Palin returns to a changed Alaska

The current budget assumes that North Slope crude prices will average $83 a barrel. Because prices were so high earlier this year, they would have to fall below $60 a barrel for the rest of the year to put the state into a budget hole, says Revenue Commissioner Pat Galvin. “It’s been way up, so that gave us a cushion,” he says. (Oil on the global market closed Friday at $61 a barrel.)

Prospects have dimmed, too, for continued federal largess.

Stevens, famous for the billions of federal dollars he has steered to Alaska, campaigned on the message that Alaska needs his continued representation in the Senate.

“We’re about ready to enter a recession, maybe even a depression, and this state is supported to a great extent by federal activities. Almost 40 percent of the jobs in this state are directly related to annual appropriations. Now why would you want to send a new person down to try to enter into that field, a person with no experience at all?” Stevens said Oct. 30 in his only face-to-face debate against his rival, Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich.

Stevens vowed he will continue to get that money for Alaska despite his Oct. 27 conviction on seven felony corruption counts – a problem he has dismissed as a technicality, along with Senate colleagues’ pledges to eject him from the Senate. “This business about not seating me is wrong. They’re not going to reject me in the Senate. I have great standing across the aisle.... I don’t think there’s any senator who’s sitting right now who has the friendships that I do across the aisle,” Stevens said during the debate.

At a “welcome home” rally two days after the verdict – held at the Anchorage airport that is named for Stevens – the tone was defiant. Several Stevens supporters wore T-shirts with an unprintable slur against “the Feds.” National politicians who have called for Stevens to resign “can kiss my Alaska moose-hunting behind, because I know Ted and I’m sticking with him,” Rick Rydell, an Anchorage radio talk-show host and the emcee at the rally, told the crowd. “Twelve jurors in D.C. don’t know Ted. I know Ted.”

No matter what happens to Stevens, the US government can no longer afford the generous budget earmarks he used to secure for Alaska, says state Rep. Beth Kerttula (D), minority leader in the Alaska House of Representatives. “We could reelect Ted Stevens all day long, but that’s not going to change the fact that the earmarks are gone,” she says.

The Stevens quandary may ultimately create an opening for Palin to return to the national stage. She has called for him to resign. If he ekes out a victory but then resigns or is ejected from the Senate, Alaska will have to hold a special election within 90 days to fill the seat.

Though she has denied interest – “I tell you, this is the best job in the world, being the governor of the state,” Palin said on her first day back at work in her Anchorage office – the governor is a likely Republican candidate.

Palin’s supporters here have their eyes on a bigger prize.

“Two thousand twelve! Two thousand twelve!” chanted fans who met the governor at the Anchorage airport when she returned from the campaign trail. Arianne Herglotz and Starr Bynum, longtime Palin friends from the Beehive Beauty Shop in Wasilla, were among those wearing buttons displaying a lipstick imprint of a kiss and the slogan: “Palin for President 2012.”

“She’ll go further now that this has happened,” Ms. Bynum says. “I think it just energized her more to do a better job here, the best she can and keep on going.”

Some Alaska leaders expect Palin’s national ambitions to affect actions at home.

“I believe that Sarah Palin, Governor Palin, will make a run for president in four years. I’m trying to just determine how long it’s going to be before she begins a campaign,” says House Speaker John Harris, a Republican. “Does it start with our next gubernatorial election, or does it start before then?”

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