Word: alaskas
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After Palin lost the race for lieutenant governor in 2002, then GOP governor Frank Murkowski rewarded her strong campaign by appointing her chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, an obscure but important board that regulates oil-field production. In her short tenure, she gained attention not for her grasp of technical detail but for making public ethics accusations against a fellow board member who happened to be chairman of the state Republican Party. She resigned in protest, leaving the $122,400 job after a year. (He was later fined for, among other things, sending confidential information...
Heyworth saw in Palin a potential ally against Murkowski, who was negotiating behind the scenes with major gas producers to build a pipeline across Canada--a move that critics feared would give too much away. Palin doubled down on her support for her friend's "all-Alaska gas line," and she soon appeared in full-page newspaper ads across the state, standing between a pair of popular former GOP governors who were also wary of Murkowski's ties to the Big Three. "There was Sarah Palin running with the big dogs," recalls John Bitney, a longtime GOP operative...
...Irwin, Palin had found a model of resistance. She put an "all-Alaska" gas pipeline at the center of her campaign for governor. It was shorthand for putting Alaskan voters, not oil companies, at the forefront--and drawing a distinction between herself and the GOP Old Guard led by Murkowski. More dramatically, Palin joined the Magnificent Seven at a large downtown Anchorage rally and promised to rehire Irwin and his aides if she was elected...
Palin trounced Murkowski in the 2006 GOP primary. Facing former Democratic governor Tony Knowles in the fall, she shifted her pipeline position to "look gubernatorial," recalled Bitney, who served as her policy director. The original "all-Alaska" option excluded any role for the major producers. But they, after all, had the gas and the capital needed to build and operate their own pipeline. So Palin took a more inclusive stance in the general election, favoring open competition for anyone, including the major producers, who were willing to meet certain criteria for a pipeline...
...meetings with gas producers. One of her first appointments was Marty Rutherford, Irwin's deputy, who agreed to act in Irwin's old job until Irwin could return a few months later. The two veterans joined with another Palin appointee, revenue commissioner Pat Galvin, to form what everyone in Alaska politics simply calls the "gas team." Their job: get the pipeline built...