One of the sharpest divisions among candidates for the Anchorage Assembly can be found in the East Anchorage race for Seat H.

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Stout

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Selkregg

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Incumbent Ken Stout and challenger Sheila Selkregg disagree on how the city should pen new development rules, and each thinks the other has taken some unfair shots in the campaign.

A third candidate, 26-year-old libertarian Alex Crawford, has a more general complaint. He's disgusted with local government on all counts and wants a complete overhaul.

Both Selkregg and Stout -- who is seeking a second three years on the Assembly in Tuesday's election -- have long histories in Anchorage.

Selkregg, daughter of former Assemblywoman Lidia Selkregg, is an ex-city planner and longtime Democrat who teaches public administration at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

Stout is a retired Army lieutenant colonel and business professor and a former head of the state's Republican Party.

Stout's daughter is Iditarod musher DeeDee Jonrowe, a fact he hammers home in his campaign advertising.

In some of her own campaign literature, Selkregg hammers Stout.

"My opponent, Ken Stout, says that running for office is an 'aggravation,' " reads one Selkregg flier. "I disagree. I love East Anchorage and as I go door-to-door, people tell me they want a representative with the commitment and energy to move us forward."

Stout pulled out the flier during a recent interview and read it out loud. That's right, he said, campaigning is an aggravation.

"I took one terrible fall in a guy's driveway and I'm still kinked up from it."

Stout has his own aggressive ads. One radio ad tells listeners that "Ken Stout wants neighborhoods in control, instead of being the victims of city planners."

Selkregg was a city planner for years.

Asked what the ad meant, Stout said: "A lot of this stuff that we have got problems with, like site condos and stuff, are things that was put into effect back when she was city planner."

Selkregg said that's not true. Decisions about housing density and town centers came after she left the job, she said.

Selkregg launched work on the city's blueprint for how Anchorage should grow. The city is now working on specific rules about land use and development that execute that plan.

Selkregg said it's being mishandled. She says the Assembly hasn't involved the public in the rewrite enough and questioned whether changes to the plan are being made to benefit developers rather than homeowners.

Stout says the process is painstakingly public. It "is going to get reviewed and reviewed and reviewed by everybody, prior to it ever becoming law."

Along with electing new Assembly members, voters will be asked Tuesday whether to repeal tough new anti-smoking rules. Crawford, a member of the Alaska Libertarian Party, was one of the first supporters of the repeal effort.

In late February, he filed a lawsuit against the city over the way the city described the smoking ban in public ads while on his lunch break from a temporary file clerk job.

At the time, he described himself as a "pot smoker defending tobacco smokers" and said the new rules were a case of policymakers overstepping their bounds.

As for his opponents, the smoking ban is one of the few issues Stout and Selkregg agree on. They both support it.

KEN STOUT

Just out of high school, Stout joined the Army in 1948. "I guess I was looking for adventure ... shortly after I joined, the Korean War broke out," he said.

The son of a Missouri salesman and farmer, Stout was stationed at Fort Richardson in the early 1970s and returned to Anchorage when he retired after 27 years.

He earned a bachelor's degree in education at the University of Nebraska and a master's in public administration from UAA. He taught at Alaska Methodist University -- now Alaska Pacific University -- and later co-owned a real estate company and a motor home company. He served as Republican Party chairman for four years.

Stout, who is 77, collects antique cars and has said that the political figure he most admires is World War II Gen. George Patton.

He ran unsuccessfully for state House in 1976 and for lieutenant governor in 1984. "I lost dreadfully," he said.

Stout has been married for 54 years. The couple have two daughters.

SHEILA SELKREGG

Selkregg's family moved to Alaska from Illinois in 1958 and to East Anchorage in 1960.

Her mother, a planner and geologist, served on the Assembly in the 1970s and '80s.

"And the issues were probably very much the same issues, right? Good neighborhoods, public safety, jobs and education," she said. "Those things don't change. Those are still my issues, really."

While Selkregg is a lifelong Democrat, she said Assembly candidates shouldn't bring a conservative or liberal agenda to city issues.

"The Assembly is intended to be a nonpartisan body," she said.

(Stout, who ran a successful campaign in 2004 saying he wanted to bring a conservative balance to the Assembly, said he'd say that too, "if I was in the minority.")

Selkregg is an East High graduate and has a master's in planning from the University of Oregon and a Ph.D. in urban studies from Portland State University.

Selkregg is 57. One of her three children is Daily News reporter Julia O'Malley.

ALEX CRAWFORD

Crawford is running a guerilla Assembly campaign.

He prints his own fliers using pints of ink he bought on eBay. He says he won't accept any donations, and his campaign Web site is a MySpace page with a picture of a silver rifle where you'd expect to see his smiling face.

Crawford is big on small government.

He thinks property taxes are out of line and people should pay out of pocket for the services they want.

He says all drugs should be legal and so should all guns.

"I've got 15 SKSs with grenade launchers on them. Can't get the grenades," Crawford said, referring to a type of semi-automatic rifle.

Fifteen?

"Saving them for a rainy day," he said.

Police are one of the few services the government should provide, Crawford said, but he added that he'd look to gut the department of any bureaucratic desk jobs.

Born in Fairbanks, Crawford is married with three young sons. In Fairbanks, he learned how to beat his speeding and traffic tickets and started doing legal work for friends, he said.

He moved to Anchorage in 2004 and works sporadically as a paralegal, he said. He hopes to go to law school after finishing a history degree at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

Daily News reporter Kyle Hopkins can be reached at khopkins@adn.com.

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