palin.jpeg

We're not in Kansas anymore. We're in Alaska.

The rise of Gov. Sarah Palin from the City of Wasilla Planning Commission, to City Council, to Mayor, to a high level position in the Frank Murkowski gubernatorial administration, to maverick outsider, to Governor, to Vice Presidential nominee, over the course of fourteen years, is meteoric. The first 20 months of her administration saw her approval ratings in the high 80s. But this summer, in a surprise move, she fired a highly respected chief of public safety. Then, the man Palin appointed to be the new top cop, lasted only a few days, as a sexual harassment charge against him surfaced. And her stated reasons for firing Walt Monegan in the first place, never made any sense.

The fallout from that move is still playing out. In July, the Alaska Legislature hired a well-respected retired prosecutor, Steve Branchflower, to handle the investigation. It was given a low budget, but its slow pace may now be hurried and harried forward. But it is still expected to take months.

Palin's Attorney General, my longtime friend, Talis Colberg, was tasked by Palin to hold his own investigation. So far, that has resulted in the suspension of her boards and commissions director, Frank Bailey, for pressuring at least one state trooper, to act against another trooper, who is Palin's sister's ex-husband. The latter is involved in a child custody dispute with Palin's sister. This is real Hatfield-McCoy stuff.

Having known Palin through most of her political career, I've seen her grow as a politician, and until recently viewed her as a person who could be described as a pragmatist. Over the course of 2008, though, she has made a series of moves that indicate she is as close-minded as most Alaska Republicans.

Resource development issues, particularly ANWR oil, offshore drilling and a series of projected mega-mines and coal-fired power plants are major here. Palin's stance on resource development is totally pro-development. At the same time, she has rejected the earmark paradigm exemplified by the careers of Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young.

Her growing anti-science stance is the most disturbing development, in my eyes. Early this year, she took a position to refuse to release correspondence to a leading Alaska academic and environmentalist, Rick Steiner, between state-employed scientists, regarding the state's support of the Bush administration's decisions on Polar bear status. And as Siun has observed in an earlier firedoglake post, her backing of an anti-science position on a voter initiative, while sitting as governor, may be more than just unethical.

Her decision to fly from Texas back to Alaska after her water had broken this spring has been criticized, but nobody's put it better than Anchorage progressive talk radio personality Shannyn Moore put it today:

Last spring there was the big announcement of Sarah Palin’s 5th pregnancy. I’m pro choice, happy she was able to make whatever choice was best for her family. With her oldest child in the military, three more at home, and one on the way she was getting quite a bit done. I would have wanted a nap and a spa, but that’s just me. In the last few weeks of her pregnancy she was flying all over the country, Washington D.C. and then to a conference of Republican Governors in Dallas. Her water broke at the conference and she decided to fly back to Alaska to have her 5th child that she knew had downs-syndrome. She passes up some of the finest children’s hospitals in Dallas, Seattle and Anchorage, to fly hours and then drive to 50 miles to her home town to have her child. I admire her ability to hold a child in during all those hours and miles above the Earth, and her staunch loyalty to Alaska to deliver her baby on Native Soil.

But had I been on board one of those planes on the way to take a loved one off life support, or be at a wedding, or job interview, or any other event that we get on planes for, and had to be diverted by a woman who knowingly got on board after her water broke, I may not admire her uterine control so much. Her lack of judgment for fellow passengers seems obvious, but for someone who is so pro-life it seems reckless.

Meanwhile:

Alaska’s somewhat kinky pre-general election primary was held on the 88th anniversary of the certification of the Nineteenth Amendment. At the polling place, voters were offered a choice of three ballots - one that had the GOP candidates and ballot initiatives, one that had only the ballot initiatives, and one that had all political parties other than the GOP, and the ballot initiatives. More than half the voters in Alaska aren’t a member of either the Republicans or the Democrats. That majority had to choose from among the three ballots, colored red for GOP, green for no candidates, and blue for all candidates who aren’t GOP. Are you confused yet?

The polling results were interesting. Here are some highlights:

35.34% 0f Alaska’s registered voters cast ballots.

With all precincts reporting, U.S. Rep. Don Young leads Alaska Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell by 150 votes - 42,539 to 42,387. But there are a yet unknown number of late absentee and questioned ballots left to be counted. Less than 10,000, but more than 5,000. They are being counted by the Division of Elections, run by Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell. There are also, according to Alaska Division of Elections director, Gail Fenumiai, “between 5,000 and 10,000 questioned ballots in the election, all of which the division will count or disqualify on Sept. 5.” No more ballots will be counted until September 5.

On the ADL Ballot, progressive Democrat Diane Benson, who had evoked strong interest in Young’s vulnerability by her strong 2006 grassroots challenge to the longtime incumbent, lost to DCCC-funded Ethan Berkowitz. Berkowitz polled 35,246 votes to Benson’s 24,477.

Sen. Ted Stevens won his primary challenge, with about 64% of 93,059 GOP ballot votes cast. He got 59,123.

Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, and firedoglake Blue america candidate, won his primary challenge, with 55,993 of the ADL ballot votes cast. That translates to over 84% of the votes on that ballot. What is important here is that Sen. Stevens - while under Federal indictment and scheduled for a felony trial - got 3,130 more votes than Mayor Begich. Again - they were on different ballots.

On Tuesday evening, at Anchorage’s Egan Center, where for the past 20 years candidates for statewide races have gathered to view election results and be interviewed by the media, Sean Parnell’s supporters came into the hall at about 9:30 p.m. looking at a strong lead from the early returns. They and their thousands of balloons slowly deflated throughout the evening. Young wasn’t there. He had gone up to his Arctic hometown of Ft. Yukon, a place he visits every two years on election day, to cast his vote.

The candidate with by far the most supporters at the post-election rally, was Mark Begich. He had well over 100 supporters in the ballroom. After Begich, the person with the most signs there, wasn’t even on the ballot - Barack Obama. These kids were very much in the face of the 50 or so vocal Ted Stevens supporters.

The Ted Stevens campaign’s use of kids as props has led me to ask a lot of questions. I’ve got a call in to his Anchorage campaign office director, Aaron Saunders (the guy I gave the poem toobz to back in July), to get to the bottom of it.

Tuesday night, St. Ted looked awful. He launched into tirades against his opponents - political and otherwise - on two TV channels. As he walked from one interview table to the next, he seemed to be having trouble merely getting around. The double burdens of actually having to campaign for a change, and prepare for a nationally spotlighted criminal trial, at his age, are tellingly obvious.

Ted Stevens’ attorneys, having asked for a speedy trial at the time of his arraignment, are now filing motions in the wake of grasping the enormous body of evidence the Department of Justice intends to bring up at trial. These motions, and the complexity of material, indicate to many, your writer included, that this trial may go weeks longer than initially expected. Perhaps past election day.

Sources inside the Mark Begich campaign have told me that their campaign had polled the Senate contest shortly before the indictment was announced. So, they decided to poll again, a few days after the indictment. Guess what? Ted got a positive bump. That’s Alaska for you!

We had four ballot initiatives. All failed. The three most important to progressives failed by wide margins.

One would have ended aerial wolf hunting. Another would have created a publicly-funded “clean elections” regime, like the one currently being used so successfully in Arizona. And the third, would have put in place more stringent water quality standards for future mining activities.

Alaska is in a state of denial. I call it PTSD - Post-Ted Stress Disorder. Palin's elevation will serve to only elevate that sate of denial for the next two months.

Meanwhile, Friday, the State of Alaska's web site has crashed from overload. Our bloggers, used to our well-deserved obscurity, are experiencing tens of thousands of hits. Not since Joe Hazelwood have we gotten this much attention.