For Palin, political issues still unresolved in Alaska
Likely to share ballot with two GOP stalwarts
ANCHORAGE - The signs said "Welcome Home." The brooch on Sarah Palin's black suit glimmered "Alaska." The Wasilla High School pep band in which she once played flute added Sarah-specific lyrics to its version of Offspring's "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)."
"I thank you for what you have instilled in me. There is no better place to come from than Alaska," Governor Sarah Palin told a morning rally yesterday, suggesting that she might not return before November.
Despite the exuberant sendoff, Alaska might not be done with her yet. The governor leaves behind several unresolved issues that could force her in coming weeks to renegotiate the tenuous political divorce from the state's Republican establishment that she has used to cast a "maverick" silhouette as a vice-presidential candidate.
"What she's saying on the national stage is not at all what she'd say in Alaska," said Ivan Moore, an Anchorage pollster unaffiliated with any state or national campaigns.
While Palin brags outside Alaska that she battled the state's "old politics-as-usual . . . big good-old-boys network," she will likely share a ballot in November with two of its charter members: Senator Ted Stevens and Representative Don Young, erstwhile rivals both struggling in their bids for reelection due to related corruption scandals.
Palin has so far not said whether she would endorse - or even vote for - either of her fellow Republicans. A McCain campaign spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment on the subject. When asked yesterday if he expected that Palin would back Stevens and Young, state party chairman Randy Ruedrich said only that "we've talked to the governor about the election. . . . We'll work with all kind of people and see what happens."
While Palin's campaign rallies elsewhere in the country last week were festooned with placards promoting local Republican candidates, the walls were bare in Anchorage. Stevens and Young will hope nonetheless to be pulled up by her coattails, according to a longtime strategist for both who said that finding common cause with them in the interest of party loyalty would not damage Palin politically.
"When you look at the contradictions that are around her, I don't see how it would complicate her anymore," said Art Hackney, who is working for both this year. "You could safely say there is a basic team dynamic that everyone recognizes when it comes to McCain-Palin, and Stevens and Young."
The two Alaska legislators are facing reelection under dramatically different political and legal circumstances. While Stevens faces trial later this month, a federal investigation around Young has not brought charges. Yet polls show Stevens closely trailing his opponent, Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, while Young lags his, former state representative Ethan Berkowitz, by a significant margin.
"She has campaigned with him, and they are enjoying a good relationship," Hackney said of Stevens. "She certainly has not got as good a relationship with Young as with Stevens."
Palin backed her lieutenant governor, Sean Parnell, in a challenge to Young in the state's Aug. 26 primary. The counting of votes has yet to be completed: Young currently holds a 239-vote advantage, with 280 outstanding absentee votes to be tallied on Thursday, according to an election divisions spokeswoman. At that point the election is likely to be certified, but given the closeness of the race either Parnell or a group of voters could demand a recount.
Parnell has not conceded the race or said how he intends to proceed, and Palin has given no indication whether she would support a recount. Polls show Parnell, a close ally who was the only Alaska politician to appear with Palin at the Anchorage rally, would be a far stronger Republican nominee than Young.
Both Stevens and Young have built their political careers on success financing Alaska projects through the congressional earmarking process, one of the favorite targets of McCain's reform agenda. It is a subject hard for Palin to avoid when she returns home: her new campaign charter plane took off yesterday from Anchorage's Ted Stevens International Airport for a rally in Nevada last night.
Since joining the ticket, Palin has repeatedly claimed that she said "thanks, but no thanks, on that bridge to nowhere," referring to a $400 million Ketchikan-area bridge whose earmarked funding had been largely engineered by Stevens and Young. Like many Alaska politicians, Palin initially backed the bridge, withdrawing support only after Congress eliminated the earmark in 2005 and the project became politically toxic.
In an interview with ABC News on Friday, Palin said "the abuse of earmarks, it's un-American, it's undemocratic, and it's not going to be accepted in a McCain-Palin administration. Earmark abuse will stop."
Yet another project also known as a "bridge to nowhere" - to connect Anchorage to the area near Palin's Wasilla home across the Knik Arm Crossing - continues to receive state support, though its congressional earmark was eliminated at the same time. Championed by Stevens, the Knik Arm Bridge will be twice as expensive as the Ketchikan project.
"Governor Palin's been in the news and she's been talking about one 'bridge to nowhere' and not the other," said Lois Epstein, director of the Alaska Transportation Priorities Project. "She canceled one bridge, but that was the easier of the mega-projects her predecessor left her with."
A local quasi-public authority responsible for construction is negotiating with private investors and waiting for the Federal Highway Administration to accept a study of the project's impact on local communities and to sign a "record of decision," according to a department of transportation spokesman.
Democrats have pushed Palin to impose a public review and legislative oversight on the process, claiming that the project has been mismanaged and that the authority has underestimated its cost.
At her Anchorage rally, Palin did not once mention the "bridge to nowhere" or address the subject of earmarks, staples of her stump speech elsewhere but still broadly popular with Alaskans. A decision this fall on how to proceed with the Knik Arm Bridge could force Palin to again choose between the state's political establishment and burnishing her national reputation as a reformer, observers say.
"It's pretty much a Republican-driven entity. It's a good-old-boy kind of a deal down there," said Moore. "If she killed it, she would [anger] her base here."
"But if she doesn't win in November," he added, "She'd have to come home."
Sasha Issenberg can be reached at sissenberg@globe.com. 