The Chris Constant tapes: Assemblyman calls mayor a ‘clown,’ and executive branch ‘fools’

Chris Constant, Anchorage Assembly vice chair, has put a target on the mayor — and the mayor’s staff, according to tapes recently acquired by Must Read Alaska. But it wasn’t like that in the beginning, when Mayor Dave Bronson announced his top administrator, Municipal Manager Amy Demboski.

In July, Anchorage Assemblyman Chris Constant wrote a letter to the editor heaping compliments on Demboski. She was a star in his eyes.

“If the mayoral election of 2021 tells us one thing, it is our job to lead through these divisions. We are grateful for the mayor’s choice of Amy Demboski to the second-highest position within the Municipality of Anchorage. Ms. Demboski served collaboratively with us from Day One, and we were impressed because we knew firsthand that she served for all the right reasons. Like us, she truly cares about our community and wants to make a difference. Our political differences are vast, but like us, her focus is the community,” Constant wrote.

“We were able to work through challenging issues and maintain respect for each other because we shared some core values. We can disagree passionately and still treat each other with respect,” he continued.

Constant closed by saying: “Ms. Demboski does her homework and values our opinions. She will be professional, thoughtful and effectively coordinate with the Assembly, mayor, and department directors to ensure the work of the people is done efficiently and professionally.  She will take a reasonable approach to critical issues. Our experience tells us that Anchorage residents can be confident she will serve the community as municipal manager with integrity, ethics, compassion, and respect for our employees. Her decisions will be based on community need with executive and legislative input. She will work fairly with the Assembly, recognizing the challenge the legislative branch has when making decisions. Like us, she will lead with dignity for the betterment of our entire community.” Constant signed the letter along with former Assemblywoman Elvi Gray-Jackson.

That was July 1, 2021 in the Anchorage Daily News.

Seven months later, Constant is a changed man. He no longer respects the mayor’s team. He said last week that the mayor’s office thinks the Assembly leftists are spying on the executive branch, that “we’ve bugged their offices because their bad ideas get out into the community. No, we don’t bug your office. We didn’t need to do that,” Constant said on a podcast. Then he admitted that he has a mole in the mayor’s office. Speaking as though to the mayor directly, he said, “You surround yourself with people who don’t trust you and you surround yourself with bad ideas. That’s what happens.”

Listen to the ‘Bugging their Offices’ tape here.

Constant said on the broadcast that Bronson is a “clown” and his staff are “a team of fools.” Constant went on to describe the Assembly majority’s strategy for dealing with such a confederacy of dunces:

“And this mayor is just ‘veto, veto, veto,’ and ‘override, override, override.’ And so I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit, there’s this ad by this ridiculous blog that must not be named, that said ‘Nothing to report, nothing to report,’ and it had zero impact on the election but it was a pretty scathing ad,” Constant said.

He was speaking of an 2018 Must Read Alaska YouTube video report about former Mayor Ethan Berkowitz, when Berkowitz never had anything to report about what he was doing as mayor:

Then Assemblyman Constant said the plan is to override everything Mayor Bronson proposes.

“I’m hopeful that an ad is developed that all these bombastic by this clown [referring to the mayor] who thinks he knows and demonstrates that he doesn’t day in and day out. ‘Veto. Override. Veto. Override.’ Because the true policymakers of the city have always been the Assembly, when it exercises that authority because that’s what the charter grants us. And so we are not going to be run roughshod over by a team of fools [mayor’s team]…” Constant said.

Listen to the ‘Team of Fools’ tape here.

Listen to the ‘Frankly not that smart’ tape here.

Constant, the same one who spoke glowingly of the mayor’s choice for Municipal Manager just seven months prior, spoke on a new podcast run by a radical leftist in East Anchorage. The majority of the time spent on the podcast was a discussion involving fellow Assemblyman Felix Rivera about their experiences as openly gay members of the Assembly.