I’d been in Alaska four years in 1978, and did not expect to be able to do much politically that year. In ’74 I’d pissed off Sen. Mike Gravel, calling him a snake in a letter to the editor. In ’76 I’d pissed off Sen. Ted Stevens by refusing to allow his personal secretary to be a delegate to the state convention. In ’78 I’d complete the trifecta, by calling former Governor, former Secretary of the Interior, and gubernatorial candidate Wally Hickel — one of the wealthiest and influential people in the state — a political opportunist. Hickel hated me ever since, and did what he could to hurt me politically. Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell was one of Hickel’s lackeys. He’s running for the U. S. Senate. It’s one reason I’m supporting Sullivan for Senate.
One guy who remembered that ’74 letter to the editor was Bill McConkey, who’d been sent up by the RNC to run the Republican Senate campaign of C. R. Lewis, a big Bircher. Gravel creamed him, but Bill stuck around, got a job with Hammond, and in ’78 was running Jay’s reelection campaign. He kind of reached out to me and we became good friends. He got me involved with Hammond. I did a lot of gofer stuff, chauffeuring Bella, Jay’s beautiful Eskimo wife, around South Central. She never said a word to me. It wasn’t personal. She was a private person. I took Jay to the Dimond Mall to shake hands with the public. That lasted about two minutes. Jay was not going to do it, and that was that.
Bill decided he wanted to attack Hickel, who was beating Hammond in the polls. We decided to accuse him of running for Governor only as a steppingstone to a White House bid. But neither Hammond, or his campaign, could do it. This was a Republican primary, and we’d need Hickel voters in the general. So Bill told me I was now chairman of Hands for Hammond, a volunteer organization, not affiliated with the campaign itself. It wasn’t a falsehood, since I was the organization and I had two hands. I put out a press release that Bill and I wrote and the Daily News ran a story on it. Somebody asked Hickel about it the next day and he blew his top, just got royally pissed off. We had ourselves a story. It was not a good story for Hickel.
Jay won that primary by 97 votes.
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