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An­chor­age Mayor Dan Sullivan is push­ing for the election of conservative As­sembly can­didates in the April 5 election, an effort to shift the bal­ance of power on the city's leg­islative body.

If those fa­vored by Sullivan win, the chairman­ship of the As­sembly could go to some­one more attuned to his views, making it eas­i­er to influ­ence the agenda. And it would be hard­er for the As­sembly to muster the eight votes nec­essary to overturn any of his vetoes.

Sullivan made a similar endorse­ment effort in last year's election and was largely unsuccessful in tilting the As­sembly to the right.

Six of the 11 As­sembly seats are up for election, and all the incumbents hope to return.

Three of them, Elvi Gray-Jack­son in Midtown, Mike Gutierrez in East An­chor­age, and Harri­et Drummond in West An­chor­age, are lib­eral-leaning As­sembly members the mayor says he would like to see replaced. Sullivan has endorsed conservative chal­lengers in their races -- campaigners whose views about taxes and spending are more aligned with his.

Sullivan said he is acting as a private cit­i­zen.

"The main rea­son is those three, as well as Mr. (Patrick) Flynn, I don't think exercised very good judg­ment in 2008 when they endorsed ... five-year, unprecedented con­tracts," said Sullivan. He be­lieves city la­bor con­tracts approved that year were too gen­er­ous and are at the root of what he sees as a con­tin­u­ing financial cri­sis for the city.

The mayor has spent much of the first half of his term cutting expens­es, mostly by elim­inating city jobs. His crit­ics, Gray-Jack­son, Gutierrez and Drummond among them, say Sullivan is adding to the bud­get crunch by taxing well be­low the ceiling, which means job and city ser­vice cuts.

Be­sides Gray-Jack­son, Gutierrez and Drummond, the incumbents on the ballot are Flynn, of downtown; Bill Starr of Eagle Riv­er and Chris Birch of South An­chor­age. Sullivan supports Starr and Birch. Flynn does not have com­pe­tition for his seat so far, so Sullivan says he is "neu­tral" in that race.

The fil­ing pe­riod to run for office closes at 5 p.m. today.

THE SULLIVAN SLATE

The conservative chal­lengers with Sullivan's endorse­ment are:

• Dave Bron­son for Gray-Jack­son's Midtown seat. Bron­son is an air­line pi­lot running for the first time and says city prop­erty taxes are too high.

• Adam Trombley against Gutierrez in East An­chor­age. Trombley is a corporate account man­ag­er. He ran for the As­sembly last year for the oth­er East An­chor­age seat and lost to Paul Hone­man. He says on his website that the city needs to reduce "the tax struc­ture."

• Liz Vazquez for Drummond's West An­chor­age seat. Vazquez is a Chugach Electric As­sociation board member and for­mer as­sistant state attor­ney general and state fraud pros­ecutor. Her election an­nounce­ment said she's will­ing to "do the heavy lifting" with Sullivan to get better val­ue for city tax dollars.

How much differ­ence Sullivan's endorse­ment will make is a question.

In the 2010 city election, Sullivan also endorsed two conservative can­didates and one moderate -- West An­chor­age's Ernie Hall, a longtime busi­nessman who was already well-known for civic activ­ities. Hall won, defeating incumbent Matt Clamen.

But the oth­er Sullivan endorsees lost to Dick Trai­ni of Midtown, a for­mer As­sembly member, and Hone­man, a for­mer po­lice lieu­tenant who lives in East An­chor­age.

THE TAX-CAP 'ISSUE'

Before the April 2010 election, a six-member lib­eral-leaning major­ity on the As­sembly was in charge.

This past year, the As­sembly's leanings have been hard­er to classify.

Sullivan says the body is still led by lib­erals; he consid­ers As­sembly chairman Trai­ni, who calls him­self moderate, to be in the lib­eral ranks.

He notes Trai­ni voted on the winning side Feb. 2, when the As­sembly by a 6-5 vote rejected a ballot measure the mayor support­ed, to amend the city char­ter in an at­tempt to clar­ify the tax cap.

Flynn said the As­sembly is "issue-driv­en. We take on a va­ri­ety of issues, and you see people who are generally cat­ego­rized as lib­eral or conservative working togeth­er."

An example, he said, was the way the As­sembly han­dled the bud­get, which passed un­ani­mously in December.

Flynn said the tax cap ballot measure was a joke, meant to give conservative can­didates an issue to campaign on that would set them apart from oppo­nents. "It was clear election­eering."

The tax cap measure, sponsored by As­semblyman Birch, was called the Taxpayer Pro­tection Act. It would have stated in the city char­ter, which is like the city's constitution, that the base for calcu­lating the annual tax cap would be the taxes col­lected the prior year.

Sullivan and Birch objected to the fact that for­mer Mayor Mark Be­gich used state rev­enue sharing to offset prop­erty taxes but didn't lower the tax cap by a compa­ra­ble amount. The Be­gich admin­istration had a le­gal opin­ion saying that was OK.

Sullivan wanted to pre­vent fu­ture mayors and As­sembly members from do­ing some­thing like that.

Flynn said the tax cap char­ter amend­ment, if approved, would cause prob­lems when­ev­er the city used a one-time influx of cash, like fed­eral stim­ulus funding, for tax re­lief. It would perma­nently lower the amount of fu­ture taxes that could be col­lected, and could hurt the city.

"They were just push­ing this thing to try to give their can­didates a wedge issue," Flynn said. "I couldn't look my­self in the mirror if I did that."

Gray-Jack­son, Drummond and Gutierrez have proposed a city law, rather than a char­ter amend­ment that must be approved by vot­ers, to clar­ify the in­tent of the tax cap re­strictions.

Find Rosemary Sh­inohara on­line at adn.com/con­tact/rsh­inohara or call her at 257-4340.