Tens of thousands of dollars are flowing into both sides of the recall election of Midtown Anchorage Assembly member Meg Zaletel ahead of next week’s vote, according to state campaign disclosure data.
Midtown voters’ ballots are due by Tuesday, Oct. 26, in the special by-mail recall election.
A group working to recall Zaletel, Recall Meg, is amassing money for mailers and radio advertising. The group received a $75,000 donation at the end of September from Mark McKenna, president of Anchorage paving company McKenna Brothers Paving. The group received another $15,000 from James Protzman, the owner of Anchorage-based property manager Pacific Properties LLC. Recall Meg is headed by Anchorage restaurant owner Andy Kriner.
On the other side of the recall, a group called Stand up for Meg Zaletel received a $70,000 donation last month from UNITE HERE, a national labor union based in New York. Stand up for Meg Zaletel is headed by Joelle Hall, the president of the Alaska AFL-CIO, a state labor organization. Another group, No on Zaletel Recall, has raised more than $56,000, mostly from small donors. Zaletel is a co-chair of that group.
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The spending on either side of the recall election dwarfs the money that Zaletel raised for her initial election to the Assembly back in 2019, which was a little over $53,000.
If Zaletel is recalled next week, the Assembly will appoint someone from the Midtown district to fill her seat. Zaletel is running for re-election in the April 2022 municipal election.
A petition was also filed on Monday to recall Chugiak/Eagle River Assembly member Jamie Allard.
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that the AFL-CIO is a labor organization, but not a union. They are a federation of unions.
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Wesley Early covers Anchorage life and city politics for Alaska Public Media. Reach him at wearly@alaskapublic.org and follow him on X at @wesley_early. Read more about Wesley here.
