I’d like to take this chance to apologize to the rest of the world on Alaska’s behalf. We elected her to the office that allowed John McCain to pick her to be his running mate. Since she was picked it has become incredibly obvious to anyone paying attention that she is not remotely qualified for the position of VP, and people have been asking what is wrong with Alaska. How did Alaskans vote for this small town mayor for the most powerful position in the state?
I’ll do my best to explain how. I was not one of the 114,000 that filled in the circle for Sarah and have never been impressed with anything that she has done since taking office. I have also never had the opportunity to tell a pollster that I was not satisfied with her job performance as I am of the generation that doesn’t have a landline.
The answer to the question though is really very simple. I can answer it in two words: Frank Murkowski. I would guess most people outside of Alaska have never heard of Frank, or if you did it was just a passing mention and he was quickly forgotten.
Frank Murkowski was elected to the US Senate in 1980. He gained some seniority, brought some money home to Alaska and was the chairman of the Energy and natural resources Committee, which is a pretty important committee for Alaska issues. He held the seat for 22 years until he decided it was time to come home to Alaska and run for Governor. He was pretty popular as a Senator, and easily defeated his Democratic challenger to win the governor race.
He was sworn in as governor, resigned his senate seat, and started the search for his replacement. The charade of finding a suitable replacement lasted a little while, and then he announced his pick. She was the State House Minority Leader, and probably wouldn’t have even been on a shortlist for a pick by any other governor, but she was also Frank’s daughter.
This was one of his first acts that would piss off Alaskans on both sides of the aisle. He spent the next four years doing the bidding of the oil companies and reaching the bottom of the popularity polls. Here’s a few of his greatest hits:
-He bought a jet. Might not seem that strange for a governor to have a jet, especially in a state as big as Alaska. The problem was there are only a couple of airports in the state that can handle a jet, and the governor already had a couple of nice planes at his disposal. He requested the jet in his budget, the legislature said no, and he went ahead and bought it anyway. This would become a big issue in the campaign.
-He tried very hard to push through his gas pipeline / oil tax cut plan. Alaskan’s have an interesting relationship with the oil industry. We basically rely on its money for everything and we let it get away with a lot of crap. But the majority of us don’t like them and don’t trust them. Frank worked hard to puch through his tax plan which amounted to a huge tax cut for big oil, it probably would have never passed without the work of some state legislators who are currently sitting in a federal prison in Oregon for their role in getting the legislation passed. And it became very clear to anyone paying attention that he was working for big oil and not for the people of Alaska.
-He changed the public employees and teachers retirement systems, basically destroying them for anyone hired after his tenure as governor.
-He eliminated the Longevity Bonus, a program that provided Alaskans over 65 with up to $250 a month to help supplement their income. This was also a huge issue in the campaign.
-He spent a lot of time in Asia. I’m not sure if anyone knows what he was doing there, he said working on state business and energy issues, most people thought he was out looking for his next job.
-He appointed incompetent people to run departments. My dad, a lifelong republican until Murkowski and Bush, works for the state. His direct supervisor is a political appointee, and the 4 years of the Murkowski administration nearly killed him. He was so stressed out from working for completely incompetent people that he was going to quit his job only a couple years short of retirement if Murkowski won re-election.
That set the stage for Palin to run against Frank in the primary. By the time the votes were cast in August, Murkowski had the lowest approval ratings in the country. They were at 14%, a full five points lower than his closest competition, the governor of Ohio who was under indictment. And also a full five points lower than the percentage of votes he got in his third place finish in the republican primary.
Sarah ran a campaign that was very simple and very effective. She basically said two words for 6 months, open and transparent. She promised to be the anti-Frank. She would restore the longevity bonus (she hasn’t), she would sell the jet (she did at a loss of $600,000), and she would restore ethics and honor to Juneau.
Between the primary and the general election the FBI raided the offices of several state legislators and the offices of the oil services company VECO. It played right into Sarah’s narrative, as the anti-corruption, anti-Frank Murkowski candidate.
She was running against a former two term Democratic governor Tony Knowles in the general. He was very popular among Dems, but this was a very red state, and even the most casual observers of Alaska politics knew that a change was needed. So they went with the outsider, the pretty young family woman who promised to be open and transparent, she promised to return ethics to the state, and she promised to fix the damage done by Frank Murkowski.
Since taking office the legislature has been working hard to fix the damage done by Frank. They passed new ethics bills, and the headline in the paper read “Palin signs ethics reforms.” The FBI continues to clean up corruption, and people gave her some credit as a maverick who spoke out against it before anyone else in her party. By the time she was speaking out, everyone had heard the rumors of federal investigations, grand juries, and indictments coming down. She did nothing but ride the wave to higher approval ratings.
She gets a lot of credit for things that the legislature does, and the media loves her. It helped that the main political reporter for the largest TV station in the state (it has something like 80% of the market for news in the state), was given a job as her spokesman, but he didn’t tell anyone at the news station for a few months and continued to report on her.
She hasn’t done much of note since taking office, besides having a becoming the first sitting governor to have a baby and getting the nod for VP. And we are learning a lot about her in the national vetting process. We are a small state, and there is not really much of a vetting process to speak of for governor. Maybe if we knew what we know now we would have a third term of Tony Knowles right now, and none of you would have ever heard of Sarah or had to worry about her becoming president on the off chance that McCain pulls out the election in November and the not so off chance that he tips over before 2012.
Here's a couple of links to check out-
http://www.alaskareport.com/wn10118a.htm - an article on Frank's popularity
http://whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2008/01/why-did-frank-murkowski-leave-us-senate.html - a great blog on why Frank left the Senate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26yyxg73iFQ - a youtube video that was making the rounds when Frank lost the primary to Sarah.
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