ALASKA: BEGICH AND BENSON BEGIN THE BEGUINE

-By Phil Munger

Begich & Benson-- Alaska dream team

As the last week of a chilly April that broke snowfall records turned into the beginning of an equally chilly May, Alaskans got to witness the first signs of negative campaigning in the important AK-AL U.S. House race, where Don Young is cornered. The first signs of spring will have to wait another week.

Young was wounded in 2006 by the Tlingit civil rights, military family and veterans' activist, Diane Benson. Her 2006 campaign used these pages to expose Don Young's close ties to Jack Abramoff, ties that Young continues to deny, despite increasing evidence.

In a unique tribute to a previously anonymous (or pseudonymous, if you want to be totally accurate) DailyKos blogger, the Anchorage Daily News' best investigative journalist, Richard Mauer teamed up with Kos' Dennis Greenia to take my October 2006 DWT article on Young's ties to Abramoff a couple steps further down Don's road to oblivion.

Mauer teamed up with Greenia, known at DailyKos as dengre, to document that "a trove of old billing records from two of Abramoff's firms show that his team of lobbyists had more than 120 contacts with Young's personal and committee staffs over 25 months, including at least 10 with Young himself."

Mauer has been tailing Young's drops of blood in the snow through the late winter and spring, and when Young sees Mauer at press conferences, he does what any cornered, wounded mink does-- he goes into hiding. In Wasilla, last winter, Young cancelled a press conference when he learned Mauer would be present.

Young's fundraising is in the toilet, and has been since the 4th quarter of 2007, as more and more evidence of the extent of Federal scrutiny on his corrupt handling of earmarks comes to light. And during 2007 and early 2008, Young spent over a million dollars from what had once been a huge campaign chest, to pay his mounting legal fees.

For the first time ever, Young has two credible GOP challengers for the August 26th 2008 GOP Alaska primary. State Representative Gabrielle LeDoux, from the fishing community of Kodiak easily bested Young in a candidate debate during that town's annual commercial fishing convention.

At the Alaska GOP Convention, held at former Alaska Governor Wally Hickel's Anchorage Captain Cook Hotel, Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell announced his bid against Young. Parnell has the open support of his boss, Governor Sarah Palin, arguably the most popular Republican politician in the USA right now, with ratings in the mid to high-80s.

And Don Young's partner in spending sleaze, Sen. Ted Stevens, is cornered too, but, unlike Young, might not be be mortally wounded. His only challenger so far from within the GOP is wealthy ex-banker, developer and flakey movie producer, Dave Cuddy. Cuddy lost spectacularly to Stevens in a primary contest twelve years ago, in which Cuddy spent over a million dollars to garnish 27% of the primary vote. Cuddy will once again dip into his fortune to attack Alaska's Patron Saint.

Ted Stevens reached across the aisle last Wednesday, as Hawaii's senior Senator, Daniel Inouye, threw a lunch-hour Washington, D.C. fundraiser for Ted. Inouye, who once called Stevens "the Strom Thurmond of the Arctic,"-- he meant it as a compliment-- has allied with Stevens over the years to bring large, often questionable earmarks back to their two non-contiguous states. These two kings of porks' luau was supposed to net Stevens between $50,000 and $70,000.

The Hulk is lurching from one fiscal fiasco to another, as another probe-- this one involving his ties to an illegal use of funds at the Alaska Volcano Observatory-- exploded Wednesday.

We're coming up very soon against the unwritten US DOJ rule that you're not supposed to indict a politician running in a Federal contest later than six months before a Federal election (unless you're a Democrat). That will be next Tuesday, May 6. Feds were poking around the neighborhood where Alaska's other corruptable Senator, Lisa Murkowski, tried to keep a super-sweet riverside property deal from going sour on her last year. She got the prime land for less than half price. Even after it came out in a very negative way, Murkowski kept on insisting it was all on the up-and-up. IOKIYAR, eh? Anyway, five Feds in dark suits emerged from two black SUVs and took pictures, notes and measurements in the area of the property, and along a road that had been built with-- guess what?-- another questionable GOP earmark.

Meanwhile, on the Democratic Party's side of the AK-AL race, former Alaska Democratic Party Chairman, Jake Metcalfe's campaign began to implode, as he was confronted over the week by a second collaborative effort in the Alaska media.

Metcalfe's chief campaign aide, Bill Scanell, had created a set of fake websites that threw a lot of mud in the direction of former Alaska legislator, Ethan Berkowitz, who is running, along with Metcalfe and Diane Benson, in the late-August primary to contest Young's seat. Thursday afternoon, Scannell resigned, saying, "It appears these ridiculous allegations won't go away until I leap on my own sword."

Metcalfe, who is beginning to look totally hapless, stated "This is the final comment the Metcalfe campaign will be making on this subject." Yeah, right.

Metcalfe seems to think he can repair the damage. Berkowitz's pet pollster, the often-inaccurate Ivan Moore, feels this has helped his man. Others aren't so sure.

Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, who kicked off his Democratic Party challenge to Stevens by holding a meetup with Veterans who are attending the University of Alaska Anchorage, appears to be creating one of the most professional campaign machines in Alaskan history. He's raking in record amounts of cash, and is building a forward-looking staff that includes notable progressives like Alaska Center for the Environment founder, Kevin Harun, and Matt Browner Hamlin, one of the leading internet figures in Ned Lamont's 2006 primary challenge to Joe Lieberman.

Begich's challenger in the Democratic Primary is Alaska's 2007 "Muckraker of the Year," Ray Metclfe-- no relationship to Jake Metcalfe. Ray is issuing one broadside after another, claiming that Begich is profiting from crooked deals with Anchorage real estate developers. Richard Mauer, the investigative reporter who looked into Don Young's Abramoff connections so thoroughly, is working on a long article about Ray Metcalfe, that will probably end up saying that, when it comes to Begich, there's "no there there," regarding Ray's claims.

The spat between the Ethan Berkowitz and Jake Metcalfe campaigns hurt Jake. A lot. But, reading through comments to the newspaper and web articles about the fake web site issue, there appears to be a lot of negativity attached to Berkowitz's somewhat dim legacy as a legislator. If there was any winner among the Democrats running fo AK-AL, it was Diane Benson.

She came out with a condemnation of unethical conduct within minutes of the similar declaration by the State Democratic Party's current chair. Benson's campaign is more-or-less grassroots, and she has more contributors-- almost 2,000-- than Berkowitz and Jake Metcalfe combined. Additionally, Berkowitz is taking in a lot of money from Inside the Beltway political boss, Rahm Emanuel. Emanuel's PAC donated $10,000 to Berkowitz in the first quarter of 2008. This is the largest contribution Emanuel has ever made to a non-incumbent Democrat, running against other credible Democrats in a primary.

Benson's concern for veterans, association with progressives, and promises to radically approach health care reform, mirrors Mark Begich's platform so far. Additionally, in 2006, Benson did better in parts of the state that Begich needs to carry to beat Ted Stevens, than did the Tony Knowles-Ethan Berkowitz ticket for governor, which lost in a three-way contest that had two Republican tickets in it. The two-- Begich and Benson-- may be the best one-two punch the Democrats can come up with in November. It will be up to the voters in Alaska's late August primary, which occurs the same day the National Democratic Party Convention convenes in Denver.