and so did former Lt. Gov. Kevin Meyer. But in the last decade, the winning margin between Republicans and Democrats has been narrowing.

In 2014, Meyer beat Anchorage Assembly member Felix Rivera 70% to 30%, which was a similar margin to prior contests. Election by election, that gap has steadily narrowed. In 2022, Kaufman won against Park 54% to 45%.

“I’d say that’s a toss-up race right now, maybe slightly lean R, but a toss-up race,” Begich said.

[South Anchorage legislative race could determine control of Alaska House]

The campaigns

Kaufman, who is running for a second term in the Senate, said he has focused spending on the general election.

By Aug. 13, Kaufman’s campaign had raised $51,000 and spent $14,000, leaving him with $37,000 for the final push until November. His biggest donors include GOP candidate for South Anchorage Lucy Bauer, who gave $5,000, and Jim Jansen, CEO of transportation company Lynden Inc., who gave close to $4,000.

In contrast, Park had raised $28,000 by Aug. 13 and spent $23,000. She had just over $5,000 in the bank after the primary. Her biggest donors include the state’s largest public sector union and IBEW’s political action committee. They each gave her $1,000.

The Senate Democratic Campaign Committee has not donated to Park’s campaign. Begich, who has previously been chair of the committee, said the independent expenditure group would not fund candidates running against members of the bipartisan Senate majority — even if they are Democrats.

Under Alaska’s open primary system, the top-four finishers, regardless of political affiliation, advance to the Nov. 5 general election. Borbridge, a Republican business consultant, finished third in the primary with 5.5% of the vote.

Borbridge did not raise any money ahead of the primary, and said his campaign was largely focused on social media. He said in reality, “you’re still looking at a very big hill to climb” to win in November. But he said he wasn’t following the advice of Republicans who called him, urging him to quit.

“We’re going to put some effort here in the next several weeks,” he said.

With ranked choice voting, Kaufman and Borbridge’s combined Republican vote could defeat Park if the primary election results are repeated in November. But Borbridge said he would not tell his supporters to rank Kaufman second.

“I want them to vote for whoever they like,” he said.

The concerns facing Lower Hillside residents are “meat and potatoes” kinds of issues, Kaufman said. Voters want to see progress on education, improved snowplowing, and a way to address a looming shortage of Cook Inlet natural gas, he said.

Borbridge, a lifelong Alaskan who was born in Sitka, said state government should focus on key constitutional issues: education, public safety and increasing private investment in Alaska.

Park said, “I think my biggest issues are education and child care, and together with that, the issue of pensions.”

Senate bipartisan majority

The Alaska Senate is currently governed by a bipartisan majority with nine Democrats and eight Republicans. Ten of 20 Senate seats are on the ballot this year. Political observers expect another bipartisan majority will likely form again next year, but the balance could shift between Democrats and the GOP.

Like most majorities in the Alaska Legislature, the current Senate majority operates under “binding caucus” rules that require lawmakers to support the budget and procedural votes. In exchange, majority members receive additional staff, better offices and committee assignments that allow them to direct the flow of legislation.

Kaufman has been a member of the majority coalition for the past two years. He said that he would “certainly appreciate a stronger Republican presence” in the Senate. But he would need to wait until after election to determine if he would join a similar majority again.

“I have to see the lay of the land,” he said.

If elected, Park said she would join a bipartisan majority.

Borbridge opposes pledging to vote for a budget ahead of time under binding caucus rules. But he said that he too would join a caucus of “like-minded Republicans and Democrats.”

In March, Kaufman voted to override Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of a bipartisan education bill to raise school funding. But the veto override effort failed by one vote. In May, he voted against legislation to reestablish a defined benefit pension for teachers and public sector workers.

In an interview, Kaufman said that actuarial work had not been completed on the pension plan, and there wasn’t enough evidence presented that it would be viable.

“It has to be financially sound, because the worst thing is to push something through just because it’s a campaign promise,” he said.

Park, who has been supported by the state’s largest union of public sector employees, argued that reestablishing a pension would be critical for Alaska.

”That will make families take a second look as to whether or not they can have the future here for their families,” she said.

Both Kaufman and Park have accused the other of campaigning negatively. Matthew Beck, Park’s campaign manager, shared answers to a survey conducted by the Alaska Family Council, a conservative Christian group that is vehemently opposed to abortion.

Survey responses attributed to Kaufman indicated support for removing protections for abortion and said he would refuse to join a bipartisan coalition in the future.

Jim Minnery, president of the Alaska Family Council, said by text message that Kaufman “never responded” to the survey. He said it was “it was an error on our part” to release survey results attributed to Kaufman.

In an interview, Kaufman said he never answered the survey and that the responses being shared by the Park campaign were “fake news.”

“What is disturbing is that someone will have been informed that it’s false, and they continue to campaign aggressively with it,” he said in a follow-up interview.

Kaufman then declined to answer questions put to him directly from the 2024 Alaska Family Council survey, including whether he would support a constitutional amendment to restrict abortion access.

“I didn’t answer the survey. I didn’t put time into it. I haven’t stared at it and pondered my answers,” he said.

Park and Beck pointed to similar responses Kaufman gave to the Alaska Family Council in 2020 before he won a primary election race a for the state House seat against moderate GOP former Rep. Jennifer Johnston.

“He is alarmingly out of step with the rest of Alaskans who support a woman’s right to choose, who support the gay community, and who think that their own religious preferences should be their own business,” Park said.

Final push to November

With just under two months left until the general election on Nov. 5, both Kaufman and Park are feeling optimistic about their chances.

Kaufman attributed his second-place finish in August’s primary to low turnout. Just under 18% of registered Alaska voters cast a ballot in the primary. In 2020, almost 64% of Lower Hillside voters cast a ballot in the 2020 presidential general election. He was a confident a greater number of voters in November would see him reelected.

The primary result had one “silver lining,” he said. It brought attention to Senate District F and showed that the general election could be a real race, he said.

“One of the challenges I had with my campaign was getting people to take my race seriously,” he said. “I was able to go back to people and say, ‘Hey, so let’s get this show on the road.’”

Park, though, was also feeling confident after the primary to flip a Senate seat long considered safe for Republicans. She said that “my message is resounding with people.”

”I’ve been working really hard, and it’s paying off,” she said.

[Clarification: This story has been updated to reflect that, based on updated information from Janice Park’s campaign, she has one paid campaign manager and several volunteers, not six paid campaign staff.]