There is a small pool of candidates running for the open Juneau Assembly and Board of Education seats in this fall’s local election.
The candidate filing period closed on Monday. Half a dozen seats are open for the Oct. 7 municipal election — three on the Juneau Assembly and three on the Juneau School District Board of Education.
Incumbent Assembly members Greg Smith and Ella Adkison are running uncontested for their seats. Assembly member Wade Bryson faces one other candidate, Nano Brooks, who unsuccessfully ran for an Assembly seat in the last two elections.
At an Assembly meeting on Monday, Bryson said he is excited to face some competition.
I’m quite proud of all of my work that I’ve done here on the Assembly, so I look forward to being able to showcase that as we move some of the city topics forward,” he said.
Both Smith and Bryson are finishing up their second full, three-year terms. Adkison is finishing her first partial term after she was elected in 2023 to serve the remaining two years in the term of Assembly member Carole Triem, who resigned.
At the meeting, Adkison said she suspects that state and federal issues might be pulling people’s attention away from local politics.
“It definitely does surprise me — I fully expected to have an opponent,” she said. “I think obviously when more people run, it’s a sign of a healthy local municipal democracy. But I think right now, frankly, there’s a lot of stuff going on.”
Four people are running for two full-term seats and one partial-term seat on the Juneau school board this election. The candidates are Jeremy Johnson, Jenny Thomas, Melissa Cullum and Steve Whitney.
Thomas unsuccessfully ran for a seat last election and led a recall effort of the board’s president and vice president. She and Cullum were outspoken critics of the board’s decision to consolidate Juneau’s high schools and middle schools.
Board president Deedie Sorensen and member Emil Mackey currently fill the open full-term seats. Both members told KTOO last week that they would not be running for reelection.
The winner of the partial-term school board seat will complete the remaining two years of former member Will Muldoon’s term. He abruptly resigned this spring. Whitney was elected by the board to fill Muldoon’s position until voters elect a new, full-time member.
Voting in this year’s by-mail election ends on Tuesday, Oct. 7. Ballots will be mailed to registered voters beginning on Sept. 19.
