Sarah Palin remains Alaska superstar

Drop in popularity after joining McCain campaign attributed to partisan politics, but she’s still state’s most popular public figure

Stefan Milkowski

For Sarah takes on Big Oil

Gov. Sarah Palin was aided in her efforts to change the state’s relationship with the oil and gas industry by an unprecedented popularity among the Alaska public.

Palin won her campaign for governor with 48 percent of the vote, but quickly earned approval ratings much higher, finding support from Democrats and Republicans alike. Marc Hellenthal, an Anchorage-based pollster, said Palin’s popularity as governor — judged by the percent of Alaskans with positive feelings toward her — was simply unbelievable.

“We’ve been polling 25 years in the state, and nobody had even come close to an 80-percent positive,” he said.

Before her nomination as John McCain’s running mate at the end of August, Palin’s approval ratings ranged from 79 to 86 percent, according to Hellenthal’s figures. Of all the governors, lawmakers, mayors and other public figures Hellenthal had tracked, only two had reached 70 percent.

State lawmakers say Palin’s popularity probably helped her win support in the Legislature for her gas pipeline legislation — the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act — and rewrite of the state’s oil production tax.

“It certainly had a bearing,” said House Speaker John Harris, a Republican from Valdez. “It might have been a significant bearing at one point in time.”

Democrats were generally inclined to support the initiatives, which were opposed by the industry, Harris said, but some Republicans were probably swayed by their desire to support the Republican governor.

Harris added that if Palin had not been so popular, her initiatives probably would have had less support and might not have passed at all.

“I don’t know what the numbers would have been,” he said. “Not everyone was real enthusiastic with the AGIA situation, but it was what we had to deal with.”

Palin’s AGIA bill passed the Legislature with only one vote against it. (The vote to award a license under AGIA to TransCanada was more divided.)

Rep. David Guttenberg, a Democrat from Fairbanks, said it was much harder to speak out against Palin’s proposals than against those of her predecessor, Gov. Frank Murkowski, whose approval ratings tumbled to less than 30 percent by the end of his term, prompting him to joke in a 2006 campaign ad that he might well need a “personality transplant.”

“If (Palin) didn’t have that high rating,” Guttenberg said, “she would have had a lot more trouble doing what she was doing.”

Impact of her popularity

felt in Legislature

Palin didn’t use her popularity to pressure lawmakers directly, Guttenberg and others say, but the impact was still felt. Sen. Gene Therriault, a Republican from North Pole, said the popularity of Palin’s proposals also pressured lawmakers to support them.

The governor’s popularity among the general public was not always reflected in the Capitol. Therriault and Guttenberg, who both supported the governor’s proposals, described lawmakers’ feelings toward her as mixed.

“She’s very nice and personable, but she didn’t work with us,” Guttenberg said. “That was difficult.”

Many lawmakers were irked by Palin’s unexpected budget vetoes and by what they described as a lack of communication.

Likely to remain popular

But Hellenthal added that she was still the most popular public figure in the state and would likely remain so if McCain lost and Palin returned to Alaska as governor.

“It’s kind of like somebody going to the big leagues and then coming back home,” he said. “She wouldn’t suffer.”

Editor’s note: This article is a reprint from “Sarah takes on Big Oil,” a newly released book by Petroleum News editors Kay Cashman and Kristen Nelson. For more information visit: www.sarahtakesonbigoil.com/.