Way up north, Democrat targets Alaskan icon

In his pursuit of the House seat held for 35 colorful years by Alaska’s Republican Rep. Don Young, Democratic legislator Ethan Berkowitz turned to the northern equivalent of kissing babies: He gamely jumped on a sled and hustled a team of dogs over the Iditarod trail.

Whether or not the mushing helped, pundits and polls alike suggest that Berkowitz, a 45-year-old state legislator, has a good chance of bringing Young’s long public career to its sunset.

The Alaska race is the one of the most dramatic examples of a national trend in which incumbent Republicans are fighting to keep formerly safe seats in Congress, particularly because Alaska has only one congressman. On Wednesday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee placed Berkowitz on its list of “Red to Blue” candidates who will receive strategic and financial support leading up to the November election.

Alaska has been firmly in the “red” on political maps for years.  Both Alaska’s senators are Republicans — though one of those seats could also go to a Democrat this fall. Gov. Sarah Palin is a Republican, and the GOP holds a solid — but shrinking — majority in both houses of the state Legislature.

Young, 74, is a cantankerous Alaskan icon. He is an unrepentant pork barrel champion who is serving his 18^th term as Alaska’s only member of the House of Representatives. To the rest of the country, he is best known for pushing earmarks for what became known as the “Bridge to Nowhere” during his tenure as chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee from 2000 to 2006.

A political sea change?

Al Grillo / AP file Rep. Don Young R-Alaska, answers questions in his office in Anchorage in August 2007.

The former riverboat captain’s fight for his political future is part of what could be a political sea change in November. Nationwide, the Democratic Party is hoping to add as many as 25 seats to its thin majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and around six seats in the Senate.

In addition to the national trend, Alaskan Democrats are benefiting from messy criminal investigations involving Young and 84-year-old Ted Stevens, another Republican who has served as Alaska’s senator for the past 40 years. The latter is locked in a tight race with Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, 46.

Young and Stevens are under investigation by the FBI and the Department of Justice regarding an alleged bribery scandal involving officials of VECO, an oil field and pipeline services company that sought to be a major player in the construction of a natural gas pipeline.

The company’s top executives have pleaded guilty. Their testimony revealed that company employees performed free home renovations for Stevens and that the company made a series of payments to his son. In Young’s case, it’s not known why he’s being investigated. In July 2007, The Wall Street Journal cited anonymous sources as reporting that Young’s relationship with VECO was being examined, but provided no details.

Change in highway bill probed
Young’s legal and ethical headaches grew in April, when the Senate directed the Justice Department to look into potentially illegal after-the-fact language changes in a 2005 transportation bill. The bill included a $10 million highway improvement earmark for a Florida interstate highway. Once the bill was passed by the House and Senate, wording in the bill was changed to stipulate that the funds would go specifically toward construction of an interchange on what’s known as Coconut Road. The language change – and the interchange – would have benefited a developer who is a Young campaign donor and fundraiser.

After being mired in unrelated issues, a different transportation bill, with the original highway improvement language restored, was signed by President Bush on June 6.

The VECO case also reached into Alaska’s state Legislature. The offices of eight lawmakers — seven Republicans and one Democrat — were raided by the FBI. Two former lawmakers are now serving time for bribery, extortion and conspiracy. At least two others are still being investigated and another — state Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch — is awaiting trial pending resolution of evidentiary issues. FBI tapes recorded by an undercover informant in which legislators are heard asking for bribes, have been available for months to voters on the Anchorage Daily News Web site.

That situation is potentially beneficial for Berkowitz. In May 2006, he dressed down Weyhrauch and other Republican lawmakers on the state House floor for allegedly allowing oil company lobbyists to persuade them to rescind an amendment to a tax bill they had just passed.

“No telephone call is supposed to change what we’re doing,” an angry Berkowitz said in the hearing, audio of which has been posted on the Internet by a political blogger. “No lobbyist is supposed to peer over the rail and tell us to change our mind.”

Weyhrauch denied that lobbyists were behind his change of heart.

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