Tarred by Scandal, Republicans May Be Losing Alaska

By Karl Vick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 16, 2008

ANCHORAGE -- On the summer morning he would deliver himself to federal marshals to begin a 3 1/2 -year sentence for accepting an oil company's bribes, former state lawmaker Vic Kohring (R) parked along the side of Alaska's busiest highway. While his mother waited in the car, Kohring posted a hand-lettered sign reading "Thanks, Alaska" and spent three hours waving and smiling at drivers heading to work.

The unlikely display of gratitude came after the FBI captured the portly Republican on surveillance video gushing, "That's very kind of you, I appreciate that," as an oil executive handed over hundred-dollar bills. And he may not be the last Alaska Republican making a less than graceful exit from the stage this year.

Polls show that Sen. Ted Stevens, recently indicted for allegedly failing to report a quarter of a million dollars in gifts from the same oil executive, is widely expected to prevail in the Aug. 26 Republican primary. But that victory would allow the patriarch widely known as "Uncle Ted" only the dubious honor of being able to devote his full attention to a felony trial in advance of a November general election that looks less promising for the incumbent.

Don Young, the state's sole member of the House of Representatives, enters his 19th reelection race having spent $1.3 million, or three-quarters of his campaign fund, on lawyers representing his interests in an array of federal investigations that the flinty incumbent dismisses with a wave of his hand.

"I've never had an easier race, contrary to what people say," Young declared in an interview. "I'm from Fort Yukon! I'm a riverboat captain!"

Even Gov. Sarah Palin, the former beauty contestant elected two years ago on a reform slate, spent July navigating her first scandal. A special prosecutor will determine whether Palin pushed to punish her sister's ex-husband, a state trooper whose established sins include moose poaching and shooting his 11-year-old stepson with a Taser.

"We come here for the edge, and we love the edge. But this is ridiculous," said Francine Lastufka Taylor, a former musician and arts administrator who arrived from "outside" in 1961. "The place was so young, and there was a lot of nut cases, but they weren't in charge."

"Crazy politics up here," declared a smiling Howard Enbysk, 74, retired from the Air Force. "It's different."

It might be even more different after Nov. 4. The relentless tattoo of scandal -- coupled with the drag of presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain's tepid local support and a Democratic field offering a new generation of political leadership -- threatens a Republican stranglehold on Alaska politics that dates to the oil boom of the 1970s.

"I expect us to have, for the first time in 28 years, at least one Democrat in the congressional delegation," said Gerald McBeath, a political scientist at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. "I expect Stevens's chances of survival are better than those of Young."

Stevens, 84, faces only modest primary opposition, but if he is able to run in November he will almost certainly face popular Anchorage mayor Mark Begich. At 46, the Democrat embodies generational change: His father, Nick, was running for reelection against the then-upstart Young in 1972 when he vanished into the Gulf of Alaska aboard a small plane that also carried Rep. Hale Boggs of Louisiana.

But while Begich's TV spots include the scandal headlines that have become obligatory for challengers here, the candidate also emphasizes his credentials as an upbeat moderate who reaches across partisan lines in a state where most voters at least call themselves independents.

"The vast majority of Alaskans don't care what letter comes after our name," Begich declared this week at an event announcing "Republicans for Begich." This being Alaska, several of the Republicans were union leaders. something unheard of in most states.

"We're diverse up here," said John Garrett, of Sheet Metal Workers Union Local 23. Andy Holleman, the Republican vice president of the Anchorage teachers union, said many voters will not make a decision about Stevens until after his trial, set to begin Sept. 22.

"If it is going to tip them the other way, this is the time," he said. "It's not going to be like this in four years."

In the House race, Young, 75, faces a host of challenges. The federal probes that have depleted his campaign coffers touch on the oil bribery scandal that ensnared Stevens, and inquiries into the congressional earmarks have made him notorious outside the state and formidable within it. Young, for his part, sounds as though he is confident in divine intervention.

"I believe he's still going to choose me to protect this state," he said. "If he doesn't, it's another chapter."

His main primary opponent is Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, elected alongside Palin as a reformer and running to the right of an incumbent who won 70 percent of the vote against his father 28 years ago.

"Sean, congratulations," Young told the state GOP convention where Parnell announced his candidacy. "I beat your dad, and I'm going to beat you."

Early polls have given the edge to Parnell, who declares, "We're tired of being the nation's symbol of excess and greed." But his trajectory appeared less certain after a shaky performance in a televised debate and the emergence of a second GOP challenger who may split the anti-Young vote.

The Democratic challengers include Diane Benson, a Native Alaskan and mother of a seriously wounded Iraq war veteran. But polls favor Ethan Berkowitz, an Anchorage lawyer who led the legislature's Democratic minority for seven years and cleanly fielded this question from the anchorman at the debate in which Parnell faltered: "When did you last go hunting, and for what?" (Two years ago, for caribou.)

"The Republican Party here is in disarray," said Berkowitz, 46. "They're infighting. They're out of money. And they just haven't had to battle from this position before."

GOP dominance in Alaska has been a constant since the ascendance of the petroleum industry, and the state's profound reliance on it contained the seeds of the current scandal.

The vast North Slope reserves allowed the state to replace income taxes with annual dividend checks, and this month lawmakers voted to give Alaskans $1,200 to cover skyrocketing gas and heating oil costs. But industry checks to lawmakers also grew routine, and the oil services company Veco and its irascible president, Bill Allen, assumed a proprietary air eventually captured by FBI surveillance cameras.

"Maybe we can buy some gasoline. You know, he's got planes," state Sen. John Cowdery told Allen, discussing plans to buy off another legislator, according to Cowdery's July 10 indictment.

"It's a classic colonial operation," said Berkowitz, "where the colonizers co-opt the local elites and use the local elites to keep the public in check."

Palin's upset election victory showed that the Republican brand retained value. And her approval ratings remain high even after she controversially fired one public safety commissioner and saw the replacement promptly resign when a former assistant said she regarded his request for a daily hug as sexual harassment.

"But it adds to the overall picture of the complications going on in Alaska politics," said Mike Meeks, 50, a city employee in Seward. "To me, Alaska's changing. It used to be if you aren't Republican, you don't belong here. That's changing."