Word: palin
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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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...
...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...
Touting energy reform and clean government, Palin cruised to an easy victory in November. She pledged in her inaugural address to have a gas-pipeline bill in four months and spent the next two days in back-to-back 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...