Word: murkowskis
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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...
Then Palin saw her opening. In October 2005, Murkowski fired natural resources commissioner Tom Irwin, a well-liked "unreconstructed miner," as one political observer calls him, for opposing concessions won by producers on the gas pipeline. Immediately, six of Irwin's top aides walked out in solidarity. The mass exodus created a firestorm, with editorial writers and politicians extolling the "Magnificent Seven" and calling the mass resignations the "Thursday-afternoon massacre...
...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...
...head honchos, too. As a member of Alaska’s oil and gas commission, she investigated the state Republican Party chairman for doing party work on government time , and launched an ethics probe against the Republican state attorney general . Both men resigned. After defeating incumbent Gov. Frank Murkowski for the GOP nomination and winning the general election, Palin sold the gubernatorial jet and ditched the complimentary chef , boosting her approval rating to a high of 93 percent...