(Scott Wallace)
‘Outsiders’ guide to understanding Alaska’s politics and peculiarities
With Gov. Sarah Palin’s sudden elevation to the GOP ticket, the world tries to fathom the 49th state – its sourdoughs and cheechakos, boomers and greenies. A moon at noon?
By Yereth Rosen | Correspondent / September 14, 2008 edition
Anchorage, Alaska
Call it the real-life version of “Northern Exposure,” the old television series premised on the idea that Alaska is not a state but a state of mind. With John McCain’s selection of Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, Alaska’s quirks, oddities, and institutions are under the world’s microscope. And the world is confused at what it sees on the glass slide.
The Alaskan Independence Party? Sourdoughs and cheechakos? Boomers and greenies facing off in the “Mad-Zoo?” A moon at noon? How is an Alaskan to explain all of this to citizens “Outside,” as we refer to all parts of the world that are not Alaska?
“Well, you can’t. It’s a lost cause,” says Mr. Whitekeys, an Anchorage entertainer who has made a career of lampooning the foibles of Alaskans and their politicians for in-state audiences who are in on the jokes. “You just can’t explain it.” Sample lyrics of one of his songs: “Wintertime, springtime, autumn, and summer, anytime anybody does something dumb an Alaskan does something dumber.”
Yet he takes a stab at clarifying things. “Alaska is a place where you can have no education, no experience, and no aptitude about anything, and you can still make more money doing it than anyplace else.” It’s the state with the second-highest consumption of Spam, and “the least amount of indoor plumbing,” he goes on to say. “We’re losers, and we’re perfectly happy about it.”
Or, as Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich put it, as he held a sidewalk press conference last week that was periodically interrupted by a blanket-wearing street musician alternately strumming a guitar, shouting, and belting out a hard-luck song: “Welcome to Alaska politics.”
•••
Let’s start with the Alaskan Independence Party (AIP), the secession-minded group that has long livened up campaign seasons by calling for Alaska to be an independent nation. It was founded by an ornery gold miner named Joe Vogler, who hated the US government so much that he used only gold – not US currency – in his transactions.
He railed famously against environmental laws and “posy-sniffers” and wolves and oil companies, but mostly against the federal government, especially the National Park Service.
His pronouncements were recorded in John McPhee’s epic 1977 Alaska book, “Coming Into the Country.” “The United States has made a colony of Alaska,” Vogler told McPhee. “When they want something, they come and get it. We are their oyster.”
When Vogler disappeared in 1993 – a local man later confessed to killing him in a botched robbery – current party head Lynette Clark and her husband, Dexter, were convinced that the Park Service or some other federal agency was involved, and would be coming for other party leaders. But not to worry, Lynette Clark said at the time. They had a special home-defense system set up – buckets of guns distributed throughout their house.
Now the McCain campaign is fending off questions about Vogler’s party because Governor Palin participated in some AIP functions – she gave a welcoming speech via video at this year’s party convention – and her husband has been registered with the party on and off for years.
The idea that their group is a potential embarrassment infuriates Ms. Clark, a loquacious gold miner who lives near Fairbanks’s legendary Howling Dog Saloon. She points out that a governor, Wally Hickel, and lieutenant governor, Jack Coghill, were elected on the AIP ticket in 1990. “This fringe-party thing is a bunch of hooey,” she says. “The good old boys, the ‘Republicrats’ and the ‘Democans,’ are worried about being knocked off a block.”
Others agree outsiders shouldn’t be unduly alarmed by the AIP’s rhetoric. “It’s more Alaskan than it is secessionist,” says Tony Knowles, a Democrat who served as governor from 1994 to 2002. “It’s a product of long winters and nothing else to do. There’s probably a relationship between how cold it gets and how many people are in the Alaskan Independence Party.” (Officially it’s 13,711 members.)
Anyway, some would argue, Alaska’s mainstream politicians are plenty colorful themselves. There is Hickel, who used to speak of taking counsel from an invisible “little man” and who once famously proclaimed, when defending Alaska’s controversial wolf-culling program, “You can’t just let nature run wild.”
There is Don Young, the Republican who has represented Alaska in the US House since 1973, whose congressional office wall is bedecked with stuffed animal trophies and who once snapped a leg-hold trap on his hand to prove that the device was not painful to animals.
There is Ted Stevens, the veteran US senator – now under indictment for allegedly concealing gifts from a politically connected Alaska oil executive – who girds for battle on the Senate floor by donning an Incredible Hulk tie.
Alaska’s fiscal and economic affairs confound Outside conventional wisdom, too. Tax cuts? A bit irrelevant in Alaska, where individual citizens face very little in the way of state taxes and in fact get money sent to them every year from the Alaska Permanent Fund.
Tax hikes? A good thing, according to state public opinion, because that means the state is wresting more wealth from the oil produced on state lands by BP, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, and a few other companies.
High oil prices? A blessing that heaps billions of dollars into Alaska’s overflowing treasury, so much so that every Alaskan qualifying for this year’s Permanent Fund dividend of $2,069 will get an additional $1,200 “resource rebate.”
Even the nation’s fascination with Governor Palin’s moose-shootin’ ways has an Alaska context. Hunting here isn’t just some macho hobby. For Alaskans in the bush, it’s a main source of food, according to Willie Hensley, a long-time native leader. He describes the current contents of his own refrigerator. “I have seal oil and mipkuq [dried seal meat] and frozen caribou. And I’m a modern person,” he says.
•••
While Palin has been trumpeting her small-town upbringing on the campaign trail, her hometown of Wasilla, a 45-minute commute from Anchorage, is considered urban by Alaska standards. Here, rural means outside the reach of roads. To get to the many native villages sprinkled along the rivers and coastlines of bush Alaska, you generally need an airplane, boat, snowmobile, or sled-dog team.
In the bush, unlike rural America, residents generally vote Democratic and see the land, rivers, and sea as their grocery stores.
Hensley, for instance, grew up in a sod home outside the Arctic community of Kotzebue. He went to boarding school and college Outside, and returned to be one of the forces behind the Alaska native land-claims settlement and corporation movement. Later, he became a state senator and state commerce commissioner.
“We have our own kind of characters in the native world,” says Hensley, who just published an autobiography that attempts to capture his, and Alaska’s, blend of the ancient and modern. “One day they might be out whaling in skin boats and the next day eating dinner with a senator and wearing a suit.”
All this attention, even if it confuses voters Outside, may bring some benefit to Alaska. “Hopefully the rest of the people in the United States will look at a map of Alaska right now and put Alaska in the right place, and not in a box off the coast of California,” says Gail Phillips, a former state House speaker.
2. D K Hatton | 09.14.08
Interesting article.
Each of our states has a personality all its own, some more esoteric than others. For example, Alaska is rough around the edges and proud of it. Sarah Palin’s political and religious views may or may not have been formed by her being an Alaskan, but they appear to me unthoughtful and extreme whatever state she is from.
These United States are an important part of a global community. Our continued celebration of a particularly American lack of international curiosity while sincerely seeming to believe that WE, above all other countries, are blessed by God and thereby exempt from rules that apply to other countries, puzzles the rest of the world, and me too.
I am voting for Barack Obama and Joe Biden because I believe they will represent America and America’s interests better in that global community than John McCain and Mrs Palin.
3. Chris | 09.14.08
I admit it. I liked it better when the states were more different from each other than they are now. Alaska does seem to be bucking the sameness trend though. Looked at in the context of where she came from, Palin looks a lot more middle of the road.
4. Alex | 09.14.08
I met Sarah Palin twice in Juneau, and trust me, there’s not alot going on in there. She seemed to still be in Beauty-Pageant mode. I don’t think I’ll ever be afraid of her far-right politics, but its starting to get embarrassing that someone so obviously unqualified to be president is even on the Republican ticket. I guess that’s politics…
5. Blandon | 09.14.08
I don’t think I can trust Alex regarding his comment regarding Sarah Palin, “and trust me there’s not a lot going on in there”, and I suspect his motivation is partisan. I feel there’ a goodness about the governor, and I trust that it has more substance than political cultivation and cunning manipulation. Her presence is as refreshing and clean as a stimulating Alaskan breeze. I think the country has reacted to it; especially the partisan media out to discredit and find fault to amplify.
6. Brigitte | 09.14.08
A very interesting article. It certainly shows why Alaskans appear to have no appreciation for nature. The eskimos value nature and cherish it. Their use of its abundance is within the order of nature. The tough colonists from elsewhere appear to compensate with bragging what the state doesn’t have in comfort trappings. It’ s a garrulous and rough world in which nature and natural balance has no room. Oil is more important to them than saving polar bears. Hunting wolfs from airplanes by driving them to exhaustion and shooting them when they can’t run anymore is “just fine”. Destroying the arctic wildlife refuge for oil doen’t matter to them, even if they can never restore it once it’s destroyed, and if their “natural grocery store” of caribou can’t live anymore because the habitat is too deprived, they will import regular beef. Who cares. That is the sense I get from Palin’s answers in the ABC interview. She doesn’t care about the consequences of her standpoints, decisions and actions. That is scary, indeed, especially from a person with so little knowledge of the world and its inner order.
7. Karla | 09.15.08
As I lifelong Alaskan I nodded while reading Rosen’s article. Then I read the comments and feel compelled to add to the story as it relates to Sarah Palin’s candidacy.
Had Palin’s interest prior to August 29 extended beyond Alaska, she had many opportunities to meet with international ambassadors, scholars and media within Alaska. Anchorage and Juneau have well-established World Affairs Councils. Alaska participated in many exchanges with Russia - business, cultural, scientific and political - in the years following the end of the Cold War. Wasilla even has a sister city in Russia.
Palin became governor following the least popular governor in Alaska’s history and in the midst of a big corruption investigation. She made a few easy and politically popular moves (selling the jet, at a big loss, and firing the chef) and then focused all attention on the oil industry. She hasn’t taken on a breadth of issues and administrative tasks to give everyday Alaskans a chance to see any depth of leadership, so she continues to get the benefit of the doubt.
Finally, not all Alaskans fit the Palin mode. Among my friends, we are very connected with nature, oppose oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and many of us think that we need to reinstate a state income tax to reconnect the population with government and our personal responsibilities.
8. katherine | 09.15.08
Karla,
If you are connected with nature, then please do you darndest to get Palin out of office in Alaska, when she loses the Vice Presidency, that is 
Hopefully, she’ll be shown as a puppet and….well, quite frankly, she seems like a jerk….on the national stage.
9. bradley | 09.15.08
Wow, you really glossed over Vogler! Left out how he was going to speak against the US from Iran’s podium at the UN. And what is that about a “robbery” (?) the newspaper articles all described it as a “plastic explosives deal gone bad” (whatever that is)? Vogler’s hateful words about the US are printed in Pravda online (the Russian newspaper). These people are really Anti-American, and there is no way to spin it any differently.
10. Tess | 09.15.08
Blandon; You really think that Sarah Palin is as ‘fresh and clean as a stimulating Alaskan breeze? Really? Her lies don’t bother you at all? She lied about the jet; hasn’t been a hockey mom in years; had people unfairly fired for not doing her bidding; shares executive mail with her husband and allows her daughter to get pregnant while preaching abstinence? And that’s only the tip of the iceberg; now that she’s done her first interview, even more inconsistencies are coming forth by the day and hour. Not to mention the despicable act of pulling wolf puppies out of their den to shoot them and the mother; then woo-hooing like a cowboy as she shoots one from the air and watches it writhe in agony.
If that’s what you call a breath of fresh air, I’m utterly stunned by that type of naivete.
11. Joy | 09.17.08
Aerial gunning of animals has nothing to do with subsistence or hunting, but merely dollars. The woman is a heartless loser. So get lost, Sarah.
12. Mikey | 09.17.08
Can anyone imagine moving from Alaska (the wild and beautiful) to Washington D.C.? Gosh, that’s like moving from Duck Creek, Wisconsin to Las Vegas Nevada.
13. Lila Jean | 09.18.08
Since I couldn’t abide winters in Chicago or Detroit I’ve never had an interst in places even colder. Are there plans, I wonder, to delve into the quirks and politics of the citizens of IL, MD, and AZ? I would enjoy hearing any of Gov.(VP)Palen’s off-the-cuff conversaitons with Puten, leaders of friendly nations as well as various and sundry international thugs.
I’m looking forward to watching “MRS. SMITH” go to WASHINGTON. I know a girl who because of her ethnic background and grades was granted a scholorship to CHOTE. She was ignored and looked on with distain by many of the paying students and was eager to leave after the first semester. Probably this same sort of treatment will great Mrs. Palen in Washington. Good,I hope so. I would be disappointed if the insiders quickly took her under their wing and tried to make her see things their way and vote for the Party. That would be the end of her effectivness in speaking for me and millions of other people like me who are fed up with scandal, greed, criminality, corruption, tretchery, and dishonesty among back-stabbing cronny senators and representatives.
14. steveconn | 10.07.08
This is a great article and about the only rational attempt to explain the irrational elements of the Alaska we love. Thanks, Yereth.
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1. Josh Young | 09.14.08
This really helps put Palin into context. I am against most of her policies, but somehow I like her-and the people of Alaska-a little more after reading this. Great article!