Tag: Sean Parnell

In case you haven’t heard yet, John McCain’s out-of-the-box Vice-Presidential pick is Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska. Now let me start by saying: I’m baffled, because her lack of experience (two years as governor of one of the nation’s smallest, and, let’s face it, most unusual states… and prior to that, mayor of a town of about 7,000) dramatically undercuts his ability to hit Obama on the not-ready-to-lead charge.

On top of that, there’s the mini-scandal associated with Trooper-gate, which revealed a rather vindictive and not so squeaky-clean Palin going after the head trooper who wouldn’t fire her screw-up ex-brother-in-law. There’s also the not-so-small matter of Alaska having only 3 electoral votes, although it does legitimately qualify as a swing state this year. Maybe after the Dem convention, the Republicans have realized the not-ready-to-lead thing just isn’t going to work on Obama, and, despite the pleasant whiff of unity coming out of Denver, are banking on peeling off a few points’ worth of PUMAs who may be attracted to a female pick (and Palin is one of the few prominent Republican women conservative enough that she won’t irritate the base).

Anyway, let’s step away from the Presidential politics; this is Swing State Project, after all! Here’s the hypothetical: what if, for some reason, McCain/Palin wins? The next person in line is Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell. If the current vote count in the AK-AL race holds, it looks like Parnell might have his schedule free to take over as governor after all.

On the other hand, what if Parnell manages to squeak past Don Young in the recount (and since the person in charge of administering Alaskan elections is none other than Parnell, don’t rule it out!), and then makes it past Ethan Berkowitz in the general? We discussed this very possibility, remote as it seemed at the time, in our VP Vacancy Speculation thread a few months ago. It turns out that the Alaska constitution and election statutes don’t specify who the #3 person in the line of succession is, but an Attorney General opinion Alaska law allows the governor to designate a third person. The currently designated person is Republican Attorney General Talis Colberg.

There’s one more possibility: what if Parnell wins AK-AL, but put in the position of being able to choose between being governor or representative, chooses the power of governor over the potential longevity of representative? Then, as far as I can tell, we’d be in immediate special election territory for the vacant House seat.

Your thoughts?

UPDATE: In this video (from several weeks ago), Palin admits that she doesn’t really know what the VP does every day. Try doing that at your next job interview!

Basswood Research for Sean Parnell (8/5, likely voters):

Sean Parnell (R): 42

Don Young (R-inc): 38

Gabrielle LeDoux (R): 8

(MoE: ±5.7%)

Last week we saw a poll for the GOP primary in the Alaska House race from Ivan Moore that had Young up by a solid 8-point margin. The Parnell camp counters with its own internal poll showing him beating Young by 4 points. The sample was taken on Aug. 5, so this is post-Trooper-gate.

The poll doesn’t appear to test the various configurations for the general election. The primary will be held Aug. 26.

In other somewhat-related grumpy-old-corrupt-guys-from-Alaska news, the feds are fighting Ted Stevens’ attempts to change the venue of his trial from Washington DC to Alaska, claiming the unlikelihood of finding an impartial jury. This is important, because a) any delay makes it less likely the trial will be resolved before Election Day, and b) Stevens will be able to campaign in his off-hours if the trial is in Alaska, while he can’t if he’s stuck in DC.

Ivan Moore Research (7/18-22, likely voters):

Ethan Berkowitz (D): 52

Don Young (R-inc.): 37

Don Wright (I): 7

Ethan Berkowitz (D): 40

Sean Parnell (R): 43

Don Wright (I): 5

(n=505)

Lost in all the hubbub from a couple weeks ago when several polls showed Mark Begich opening up a huge lead on Ted Stevens (even before the Stevens indictment) was that, in the fine print, Ivan Moore also polled Alaska’s House seat as well. Former state House Minority Leader Ethan Berkowitz leads corruption-scented incumbent Don Young by a sizable margin but barely loses to comparatively clean Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell.

The good news for Berkowitz: the primary matchups are also polled, and this shows Young with an edge over Parnell. The poll was taken just as Trooper-gate was breaking (in fact, that’s one of the problems with polling over multiple days: Trooper-gate was significantly more broken on the 22nd than on the 18th), so it may show Parnell getting hit with some Palin blowback. He may be in an even worse position now, as he’s taken a decidedly low-profile approach since the scandal surfaced. The primary is August 26.

Ethan Berkowitz (D): 54

Diane Benson (D): 25

Don Wright (D?): 5

(n=284)

Don Young (R-inc.): 46

Sean Parnell (R): 38

Gabrielle LeDoux (R): 6

(n=250)

Special thanks to Ivan Moore for sharing these numbers with the Swing State Project. The full results are available below the fold.

Hot on the heels of the news that Don Young was outraised in Q2 by both primary opponent Sean Parnell and likely general election opponent Ethan Berkowitz is one more thing Young’s gotta worry about: the Club for Growth just made a $100,000 TV ad buy targeting him. (And in Alaska’s cheapo media market, $100,000 goes a long, long way.)

The 15-second ads hit Alaska’s avuncular, blustery, corrupt GOP representative over seemingly out-of-context comments in favor of a higher gas tax.

“I’d suggest we raise the taxes to a dollar a gallon,” Young says in a clip in one of the ads. “That makes you put your money where your mouth is.”

The Club for Growth has endorsed Parnell over Young’s addiction to pork. Unfortunately (for our pickup chances), while polls show Young losing to Berkowitz, they show the ostensibly ‘clean’ Parnell beating Berkowitz, and CFG’s moneybomb makes its likelier than Parnell wins the Aug. 26 primary. As I’ve said before, it’s a case of “Vote for the crook, it’s important!”

According to some new polls from Hellenthal (5/6-10), we've got some mixed news coming to us out of Alaska.  First, the good news:

AK-Sen:

Mark Begich (D): 51  

Ted Stevens (R-inc): 44

(MoE: ±6%)

      Now, the tricky stuff:

 AK-AL:

Sean Parnell (R): 37

Don Young (R-inc): 34

Gabrielle LeDoux (R): 8

Sean Parnell (R): 43

Ethan Berkowitz (D): 38

Ethan Berkowitz (D): 58

Don Young (R-inc): 38

So apparently, it's not the GOP "brand" itself that is suffering in Alaska; it's the corruption of two particular elected officials.  Luckily, Stevens has no primary challenge (thus far!). [UPDATE: See below.]  As far as Young is concerned . . . I guess we've got to hope he beats Parnell in the primary, or else our chances of taking that House seat are significantly diminished.

UPDATE (James): While the article doesn’t offer any head-to-heads, the same poll tested Stevens’ strength against his GOP primary challenger, Dave Cuddy, and found Stevens ahead by 15%. Weak.

Everybody’s favorite group of Republican purity trolls, the Club for Growth, has weighed in in the primary for the Alaska at-large house race, and they’re supporting the challenger, Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell.

Club President Pat Rooney made the case in a Wall Street Journal commentary today entitled simply “Don Young Embodies What’s Wrong With the GOP:”

Mr. Parnell is a solid conservative who led the fight for lower taxes and spending in the state legislature, and joined Gov. Sarah Palin in pushing for reform in the state. The man he is hoping to replace isn’t economically conservative in the least. Mr. Young is actually a poster child for what has gone wrong with the Republican Party in Washington.

Toomey’s commentary, interestingly, steers clear of the fact that Young is under Justice Dept. investigation for ties to Veco, and is armpit-deep in legal fees. Instead, it just focuses on the great right-wing walkback of 2008: that the GOP brand has failed because Republicans haven’t been conservative enough. They’re addicted to earmarks and subsidies (like the “Bridge to Nowhere” and the Coconut Road interchange in Young’s case), and if we just remove those, the clouds will lift and St. Reagan will return to walk the earth again.

But instead of using his power to steer Republicans down a principled, conservative track, he helped derail the GOP train in 2006. Mr. Young spends taxpayer money so wastefully he could make a liberal Democrat blush.

It’s worth noting this is a convenient way for Club for Growth to claim the scalp of one of the less conservative GOP representatives (for all his bluster and corruption, Young was in fact a vote for minimum wage increase, for SCHIP, and for stem cell research)… even though Young’s impending loss has little to do with bedrock conservatism and more to do with Alaska finally being ready to turn the page on its tradition of corruption.

Unfortunately, a Parnell victory in the primary might make our pickup of AK-AL more difficult in the fall, as Parnell is perceived as ‘clean,’ and an ally of popular GOP governor Sarah Palin. Here’s hoping Don Young can survive CfG intervention in the Aug. 26 primary and forestall his demise until November!

SSP currently rates this race as a Tossup.