SIVACRACY.NET

But this year is not like any other election year in Alaska, principally because of what may well turn out to be a fateful mistake by Gov. Frank Murkowski when he ascended to his current office from the Senate two years ago. In an act of hubris that outraged critics across the political spectrum, the new governor appointed his daughter Lisa Murkoswki to succeed him in the Senate.

The blatant nepotism behind her appointment -- her father had staged an elaborate charade of "considering" other possible candidates -- inflicted serious damage on the governor's own approval ratings as well as hers. Rumbles of discontent have scarcely diminished during the past two years, leaving Sen. Murkowski vulnerable to a strong challenge by Tony Knowles, the former Democratic governor who has maintained a small but consistent lead in most polls.

The expected Bush landslide in Alaska still could sweep Knowles away, of course. Should he win, however, the Democrats will be far more likely to regain control of the Senate. Hovering around three points ahead in the latest polls, Knowles is within reach of that victory. A Yale graduate, Vietnam veteran, former businessman and onetime oil-rig roughneck, Knowles breaks with Democratic orthodoxy on energy development and gun control, while opposing Social Security privatization and supporting expanded healthcare.

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In the Murkowski political clan, the father has become the daughter's weighty albatross, and vice versa. For the past several months, the governor and the senator have assiduously (and somewhat oddly) avoided public appearances together. For obvious reasons they would prefer not to remind anybody that they're related, at least not until after Election Day. Amazingly, the official biography on her Web site neglects to mention the existence of her father, the governor.

But the most generous donors to Murkowski's Senate campaign seem well aware of her filial relationship to Alaska's most powerful public official. Major corporations and other special interests needing favors from the governor have poured money into his daughter's war chest. And perhaps not surprisingly, their generosity has coincided with favorable action by the governor.

Perhaps the most blatant of these favors to industry was Gov. Murkowski's decision in July 2003 to permit seafood processors, located at sea or in remote areas, to deduct room-and-board charges from their workers' paychecks. In some cases, those deductions would drive the take-home pay of those laborers, working under arduous and often dangerous conditions, below the statutory minimum. Murkowski enforced the wage cut by regulatory fiat, without legislative approval. By doing so, he overturned a veto of identical legislation by his predecessor Knowles in 2002. As Knowles pointed out in his veto message, "Docking the cost of room and board from a worker's pay is a practice that has been banned since Alaska became a state."

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But for Lisa Murkowski, the truly big money has flowed in from Veco Corp., a major Anchorage construction firm. Veco is not only the largest single donor to the Republican senator but is regarded by many Alaskans as the most powerful company in their state. While its interests are broad and varied, from the oil industries to local construction, the Halliburton-like firm has an important potential stake in one of the state's most controversial projects: a private prison in the port town of Whittier that could ultimately cost the state more than $1 billion.

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