Austin Quinn-Davidson '07 wins re-election to Anchorage Assembly

In April, Austin Quinn-Davidson ’07 won re-election to the Anchorage (Alaska) Assembly. She represents 40,000 people in west Anchorage.

Quinn-Davidson has held the seat since 2018. Quinn-Davidson, then legal affairs director for the Great Land Trust nonprofit, had jumped into politics that summer after an Assembly seat suddenly became open. She won in a special election, becoming the first openly LGBTQ woman on the Assembly.

She had been poised for a possible run for office since the 2016 presidential election, Quinn-Davidson said in late 2018.

“It was a big turning point for people like me, of starting to think about how seriously people take women, and who we want in office,” Quinn-Davidson said. “And of me saying, ‘What more can I do … to make the world a better place?’”

Her experiences at King Hall also inspired her. 

Quinn-Davidson comes from “a pretty poor family” in rural Trinity County, she said. “In my town, we didn’t have any lawyers. The ‘rich people’ were teachers, because they had health care."  Coming to law school “was a really big shock for me,” she said. “A lot of the students had parents who were highly educated and were middle class or more.”

She recalls thinking “these are the folks making laws … and if they don’t know much about poor people, it is hard for them to make laws that reflect our broader community.”

During law school, she learned to advocate for underrepresented communities through the Civil Rights Clinic, and through King Hall's larger public service ethos.

“The reason I am doing this on the Assembly is to help lift up the voices of more vulnerable people,” Quinn-Davidson said. “And I think that’s a real priority and vision of certainly Dean Johnson, but also of the law school. That really reflects my values, so I feel like I am carrying that with me.”