ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's reputation as a crusading reformer after pushing through higher taxes on oil companies has been tarnished by revelations that members of her staff tried to have her former brother-in-law fired from his job as an Alaska state trooper.
State lawmakers have launched a $100,000 investigation to determine if Palin dismissed Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan last month because Monegan wouldn't fire a state trooper involved in a messy custody battle with her sister.
She also is under fire from environmentalists for opposing the Bush administration's decision in May to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act because global warming is melting the polar ice cap. Palin said the decision could damage the state's and nation's economy.
Palin's rapid ascent in politics followed her appointment in 2003 by then-Gov. Frank Murkowski to Alaska's Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. From that post, she exposed ethical violations by the state GOP chairman, also a fellow commissioner, who got too close to the oil companies, and later exposed a similar problem involving the state attorney general. Palin's record on oil is not a simple one.
She supports opening the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve to drilling. But over opposition from oil companies, she pushed through the Alaska Legislature new taxes on the profits from oil pumped on Alaska's North Slope, arguing that an earlier tax proposal by her predecessor, Murkowski, was too lenient to the industry.
With oil prices soaring, Alaska collected an estimated $6 billion from the new taxes last fiscal year. With the state treasury bulging, she won legislative approval for a special $1,200 payment to every Alaskan to help pay for high energy prices.
She supports a TransCanada Corp. pipeline opposed by Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhillips and BP PLC, the major gas lease holders on the North Slope. They have proposed a separate pipeline venture.
Palin's approval ratings have ranged from 79 to 86 percent, says Mark Hellenthal, a Republican pollster in Alaska.
"She's like Saint Sarah up here," according to Hellenthal.
But she's hardly without strong critics.
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."
Former state Rep. Ray Metcalfe, a Republican turned Democrat who was an early whistleblower in an FBI investigation that unearthed waves of corruption in Alaska politics, said his party will have a tough time finding ways to criticize Palin.
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.
Despite her record as a reformer, her own troubles could cause trouble between now and November.
In 2005, before Palin ran for office, the Palin family accused Mike 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 her safety 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.
"The pressure to come up with something is going to be intense," said Hellenthal, the Republican pollster. "All of a sudden, this thing has assumed much more importance than it had a week ago."
AP reporters Sharon Theimer and H. Josef Hebert in Washington contributed to this report. |