Alaska Governor Hickel was an AIP member and endorsed Palin in 2006

[demobabe]

From Liz Arnett's diary on Kos:

Governor Palin’s connections with the AIP are also furthered by her connection to Wally Hickel, a former Alaskan governor. Hickel was elected on the AIP ticket. He served as the co-chairman of Governor Palin’s campaign in 2006
Here is a quote from an interview Hickel did with the Alaska Dispatch:

When Palin was running for governor in 2006, Hickel appeared in advertisements supporting her and the Alaska pipeline.
"I made her governor," Hickel told me.

When asked earlier this year on CNBC about whether she’d be picked for McCain’s VP, Palin said, "We wanna make sure that that VP slot would be a fruitful type of position, especially for Alaskans, and for the things we’re trying to accomplish up here for the rest of the US, before I can even start addressing that question."

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/9/1/4231/18477/878/581881 - see the entire AIP connection in her journal, including all the video and Palin's 2008 welcome message for the AIP convention.

[demobabe]

1. Kicking cause this is important

Folks are trying to dismiss Palin's ties to the AIP because she was a member quite a while back. But the truth is, she was endorsed by the AIP all along. Even during the Governor's race, an AIP member says he got the office for her.

[valerief]

2. Kick

:kick:

[yellowdogintexas]

3. deleted myself

decided it was too much non sequiter

[Blue_In_AK]

4. Hickel's a Republican.

He isn't "really" AIP, he just ran for governor on their ticket in 1990 because the Republican nominee (in an open primary) ended up being Arliss Sturgelewski, a pro-choice Republican woman, who was anathema to the more conservative and macho Republican men in the state. The AIP party chairman, Joe Vogler, thought Hickel would have a better chance of winning than Arliss, so he convinced the AIP candidate John Lindauer to step aside and let Hickel run on their ticket. He defeated Tony Knowles, who was the Democratic candidate that year, and left poor Arliss, a rather remarkable woman, in the dirt. He served only one term from 1990 to 1994. (He had previously been a Republican governor from 1966 to 1969, when he resigned to be Richard Nixon's Secretary of the Interior. He resigned from the Nixon cabinet in protest against Nixon's escalation of the Vietnam conflict.)

Our politics is never dull.