Miscellaneous

That’s me, a Balanced Budget Democrat.  Changed my registration online this morning.  The Task Force is now bipartisan.  Since I didn’t think of this until after the March 7 filing deadline, I can’t be of much help to my Congressman, Tom McClintock, this year.  His only opponent is a Republican who is relying on Democrat votes to beat him.  What I will do is write a letter to the editor asking my fellow BBD’s to support him.  Being a fellow Democrat, they might listen to me.

I emailed the announcement of my candidacy to about 30 people this morning.  The response has been pretty good, though Kirk Uhler accused me of drinking.  I feel as though I have the nucleus of a winning team.

Jim Rockett suggested, for a bumper sticker                      PETTYJOHN for CONGRESS                                                               

                                                                                               Balanced Budget Democrat

I like that.  I’ve got to get bumper stickers.  When I do run, in 2016, it’s actually quite likely no Democrat will oppose me for the nomination.  It’s that kind of district.  So me and Tom will be going at it, head to head.  I hope there’s a lot of debates.  I looked up Tom on Wikipedia, and he’s only 57.  I thought he was older.  He’s still young enough to run statewide, which he’s done three times and lost.  Never raised enough money.  I look forward to getting to know the guy. 

I’ll bet we’re pals.

 

That’s the best name I’ve come up with for November.  Word out of dysfunctional, Democratic Illinois is that the R’s primary today will produce nominee Rauner for Gov., and he may well win.  The Senate playing field continues to expand.  Michigan looks good, and so, suddenly, do Virginia, New Hampshire and Colorado.  Minnesota and Oregon are now worth talking about.  Red and purple expand, red contracts.  I read dozens of stories about the coming blow out.

My problem is I get too jacked up.  But I’ve spent the last five months working Article V, all in the hope and expectation that this wave hits and hits big.  What do you call a series of waves?  A storm.  This is going to last into 2016 and beyond, I reckon.  I, as a member of the Republican political class, am playing my part.  I did it with Reagan, and this time I’m operating at a higher level.  Because I know what I’m doing, I believe my part will get bigger. 

It’s true that I don’t have the energy I once had, and pretty much shut it down at five.  But my current involvement is such that I do pretty much only what I feel like doing.  I’ve made two commitments: to get the pledge letter out and to travel to Capitols next January.  The latter is a sacrifice, but the cause is worth it.  Everything I’ve read, learned, and experienced in 50 years of political involvement has made me an asset, and one that is being used.  I just can’t overcommit myself.

I did decide to run for Congress in 2016, but that’ll be fun.  I’ll switch parties and become a Reagan Democrat.  I’ll file as soon as I can.  I missed the filing deadline by 10 days this year.  Damn!  I’m doing this for my Tea Party Congressman, Tom McClintock, who I like a lot.  We have a jungle primary, so the way they’re trying to take Tom out is with a moderate Republican in the primary.  No Democrat has filed, so the moderate R starts off with a base of the considerable minority of Democrats.  They did it to me ’86, and I barely won.  If Tom wins, I’ll make sure they can’t pull this on him in 2016 by giving the D’s a name to vote for in their primary.  A lot of D’s go in there knowing nothing, and will automatically vote for me.  Maybe I could go to debates, either against a D or Tom.  What a hoot.

I’ve always wanted to run for Congress.

Haven’t heard back from the Daily News about writing an op-ed for them, though I have had a nice email exchange with my old editor, Mike Carey.  If I get a few printed I’ll have enough of a profile to be able to get re-involved up there in the Sullivan campaign.  I’ve never met him, since he got into politics about the time I was leaving.  His main opponent, Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell, was active when I was, but he had his nose shoved so far up Wally Hickel’s butt that I didn’t really know him.  Hickel was an asshole with money, and he liked to surround himself with sycophants who kowtowed to him.  He gave them jobs at some of his political projects and supported them.  They were required to listen to his deep thoughts (Wally was a big geopolitical thinker) and act like they were profound.  Guys like that shouldn’t get elected to the U. S. Senate.  Sullivan just got backing from the Club for Growth, and he’s raised a lot more money than Treadwell, so the race is his to lose, in the primary.  The general, against the politically talented incumbent Mark Begich, promises to be a knock down drag out, but if Sullivan has decent skills he should win.  Begich voted for Obamacare, he’s a Democrat in a very red state, and Obama’s approval is around 40% nationally, much lower in Alaska.  I met Begich when he was an Anchorage Assemblyman who was responsible for bringing traffic ticket dispensing cameras to Anchorage.  People hated the damn things, and I was involved in an initiative to outlaw them.  Begich came on the show to defend them, unsuccessfully.  I wasn’t too hard on him, and he showed some balls just coming on my show.  Seemed like an O.K. guy, really.  It sure would be fun to be part of a campaign that knocked him out of the Senate.

Beating Treadwell in the primary would be fun too.  Mainly because he was a Hickel guy.  After I helped take Wally out in ’78 as Chairman of Hands for Hammond, I was part of taking him out again in ’86, as principal advisor of Bipartisan Alaskans Against Hickel, BAAH (like a sheep).  This was my buddy Bob Clarke’s idea.  I lived with Bob in Juneau most of my eight years down there.  He was Hammond’s Communications Director (PR guy), and really good friend.  He told me all the good stories about Hammond, who he accompanied on trips out of state.  They were, like, pals.  Bob worshiped Hammond.  And Hammond did not want Hickel to be Governor.  He was afraid he’d destroy the Permanent Fund (worth, today, $50 billion).  So Bob wanted to do big full page attack ads against Hickel, accusing him of all kinds of things.  Sturulewski was running against Hickel, and she couldn’t be associated with the ads.  They were really rough.  So Bob somehow got some money from Sturgulewski people to run the ads, and formed BAAH.  But for a variety of reasons Bob’s name could not be associated with any of this.  I was House Minority Leader, and couldn’t be the flack catcher either.  So Bob said go find some college kid that likes Sturgulewski and we’ll make him the Chairman.  So I asked around and came up with this kid, who we convinced to do it.  His parents were big Sturulewski fans, so they went along.  So I had my secretary, Anne Williams, go get a BAAH P. O. Box, and we had ourselves an organization! 

We ran the ads and they were killers.  Caused a huge stink.  Charges.  Counter charges, big coverage in the papers and TV stations.  Everybody wanted to know what the hell BAAH was and who the hell was Paul Hansen (the college kid).  The heat got too strong and we had to produce the kid, at a press conference.  I prepped him pretty good, and he was really good.  I was proud of him.  But somebody had to set up the press conference, and be there with the kid.  Since Bob couldn’t do it, it was me.  I didn’t want to, at all.  These ads we ran were real hardball, and Hickel, and a lot of other people, would be pissed.  My name wasn’t mentioned in the papers, or on TV.  But Hickel and people in politics knew.  These guys were going to have a hard on for me for a long time.

On the bright side, I was getting a reputation as a guy you didn’t want to mess with.

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.

We’ll get Michigan and Louisiana.  That would be 24.  We need these three to get to 27 this year, giving us just seven to go.  We need one Wisconsin senator, Glenn Grothman.  Eagle Forum type guy.  Sponsor Rep. Chris Kapenga is a bright guy, and knows what he’s doing.  He hasn’t moved him yet.  I’m sure he’s thinking of everything.  We’re all brainstorming on ways to approach him.  Hard to say.

We finally got to the bottom of the problem in South Carolina.  The bill was being held in the Senate because hanky panky was used to pass it in the House.  So we’re starting over, with a Senate bill.  We should, I hope, be able to muster enough support to get it through.  The Eagle Forum/Bircher problem seems more pronounced in the West than in the South.

Arizona gets down to Senate President Biggs.  Someone called in to Levin’s show about Arizona and Biggs, and Mark raised hell about it.  I didn’t hear the show, but Levin goes batshit at the least provocation.  It got to Biggs.  Now he’s willing to talk to people.  I’ll be trying to get on the Mike Broomhead show, KFYI, Phoenix, to talk about it.  I called Alaska Senate Majority Leader John Coghill this morning, to get a read on the CoS bill up there.  He said it looked good, and I passed that on to Meckler.  We want to work with him on Biggs, who he says he’s tight with.  I’m optimistic.

Early returns on the pledge letter, 25 from West Virginia, six from Kentucky.  This is important in Kentucky.  It shows our sponsor. Rep. DeCesare, that we’re worth working closely with.  It’s entirely possible Kentucky could be 34 next year, when we dump Speaker Stumbo.  West Virginia’s a long term thing.  We won’t get the Senate until 2016, unless there’s a coalition.  Could happen.  So the letter is worth sending.  Idaho and Montana next.  A lot of work, but what the hell.  I’ll be at this for another couple years. 

What else am I going to do?