Word: palin
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...began Palin's unusual relationship with the oil and gas industry that dominates the state's economy. She says it is her experience in energy matters that best prepares her to be John McCain's Vice President. Indeed, she came out of nowhere to win the governorship by promising to get more out of the oil industry for Alaskans. But for many independent observers, this heady populism was more effective in getting her elected than it was in actually getting things done once she was governor. No initiative illustrates that better than the natural-gas pipeline project, which Palin pushed...
...industry. Over the past 25 years, the average Alaskan has received roughly $1,200 from the state each year. When fuel costs spiraled out of control in rural Alaska, instead of focusing on suggestions to help rural residents weatherize their homes or develop small-scale renewable energy sources, Palin wrote every Alaskan a second check...
...that it regulates. The state's elected officials have always worked closely with oil companies--at times, too closely. In the late 1950s, bureaucrats actually hired an oil-industry lawyer--with the big oil companies paying his expenses--to write the new state's oil and gas lease laws. Palin's populist approach was the perfect complement to rising public discontent with Big Oil, and it was the main engine of her remarkable rise from small-town mayor to a place on the Republican national ticket...
...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...
...Scott Heyworth was back in Wasilla, eating pancakes in the mayor's breakfast room next to her husband Todd as they discussed her plans to run for governor. Palin was weighing whether to run as an Independent or a Republican, Heyworth recalls. His ballot initiative had passed in 2002, and he was in a good position to help either way. He organized a Palin fund raiser and turned over the names of 42,000 voters, largely independents who had signed his petitions...