Month: April 2015

It’s the big new thing in politics.  Loren Enns is our IT guy, and that’s what he’s doing in South Carolina and, especially, Oklahoma.  We need both, along with Wisconsin, to get to our 2015 goal of 30.  When you’re trying to get to 34, 30 sounds a lot better than 29, or, God forbid, 28.

The South Carolina House is in recess until the 14th, and the goal is to encourage them to take up our bill upon their return.  Those on the ground are fairly confident of having the votes, but the Birchers and others are doing all they can to stop us.  This legislature operates under some truly bizarre rules. They seem designed to thwart the will of the majority.  Or something.  They’re weird.  It’s almost like the old Polish Senate, where unanimity was required to do anything.  Naturally, very little got done, and Poland disappeared for a while.  Apparently back in the 20th century some guy ran the Senate for 30 years and came up with these things.  Now 85 year old Sen. Hugh Leatherman is carrying on the tradition.  As an outsider, I really don’t know what the hell is going on.  We should get South Carolina.  It’s the only deep south state we don’t have.  Dave Guldenschuh is helping out, Lou Marin is working the grass roots, Loren is micro targeting, Biddulph’s polling, and John Steinberger is working hand in glove with sponsor Sen. Larry Grooms.  We’re giving it all we’ve got.  That’s all you can do.

We’re up in Senate Rules in Oklahoma next Wednesday.  I’m 1500 miles away, but the disturbing news of Dr. Boren’s hospitalization for his cancer may have an incidental side effect.  He apparently laid it out to these guys on Article V.  Told them the truth, and asked them to act.  Attacks on him by the Birchers backfired badly.  Maybe a few of these guys can work up the courage to face down the Birchers as a testament to him.  I’d like to believe that.  Dr. Coburn is one of a very rare breed — a man of courage, intelligence, and tenacity.  He delivered thousands of Oklahoma babies.  He’s like a legend.  Maybe they’ll do it for him.

Or, maybe, oil.  The oil companies will soon get wind of the Reagan Amendment.  Whether you like it or not, they’re going to make a ton of money if it’s approved.  These people are notorious for the relentlessness with which they pursue their self interest.  Having been an Alaska legislator, I can assure you of that.  I was never one of their fair haired boys.  They’d contribute to my campaign, just like they did to every Republican, but I was never tight with them.  In fact, after the Valdez oil spill in ’89, I took them on.  They wanted drilling rights in Bristol Bay, home of the world’s greatest run of sockeye, and I made a speech telling them to forget about it.  It wasn’t going anywhere anyway, but they didn’t appreciate my attitude.  They don’t like independence in their legislators.

Right now Conoco-Phillips is the biggest oil producer in Alaska, and would have a major participation in the development of the oil in ANWR.  They’re very big in Oklahoma.  The oil and gas industry is, I believe, a major player in Oklahoma Republican politics.

Am I missing something?

I now think the Wyoming Liberty Group sunk us in Wyoming.  I learned about them last summer, and tried for months to get them to help.  I’d been told that they had real influence with as many as twenty House members.  The founder, Susan Gore of the Gore-Tex clan, finally told me they had limited resources and declined to be involved.  That didn’t smell right, but we saw neither hide nor hair of them in Cheyenne, and I figured they were staying out of it.  I was wrong, according to a conversation I just had with Senate President Phil Nicholas.  He said in the end they were just overwhelmed with negative emails generated by WLG, and others.

This was an important conversation.  We have to have Wyoming, and he’s the key.   The whole idea of the Reagan Amendment came from his stated desire to amend the Wyoming Statehood Act.  And Phil Nicholas is a very bright guy.  If there’s something wrong with this idea, he’d see it, and he’d tell me about it.

He is, he said, intrigued.  I told you he was smart.  He wasn’t planning on going to NCSL in August, but now he thinks he might.  He’s got a lot of family in Portland and he could turn the trip into a bit of a vacation.  I hope he comes.  I want this guy as a partner.  He’s got a lot of balls in the air, but if he could devote a little time to this he could really be helpful.

And he should.  He cares as much about Wyoming as anyone, and the Reagan Amendment would be very, very good for Wyoming.  And, since he is a politician, who is believed to be interested in running for Governor, it makes sense for him, personally.  If Wyoming gets its land they’d put up a statue of him.  Well, a plaque, anyway.

This puts me in an extra fine mood.  It is final confirmation of the Reagan Amendment’s political viability, and its necessity.  Without the Reagan Amendment we won’t get Wyoming.  And we won’t get Idaho, or Montana, or Arizona either, for that matter.  Without the Reagan Amendment, this whole thing dies.

I knew Phil Nicholas was the key the last time I went to Cheyenne.  I watched him preside over the Senate, just to see how he handled himself.  If you’re experienced you can see things.  I liked the way he conducted business.  When I testified before Senate Rules, which he chairs, I tried my damnedest to read him, get inside his head a little.  He keeps his cards close to the vest, and doesn’t give anything away.  He’d be good at poker.  At the last hearing of Senate Rules I thought Eli Bebout had gotten to him, and we were O.K.  He killed the Compact, and passed our bill out.  Then, over the weekend, he changed his mind.  The opposition was too intense.  And I suspect the opposition of Susan Gore may have played a role as well.

That’s all behind us now.  We’ll be back in Cheyenne in January, and with Phil on our side it will be in the bag.  I won’t even have to go back, personally.  I might though, for the hell of it.  It would be fun to see Tyler and Dan and Bill McIlvain.  I only had a few minutes with Eli Bebout, and I’d like to get to know him better.  He seemed like the kind of guy you’d like to get to know.  I might even wind up making a friend of Phil Nicholas.

The world turns.

I did a back of the envelope calculation on the 2016 Electoral College.  I figure we get 409 votes next year.

April Fools!

That’s what it’s going to be all about.  It makes the world go round.  It won the second world war.  In some ways, it was what the war was all about.  The Japanese went to war for oil.  German military strategy was all about oil.  If you want to understand the importance of oil, read Daniel Yergin’s “The Prize”.  It will open up your eyes.

And, whether we like it or not (and I don’t), the fight over the Reagan Project will be about oil.  Leading the fight against us will be the Center for American Progress, led by former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.  There are subsidiaries, like the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities and the Center for Western Priorities.  But the CAP is the lead dog.  Soros, of course, is the main money man.  But it gets money from Fortune 500 companies as well, along with Gates money.  And, tellingly, almost a million dollars from the United Arab Emirates.  I wonder why?

They stopped us in Montana.  We had enough Democrats to pass the bill in the House, despite their efforts.  But then these guys got to Gov. Bullock, and he killed it.

They’ve got the money but we’ve got the issue.  Last week Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R. AK) put in a budget amendment calling for the disposal of excess federal lands.  It passed 51-49 on a party line vote, with only three Republicans opposed.  It’s in a non binding budget resolution, and has no chance of becoming law with Obama as President, but it shows there is political support for something like the Federal Lands Commission.

We’ve also got Clive Bundy on our side.  What a character.  He ranches on federal land in Nevada and refuses to recognize federal authority.  He and his buddies got in armed standoff with the federales not long ago, which they won, and he was in Carson City last week to testify on a bill.  The Center for Western Priorities keeps track of these things, and says there are about 65 of these bills introduced in various legislatures.  Speaker Mike Chenault has got one going up in Alaska.

All these bills are about trying to do what the Reagan Amendment does.  But they’re unconstitutional.  Everybody knows that.  These state legislators, all across the country, are trying to do something to get their land.  They just don’t know how to do it, so they get frustrated and try to pass these meaningless bills.

At some point CAP is going to try and get the Maryland legislature to rescind their BBA Resolution.  It’s just a matter of time.  I’m kind of surprised they didn’t do it this year.  Maryland adjourns in less than two weeks, I’m pretty sure, and they’ve run out of time this year.  When we get close to 34 they’ll make their move.

I’ve never counted on Maryland, not from the get go.  If we lose it next year we’ll need to get Virginia or Montana to make up for it.  We need to get the conservative Republican Governor in Maryland, Larry Hogan, to raise hell when they make their move.  Make a big public stink about it.  That’s about all he could do.  He’s got no say.  The Maryland legislature will be under a lot of pressure from the national Democratic Party to do CAP’s bidding.  That’s a very difficult fight for us to win, but we’ll try.  If the BBA, and the Reagan Amendment, have captured the public’s attention we’d at least have a chance.

So this is the fight.  The Reagan Project vs. the Center for American Progress.  George Soros against the sons of the Gipper.  We’ll see who wins.  He’s a very smart and a very rich man.  But he’s not an American, and he doesn’t understand this country.  He’s playing politics, and he’s an amateur.  He’s also, in my opinion, an evil man.  I think he hates this country and everything it stands for.  We’ve got nothing to fear from him.  I want to kick his ass.

It’s not a fight we could have avoided.  It won’t be because we’ve tweaked the original BBA, and turned it into the Reagan Amendment, and somehow provoked them.  They’ve been out to get us all along.  They proved that in Montana, before the idea of the Reagan Amendment came up.

Lisa Murkowski is in the Senate seat that I wanted, and her daddy gave her.  I knew her quite well, back in the day.  She’s over her head.  But she is an Alaskan, and she’ll want to help.  One of these days I’ll give her dad, Frank, a call and tell him about the Reagan Amendment.  I know what Frank will do.  He’ll tell his daughter to lend a hand.  Frank and I go back to 1980, when I was his deputy campaign manager.  They hired me to do a hit on Clark Gruening, the Democrat he was running against. I pulled it off, in spades, and Frank has liked me ever since.  He was running even with Gruening until I pulled my little stunt.  It put Frank ten points up, which is what he won by on election day.

When I got elected to the state senate Frank came to Juneau and stopped by to see me.  He knew I couldn’t stand Ted Stevens, and he wanted to tell me a story.  Stevens’ wife was pregnant and the old goat was very proud of himself.  He’s down in the basement of the Capitol, getting a massage from an old Swede, talking about how his wife is having a baby.  So the old Swede asks him, “Who do you suspect?”

Frank and I had a good laugh over that, I can tell you.  He really didn’t like the little prick either.