The longest-serving member of the Anchorage Assembly, Dick Traini, died last week. He was 77, and passed surrounded by family and friends, according to Sandy Traini, his wife of more than 50 years.
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“He did so many different things,” she said Wednesday about Traini’s extensive career in public service and on the Assembly.
Traini represented Midtown off and on for nearly three decades between 1991 and 2019. Though Assembly members are limited to serving three consecutive terms, Traini had periods out of office after electoral defeats, and left the body for the last time in 2019. He was the longest-serving member of the body, elected as its chair five times.
“Dick was a true leader who served a total of 19 years on the Assembly. He was a staunch advocate for his community and always stood up for what he believed in. Dick was also a true family man and cherished time with his wife Sandy, children and 20 grandchildren,” Anchorage Mayor Suzanne LaFrance wrote in a Facebook post.
He was the driving force behind a wide range of legislative measures that had a lasting impact on Anchorage, including the city’s ban on indoor smoking, the establishment of dog parks and the implementation of recreational cannabis rules, among many others.
“He wasn’t afraid to attack anything if there was needed legislation for it,” Sandy said.
Traini was widely lauded by colleagues and contemporaries for his grasp of the Assembly’s rules and political levers.
“What I learned from him first and foremost was how to run the meeting,” said Sen.Forrest Dunbar, who served on the Assembly with Traini and is now a Democratic state senator representing East Anchorage. “He was known for being polite and being very thoughtful when it came to addressing the public. … He had a heart for community service. And behind closed doors, he was the same as he was in public. He was thoughtful and friendly.”
Traini was also, Dunbar added, extremely funny, never taking himself overly seriously in spite of his lofty political position.
While the Anchorage Assembly is technically nonpartisan, Traini ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for a state House seat in 2012. Fred Dyson, who represented Eagle River on the body during separate hitches and served as a Republican in the state House in between, said he and Traini shared a some traditionally conservative core values, but that Traini “was never wearing a label.”
“He was a serious guy. Nonjudgmental and remarkably fair,” Dyson recalled Wednesday. “He really cared about the community. Pretty bright, too.”
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Dyson said one of the qualities that impressed him about Traini was that compared to many elected officials aiming for higher office or more influence, Traini remained focused on nuts-and-bolts local government policy.
“He was never looking for the cameras or what would give a sound bite or the media or anything,” Dyson said.
Traini and his wife moved to the Matanuska-Susitna Borough in recent years, where most of their children and grandchildren live, though he was known to still keep tabs on Anchorage politics.
“Up until the very end, he never stopped caring about the community,” said former Eagle River Assembly member Amy Demboski, who commended Traini as a mentor to many newer members as they began their service on the Assembly.
Demboski and Traini fell on opposite sides of a few contentious issues that came before the body during their overlapping tenure. But she said he was always fair to “members of both sides” on even divisive ordinances that split the body into factions and had no problem partnering on topics of common interest.
“You saw Dick Traini cross over with different issues,” she said. “We got along great.”
One of Traini’s closest friends and colleagues was, at one point, his political rival. Sen.Elvi Gray-Jackson, D-Anchorage,worked with Traini over the years in municipal government, and beat him for the Midtown seat in 2008. They reconciled and were close political allies for years on the Assembly, even though their personal politics at times did not align.
“We worked really, really well together. We served the same district,” Gray-Jackson said Tuesday. “He was my friend. I loved him.”
Traini threw his time and effort behind all sorts of issues, Gray-Jackson recalled.
“Dick wasn’t a politician,” she said, “he was a public servant.”
A service for Traini will be held at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Palmer on Sept. 19.
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