Contractor challenging doctor for borough assembly seat

Barbara Doty was appointed to the Mat-Su Borough Assembly to replace Jim Colver and later won her first election. Challenger Jesse Sumner builds homes in the Valley and has seen over $20,000 of items stolen from him this year alone. He is passionate about crime. Doty hopes to foster relationships between Mat-Su College and the hospital to create a U-Med district.

Barbara Doty

Doty has been a doctor in the Valley for 30 years and delivered babies in the quadruple digits, somewhere over 2,000 she estimates.

“I’d like to carry out some of the things we’ve started to keep that community development going in a fiscally responsible way,” Doty said.

Doty lauds her experience and encourages continued work on the roads.

“The road bonds are important. I encourage people to vote because getting from one side of town to the other has become difficult and as we grow we need those connectors finished so we’ve got to find a way to fund them,” Doty said.

Doty serves on national boards and has been recognized with her work in the medical community. She also serves as the WWAMI dean for medical students.

“I also am about bringing people together. I don’t have a political agenda that I need to achieve and I’m not looking to run for another political office necessarily anytime soon. This is about local care,” Doty said.

Doty took over her husband’s business when he passed, a field she had no experience in. She does, however, have small business experience starting at 16 years old.

“There are still some things related to the opiate task force and the crime that are related to health. I have a lot of experience in running a small business from the ground up,” Doty said.

Jesse Sumner

Sumner is working on 10 different homes currently after he took over his father’s homebuilding business. He sees a need for more vocational education in schools. He believes the college-only track is not right for everyone.

“Anybody that we can encourage to go in the trades I think they are more likely to graduate and I think they are more likely to be a contributing member of society afterwards,” Sumner said.

Sumner would also like to see greater security coming from the residents with increased street-facing security cameras. He wants a full repeal of SB91.

“We need to the state needs to increase presumptive sentence guideline for theft and they also need to address how the issue right now, a lot of it is that they’re releasing defendants on unsecured bond a lot of them aren't showing up,” Sumner said. “They have to make the choice to go and seek treatment and we can facilitate that. If we don’t make it extremely hard to be a criminal and easy to get treatment then people aren’t going to be making that choice so there do need to be tough consequences.”

Sumner wants to see the continued growth of the Mat-Su housing boom.

“We need to protect the factors that are driving that population growth and we need to maintain the Mat-Su Borough as an attractive place for people to move.”