Deadline near for mayor hopefuls

PALMER — Packets are available for anyone who wants to be the next borough mayor and a couple of early birds have already filed to run.

Both of the early filers are familiar faces, though for different reasons.

Brian Sullivan is a former school board member who resigned in April of 2009 for a couple of reasons; one being an Army policy that restricted officers from serving on non-partisan boards, the other being that his work duties kept him from spending the necessary amount of time working on school board business.

Sullivan is a major with the U.S. Army Military Police at Fort Richardson, a position he will leave Nov. 19. He’s served a tour in Iraq and counts himself a conservative who is supportive of working families. Sullivan said he served two terms in the Washington State Legislature, representing a district in Pierce County that included Joint Base Lewis-McCord.

He says in Washington he was a Democrat tarred as a turncoat for not voting lockstep with organized labor, but here he will likely be viewed with suspicion for having once been a Democrat.

“It’s all relative to where you are,” he said.

The other early bird is John Leiner, a Palmer farmer who has run in the last three local elections. He ran for borough mayor the last time it was open and for the borough assembly in October. In neither case was he a front-runner.

Leiner is also a frequent attendee of borough assembly meetings, where he often offers impassioned testimony about a gravel mine that punctured an aquifer and flooded his land. Lately he hasn’t been testifying as frequently.

The borough is accepting applications to run for the position until Friday. The election is scheduled for Jan. 11, 2011. Interested parties need to pick up a candidate’s packet at the borough offices in Palmer.

This is the second borough mayor race in a row to take place during a special election. The first came after then-mayor Curt Menard died. Then his replacement, Talis Colberg, resigned to take the helm as director of Mat-Su College.

Colberg purposely timed his resignation to put the election for his replacement after November’s general election in order that a ballot proposition that would have drastically altered the mayor’s duties would be settled before voters were asked to select who would serve in that capacity.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.