Palin candidacy raises eyebrows in Alaska

By DAN JOLING - Associated Press | Friday, August 29, 2008 8:11 PM PDT ∞

ANCHORAGE, Alaska ---- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is a comely candidate with a reputation for fighting corruption, but lately her reputation within the state has been bit by allegations of mixing political and family business, and by mistreating one of the state's premier marine mammals.

Palin's catch-phrase of "openness and transparency" has been tarnished by revelations that staff members tried to have Palin's former brother-in-law fired from his job as an Alaska state trooper.

Also, the governor of the only state with polar bears has adamantly opposed listing the animals as a threatened species, despite strong evidence that global warming has devastated their sea ice environment off Alaska's coast.

And despite John McCain's claim Friday that Palin is a budget-cutter, the governor this year oversaw a 6 percent increase in Alaska's operating and construction budget, fueled by a revised tax structure and skyrocketing crude oil prices.

Dermot Cole, a longtime columnist for Alaska's second-largest newspaper, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, called McCain's choice of Palin "reckless" and questioned her credentials.

"Sarah Palin's chief qualification for being elected governor was that she was not Frank Murkowski," Cole said of her enormously unpopular predecessor, who lost favor with Alaskans in part because of unpopular budget cuts. "She was not elected because she was a conservative. She was not elected because of her grasp of issues or because of her track record as the mayor of Wasilla."

Her enormous popularity in the state took a hit this summer over her firing of her public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, a former Anchorage police chief.

State lawmakers launched a $100,000 investigation to determine if Palin dismissed Monegan because he would not fire the governor's ex-brother-in-law, Alaska State Trooper Mike Wooten, who has been involved in a messy custody battle with Palin's sister.

In 2005, before Palin ran for office, the Palin family accused Wooten of drinking beer in his patrol car, illegally shooting a moose and firing a Taser at his 11-year-old stepson. The Palins also claimed Wooten threatened to kill Sarah Palin's father. Wooten was suspended over the allegations for five days in 2006 but still has his job.

Palin denied the commissioner's dismissal had anything to do with her former brother-in-law and denied orchestrating dozens of telephone calls made by staff and family members to Wooten's bosses. The investigation launched by state lawmakers is expected to take at least three months.

State Sen. Hollis French, D-Anchorage, said Palin's candidacy does not change the investigation.

"I think it raises its profile. I don't think it changes the steps you go through. It is what it is. You have to find out what happened," French said.

The investigator hired by lawmakers two days ago told the Department of Law it was time to schedule Palin's deposition, French said.

Palin, in a move that shook up Alaska's Republican Party, took on the state's long-term congressional delegation, U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young, calling on them to explain why they're the target of federal corruption investigations.

But she has been just as dogged trying to protect Alaska's main industry and cash cow, petroleum extraction, from the side-effects of Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne's decision to list polar bears as a threatened species.

"Listing polar bears under the Endangered Species Act has the potential to damage Alaska's and the nation's economy without any benefit to polar bear numbers or their habitat," Palin said, a statement environmental groups call ridiculous.

Polar bears use sea ice as a platform to hunt seals and the listing has the potential to disrupt future offshore drilling in polar bear territory. The disappearance of ice at such an alarming rate forced Kempthorne, who had not added a U.S. creature to the endangered species list since he took office, to declare polar bears threatened.

Summer sea ice last year shrank to the lowest level since the beginning of satellite observations, about 1.65 million square miles, nearly 40 percent less than the long-term average between 1979 and 2000. The National Snow and Ice Data Center said this week that 2008 could break that record. Most climate modelers predict a continued downward spiral, possibly with an Arctic Ocean that's ice free during summer months by 2030 or sooner.

Palin contends climate models are unreliable, polar bear numbers have not crashed and they've survived other periods of warming. She has also claimed polar bears could adapt to living on land ---- a contention most international polar bear scientists find specious, given that grizzly bears already occupy that niche on land and polar bears have shown little ability to feed on land, other garbage or the occasional whale carcass.

Palin is suing to overturn Kempthorne's decision.

Palin also claims to be a fiscal conservative, but watched this year as Alaska reaped the bounty of high oil prices and a revised tax structure. The excess has spared her from any sort of challenge to make tough budget-cutting decision, but did spur her to come to the rescue of Alaskans facing the nation's highest energy costs.

Palin championed a $1 billion energy assistance package that will send each resident $1,200 to help offset energy costs, which runs to more than $9 per gallon for gasoline in rural Alaska.

That will be on top of dividends from the Alaska Permanent Fund, checks to each qualified resident that are expected to exceed $2,000 this year.