APRN's Joel Southern was quick to get actualities of Rep. Don Young and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, with those legislators' takes on the announcement in Anchorage this morning by British Petroleum and Conoco-Phillips, of the oil giants' Denali proposal.Young said, "I'm very excited about it. It's a long time that we got off that, uh, AGIA process, and went ahead and got something that can be done."
The way Young threw out "that, uh, AGIA process" was derisive. He's going to keep pounding at the Governor. Apparently, with Sean Parnell's announcement, his campaign has decided that the way to get enough of the GOP base votes to win a three, four or five-way race, is to run against Gov. Palin.
That's pretty much all he will have to run on, except his "experience," "seniority," and stuff he can make up on the fly.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, on the other hand, according to APRN, "credits Governor Palin and AGIA, for helping advance things to where they are, and she believes the BP/C-P plan leaves the door open to even more co-operation and partnerhips."
She's bright and sunny, eh? She doesn't have to run this year, for one thing. And for another, she appears to be more in touch with the remedial effect this partnership, as sketchy and tenuous as it is, might have on healing deepening rifts between Palin's advocates in the Alaska GOP, and the aging, increasingly ineffectual crowd Young typifies.
Meanwhile, Young is continuing to spend far more than he can, and is still spending more on lawyers than his campaign fund is bringing in. I was a bit surprised he's brought in as much as he has this quarter - $164,000, compared to the $400,000 (I'm estimating Jake Metcalfe brought in $75,000 in 2008 so far) his three Democratic Party challengers have brought in since January 1.
Young's GOP challengers are stuck in fundraising limbo for a few more days, but that will change the day after the regular legislative session ends. Gabrielle LeDoux will probably drop her pledge to stop fundraising, in spite of the upcoming special session.