Linkand the natives are getting restless:
The partisan spillover of the presidential campaign into the statehouse, political analysts here say, now threatens Palin's most powerful political capital in Alaska: her commitment to transparency, her willingness to forge bipartisan alliances with Democrats to advance her legislative agenda, and her battle to upend the good ol' boy network.
"Is this going to dilute her image as a maverick who will clean out the rascals from their perches of power, when she herself cannot tolerate questions into her behavior, investigations into the firing of a public safety commissioner?" said Gerald McBeath, political science professor at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks.
Palin, he said, is "still popular" in Alaska, "but she is not beloved. And there's a difference between the two. She's getting a lot more criticism at the state level as a result of her vice presidential candidacy."
Democratic leaders, whom the Palin camp accuses of initiating rounds of partisan sniping, say the bipartisanship that helped Palin win passage of ethics measures, a new natural-gas pipeline and an increase in the oil production tax -- in most cases over the objections of her own Republican leadership -- is essentially over.
"She would have gotten none of her bills passed without us, and to see her come in and attack us now the way she's attacking us, when it's completely unwarranted, is just tearing people up," said Democratic state Sen. Bill Wielechowski. "I think it's going to make it hard for her to come back and govern in this state."
Even conservatives are expressing resentment over the governor's about-face on the Monegan investigation and the infiltration of state government by the McCain campaign.
"This Palin VP thing has Alaskans all stirred up. Much like Palin divided the Republican Party, she has managed to divide the state over her national candidacy," conservative talk-show host Dan Fagan complained in a commentary last week.
"My fellow conservatives, remember how frustrating it was when Bill Clinton committed perjury and liberals looked the other way. As conservatives, we are no better unless we demand full disclosure from our governor," he said. " . . . No politician is so popular and charismatic that they should be above accountability and telling the truth."
As I mentioned earlier, regardless of how this presidential election turns out, Palin's not going to be re-elected in her own state.
