Palin pick shakes up Alaska politics
GIRDWOOD, Alaska -- Laura Bowen, an attorney and political independent, was determined to vote against Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, whose chalet in this picturesque ski town is at the center of his corruption trial in Washington as he runs for re-election. She was even flirting with supporting a Democrat for president.
Then came what she calls "the Palin hit job." Democrats and some in the news media, she says, have unfairly impugned the Republican vice presidential nominee, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a woman Bowen admires deeply.
Bowen says, "The Democrat smears against Palin and the biased media coverage have made it easy for me to vote a straight Republican ticket."
She says she worries about expanding the Democratic majority in Congress and handing more power to liberals such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, since she believes Democrat Barack Obama will win the presidency.
It's not clear how many Alaskans share Bowen's sentiments, but there's no doubt that Palin's ascendancy to the VP slot has upended state politics in what had appeared to be — and may yet be — a surprisingly good year for Democrats in this solidly Republican state.
Palin's statewide approval ratings have fallen from a stratospheric 89% last year to a still high 65% last month. "Even today, Sarah has a very strong and loyal — some might even say loving and adoring — base," independent Anchorage pollster Ivan Moore says.
Palin's base is expected to turn out in big numbers, Moore says. As a result, her presence at the top of the ticket all but assures Alaska's continued spot in the Republican column for president, and it could improve the re-election chances of the state's two endangered Republican members of Congress, Stevens and Rep. Don Young, Alaska's only House member.
Stevens and Young are giants of Alaska politics; they have 75 years of incumbency between them. Over the past three decades, both men usually have won re-election handily as they used their influential committee posts to steer billions in federal dollars back home.
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