Murkowski Campaign Centers on "Alaska Mafia"
The Washington Examiner reports:
Once insurgent conservative Joe Miller knocked off moderate Sen. Lisa Murkowski in Alaska's Senate primary, almost all Beltway Republicans lined up behind Miller. But thanks to Alaska's unique political culture, there is a small cadre -- mostly former staffers for Murkowski and other Alaska lawmakers -- supporting her quixotic write-in race for re-election.
Murkowski's bid has brought attention to a quiet but significant clique on K Street composed of former aides to Murkowksi, her father, Frank, former Sen. Ted Stevens, and Rep. Don Young, who specialize in lobbying for energy interests, Alaskan natives, and Alaska's towns and cities. The phrase "Alaska mafia" slips off the tongue of many Republican staffers, activists, and lobbyists who have dealt with this clique.
"They've done a very good job of looking out for each other," one Republican lobbyist told me. Stevens, Young and the Murkowskis have shared plenty of staff, and sent dozens of aides to lobby on K Street. These aides served as invisible middlemen in the earmark machine run by the venerable Alaska Republicans.
Stevens was a champion porker who once bragged, "I am guilty of asking the Senate for pork and proud of the Senate for giving it to me." Young was chairman of the House Transportation Committee. Lisa Murkowski was put on the Appropriations Committee in her first full term, and her father chaired the Energy and Natural Resources Committee before becoming governor.
Their aides grease the skids, cash in on K Street, and then donate to Murkowski and Young. Cordova, Alaska, population 2,500, boasts a former Lisa Murkowski staffer as a lobbyist. Another lobbyist, Jon DeVore, who worked for Ted Stevens, Frank Murkowski and Lisa Murkowski in the Senate, now represents a handful of Alaska Native Corporations -- government-created, for-profit entities owned by indigenous Alaskans. DeVore -- a Murkowski donor -- works at the lobbying firm Birch, Horton, a hub of the Alaska Mafia.
Besides representing cities and native corporations, K Street's Alaska contingent is heavy on the oil and pipeline clients, for obvious reasons -- it's the state's leading industry.
But the Murkowski-Murkowski-Stevens-Young crowd isn't just lobbying for laissez-faire, unbridled drilling and mining everywhere. Consider Andrew Lundquist, another Lisa Murkowski donor who worked on energy policy for Stevens and the elder Murkowski before co-piloting former Vice President Cheney's infamous energy task force.
In 2003, Lundquist left the White House and started his own lobbying firm specializing in "green energy" and clients backing climate regulation right out of Al Gore's playbook. Lundquist's clients include cap-and-trade backers BP, Exelon, Duke Energy and ConocoPhillips as well as the Solar Energy Industries Association, Hudson Clean Energy Partners and the American Coalition for Ethanol.
This flexibility shows in Lisa's legislative record, too. Her 2009 energy bill included renewable energy subsidies, and she has voted for renewable energy mandates.
Earmarks, federal aid, energy subsidies and renewable mandates are hardly what one would expect on the agenda of a supposedly conservative state that styles itself as ruggedly individualistic pioneer country. Washington conservatives often express frustration that such a conservative state should produce moderates and big spenders -- especially Stevens and Lisa Murkowski.
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