See my comment in the other thread; thought it was pretty good.

Alaska should never, ever have had a Democrat Governor, yet Knowles served two terms. The first because of Republican fratricide and not a little voter fraud inThe Bush. The Republican bete noir here has long been the far right and the libertarians who often align with them; they can’t get elected, but they can sure keep a more mainstream Republican from getting elected by going third party, usually the AIP. Hickel’s Lt. Gov, Jack Coghill didn’t thing the nominee was conservative enough, so he ran AIP and elected Knowles. The second time around was almost like we were astroturfed. The Democrat dominated AKSC opened our primary and a guy that political players all knew was a scumbag and who no real Republican would vote for spent a bazillion bucks from his Chicago mob connected wife’s fortune. All the NPs only saw great commercials and the Ds didn’t have a contest so they all crossed over. As soon as he was the nominee, the Ds and the ADN unloaded both barrels on him and literally forced his withdrawal as a candidate. A month from the general election, the Alaska Republican Party had no nominee and the ballots were printed. Even with the Rs only having a write-in candidate, Knowles couldn’t get a majority but unbeliievably, he got re-elected. I assure you that after eight years of Democrat misrule, Alaska Republicans were hungry!

When Murkowski said he was coming back to run for governor, there was practically dancing in the streets. Frank was never as popular as Ted, but he still won handily over former Juneau Mayor and Knowles’ Lt. Governor, Fran Ulmer. We did some good and needful things but we never recovered from Frank’s appointment of Lisa, the jet didn’t help, and then there was Sarah Palin. It is ironic that she complains that she was hounded from office by the ethics complaints when that is exactly what she did to the Murkowski Adminiistration, an administration that actually had preferred her for Lt. Gov and which had given her one of the State’s plum patronage jobs.

We would NEVER have countenanced Randy Ruedrich doing Republican Party and private business from his State position and we did respond to it. The only responsibility Sarah had for ethics on the AOGCC was to report/refer issues to the Department’s Ethics Supervisor, the Deputy Commissioner. Typical Sarah, she rather went to the COS and maybe the Gov as well, so her complaints about Randy had to come back down to the Department. I know they did because the DC, new to government and also a friend of Randy’s, came to me about how to handle it. He was sensitive to the issue because both the director of personnel and I had given him a stern talking to about the limits of politics on State time and equipment. We determined that he would do an investigation as if we were dealing with classified, unionized employees rather than more or less at will appointees. He goes to Sarah to document her complaints so Randy can be confronted and she blows him off and tells him that its been handled between her and Randy. No complaint, no ethics charges against Randy, case not closed but certainly not front burner and a stern talking to with Randy. Next thing we hear about it is when Sarah loudly resigns and runs to play kiss and tell with the Anchorage Daily Worker. Along the way, she teams up with the Democrats and files ethics charges against Murkowski’s AG and brings him down on a nothing charge because he owned some stock, not a lot and certainly no controlling amount, in a company the State did some business with. So, now we are battling the Lisa appointment, the jet, and Sarah has us drowning in ethics charges over stuff that nobody would have known or cared about had it been a Democrat doing it or if she hadn’t been practically sky-writing about it. So, Sarah Palin becomes the Democrats and the Anchorage Daily Workers’ favorite Republican.

Enter the FBI. GWB’s DOJ couldn’t stop treasonous leaks in DC, but they sure had a lot of time to spend in Alaska over penny ante allegations of corruption. The prosecutorial team was from Eric Holder’s alma mater, the Public Integrity Section, and was, of course, led by a holdover Democrat Hellbent to run run Ted Stevens and his son Ben to ground. They never got Ben, lost Ted, though it cost him his Senate seat, and a half-dozen or so Republican legislators were collateral damage, four or five were convicted, one awaits trial pending an appeal to the USSC. Two of those already convicted have been freed because of the same kinds of prosecutorial misconduct that resulted in Ted’s conviction being over turned. But all that was in the future, when the Democrat’s favorite Republican announced she was running for Governor against Governor Murkowski and the corrupt old boys in Juneau.

So, by the summer of ’06, we have Sarah proclaiming from the rooftops that she’s Alaska’s savior and is going to clean up the corruption. Whatever else the FBI is or isn’t good at, they are superbly able to script their actions for dramatic effect on elections and they’re crawling all over the state. Our poll numbers were in the toilet and the wheels were off the Administration. Murkowski dithered about making his announcement, so there really wasn’t a campaign. John Binkley had piled into the Primary as well since he’d never forgiven Frank for not appointing him to the Senate seat. My boss quits the Administration to go become Binckley’s campaign manager. The free for all inside the Administration both disgusted me and had me worried about becoming collateral damage myself. I had nothing to gain by sticking it out to the end and at that time, I and most others figured Knowles was going to win. He would, of course, fire me as director but I had rights to my old job in the merit system. Sarah wouldn’t have fired me, I don’t think, but I wouldn’t have worked for her long before we’d have come to some contretemps; I don’t do insecure control freaks very well. So, I retired on July 1, ’06, and watched the whole thing from the sidelines.

Anyway, by the time Sarah takes office, most Republicans are mad at her for trashing everybody in her campaign. She compounded the ill-will by firing practically every Murkowski appointee, who happened to be most of the Republicans in Alaska who knew where the light switches and rest rooms were. She rubbed salt in that by bringing back a bunch of people who’d left the Murkowski Administration in a huff.

The Legislature was in dissarray. Several had not sought office because of the cloud over them, several had been arrested, most had had their offices and files tossed by the FBI. Nobody would be seen with or talk to anybody for fear that one, the other, or both had a wire. The normally busy watering holes and restaurants in Juneau were practically empty because people were afraid to be seen together. Grip ‘n Grin receptions were sparsely attended by people who came late, left early, and said little in between.

Along the way, the Senate that had been solidly Republican since the ’70s becomes a coaltion with very liberal Democrats holding powerful positions, e.g., Elton, French, and Ellis, and the split was in large measure about who would and wouldn’t work with Gov. Palin. We still had a majority in the House, but it was shaky. Four years before, we’d had a veto-proof majority. And Sarah was Hellbent on an agenda that was anathema to most Republcans, so she teamed up with the Democrats. It was a very anti-industry agenda but the times were such that if you didn’t vote against the industry, you got tarred with the corruption charges that Sarah and the FBI had hanging in the air. So, Sarah got her way with ACES, but the industry has all but given up on Alaska as a result.

So, now that this has practically become a book itself, that’s the way I saw it from inside up until July 1, ’06, and from pretty close since then. I’d like to think that with their wings clipped, the FBI will leave us alone for awhile, but I don’t think any Red state is safe under Comrade Obama. Sarah likes to claim credit for “cleaning up,” but really all she did was take out a couple of pretty good, though not blameless, Republicans. The FBI unleashed Hell in Alaska and Sarah just glommed on to it and became first Governor, then VP, nominee, and now a celebrity writer. I and most Alaskans will be happy for her to stick to being a celebrity and leave the governing to others.