With a narrow 26-vote lead, Janice Park is set to represent Midtown Anchorage on the city Assembly, following a recount Friday.
Park has waited more than two weeks for the final results of the April 7 Anchorage city election. She was one of three candidates who ran for the seat, along with Dave Donley and Kim Winston.
But it was Park and Donley who dominated the race, with Donley leading by 89 votes after the first batch of results on election night.
Donley is a conservative who served in the state Legislature from 1987 to 2003. He’s set to wrap up his third three-year term on the Anchorage School Board.
Park is a paralegal and registered Democrat who previously ran for both the Alaska House and Senate.
Donley’s lead shrunk as more mail-in ballots were counted, with Park eclipsing him on April 10. As results continued coming in, Park said she tried to keep a positive outlook.
“I felt good, and I wanted to trust the process and just wait for the outcome,” she said.
Per the last batch of election results released on Thursday night, Park led by 26 votes, or 0.24%. City law dictates that an automatic recount be held when a candidate leads by less than 0.5% of the vote.
Recounts in Anchorage elections are rare, with the last one happening in 2021 for a school board race, where eventual winner Kelly Lessens led challenger Judy Eledge by 228 votes, or about 0.35%.
At a recount Friday morning, more than 100 ballots had to be looked at more closely due to a variety of issues. City Clerk Jamie Heinz and Elections Administrator Liz Edwards went through each of those ballots while observers representing the Park and Donley campaigns watched.
“Only going to see write-ins, blank ballots, ambiguous marks and over-votes,” Heinz said.
After reviewing a final tally, the results matched Thursday night’s: Park had 5,030 votes to Donley’s 5,004.
“I'm really grateful for the attention that the staff has given to make sure that every vote is counted,” Park said a short time later. “That's really important. And I'm happy with the apparent results.”
The results of the recount will be finalized by the Anchorage Election Commission during a meeting Monday.
All of the winners of the April 7 election will be sworn in at Tuesday night’s Assembly meeting. Along with Park, they include newcomers Donald Handeland from the Eagle River/Chugiak district and North Anchorage’s Sydney Scout. Incumbents Anna Brawley, George Martinez and Zac Johnson were also reelected to serve West, East and South Anchorage respectively.
Rachel Blakeslee and Paul McDonogh will fill seats on the Anchorage School Board vacated by term-limited members Donley and Andy Holleman.
