Alaska

U.S. Sen. Al Franken has acceded to a formal request from Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) that the Minnesota senator add Alaska and Hawaii when he draws freehand maps of the United States as a parlor trick. Franken, whose 2007 campaign-trail performance of the stunt is on YouTube (see it after the jump), promised Begich that [...]

We’re supposed to learn Tuesday whether a final batch of 24,000 absentee and contested ballots will bring U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, back from a 1,000-vote deficit to win re-election, despite his recent felony conviction. Should Stevens win election but then get booted from the Senate, Gov. Sarah Palin will be in a situation very roughly akin to Minnesota Gov. Wendell Anderson’s in 1976 after former U.S. Sen. Walter Mondale was elected vice president. Anderson quit as governor, having arranged for his replacement, Rudy Perpich, to appoint him in Mondale’s place. Voters punished both Anderson and Perpich two years later, denying them re-election. If Stevens is the winner after the last Alaska vote is counted tomorrow, what advice would Anderson have for Palin?

With the nation on the verge of electing Barack Obama to the presidency, I decided to spend the evening surveying the political mood in Juneau, the city to which Sarah Palin would soon be returning as a defeated vice presidential candidate.

You could fill an undergraduate survey course in American history with the political, historical, cultural, and geographical differences between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden and their respective home states. One state is tiny, the other enormous. One state is the oldest, the other the newest. One state leans the deepest shade of blue, the other [...]

For the past several weeks, Sarah Palin has aggressively harvested Alaska’s mythic cultural status on a national political stage. In addition to her near-daily odes to guns, hockey and mooseburger, Palin has also reinforced the perception of Alaska as a vast frontier land where environmental concerns and resource extraction converge harmoniously. By explaining, as she did to the right wing throwbacks at Newsmax, that Alaska would experience the consequences of climate change in unique ways, she has repeatedly implied that her leadership on climate change has been cautious and realistic.

It hasn’t.

“I simply refuse to believe there are no community organizers in Alaska.” That’s what Marjorie Childress wrote at the New Mexico Independent after Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin maligned community organizers at the Republican National Convention.

Indeed, though their work may carry different job titles — “advocate” seems to be Alaskan for “organizer” — plenty of Alaskans do community organizing. In fact, Gov. Palin is currently hiring people to do the work of community organizers.

The nomination of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate is perhaps the most bizarre thing I’ve witnessed since moving to Alaska six years ago, arguably surpassing the time a bald eagle dropped a flounder into my hot tub. Judging by the e-mails I received on Friday — half of which were some variation of [...]