Who am I?

The last two days we have had record visits on this blog from around the world. One of the consistent questions I've received from readers is who am I and my history with Governor Palin.

Below you will find a fairly in depth article that was done by the Anchorage Presss during the last week on the 2006 gubernatorial campaign.

What does Andrew Halcro want?

- By Amanda Coyne
The Anchorage Press

When Andrew Halcro, the former two-term Republican state representative who is running for governor, takes the stage with Tony Knowles and Sarah Palin, his front-running competition, as he has countless times in the last few months, it's easy to guess which one is not like the others.

In forums and debates, Palin talks about the Alaska Constitution, the state's rosy future, prioritizing services and letting free markets work their magic; about conservative values and how hard she'll work to put Alaska first; and about the outsider status that makes her the best choice to get an all-important gas line built.

Knowles talks about Alaska's rosy future and about a government that won't leave its people stranded, and about the experience that makes him the best choice to get that crucial gas line built.

Halcro talks about Alaska's potential, too, but often it's followed with words such as “wasted.” Mostly, he talks about the ways the system is broken and about why Alaskans need to grow up and be fiscally responsible. He talks about the “ignorance factor” in the state legislature and, to some extent, Palin. He talks about the danger of the boom-and-bust mentality of a state almost wholly dependent on oil, and how the danger rises as oil production declines and prices swing wildly. Halcro talks about a gas line, too - but as often as not he says it's just a speck on the horizon, and a way to avoid talking about more responsible ways to pay for police and roads and schools as we wait for someone to build one. If John McCain hadn't taken it first, Halcro's virtually one-man campaign could be called The Straight Talk Express.

Halcro, who is 42, tends to make his points at lightning speed. Knowles and Palin may not be equal in experience, a point that sometimes seems to be the essence of the Knowles campaign, but both have mastered the politician's artful pause. Halcro, however, opens his mouth and the multi-syllabic words and the facts and numbers tumble out like the contents of a capacious and overstuffed closet. He pounds an audience with quick one-liners, like Bat Masterson on the stump, and all of it is spoken with a vaguely wonky, Seattle-tech inflection.

If you were casting a reality show, you probably wouldn't pick the tall, slender, and stylish Halcro for an Alaskan, although he's spent his life here. Last week, during a KTUU Channel 2 debate, John Tracy, the moderator, asked the gubernatorial candidates how they'd dress each other for Halloween. It was a mischievous question. Halcro said he'd like to dress Knowles as a DEC inspector and Palin as a liquefied natural gas line. Palin - another lifelong Alaskan, who rivals Halcro's style so much that a stranger easily could mistake the two for husband-and-wife models in a Lenscrafter ad - said she'd like to dress Halcro in Carhartts and steel-toe boots, to make him “a little more Alaskan.”

It's hard to imagine Halcro dressed in anything but the slick suits he favors, sometimes with a tie, always with a pocket square peeping from his breast pocket. His shirts look crisply laundered. His hair is stylishly cut. If he really owns the jeans and the flannel shirt that he swears are in his closet, they aren't getting out much in this campaign. But it's not just his wardrobe that sets Halcro apart. It's also his mind. He once remarked, in public, in Alaska, of all places, that he's a fan of Federico Fellini's films.

Tony Knowles can be dapper when the situation demands it, but he's the kind of politician who poses in clean hard hats or work boots, too, as an oil executive would. He and Palin have each evolved a folksy, Alaskan way of courting voters, Knowles with his light Oklahoma accent and Southern colloquialisms, and Palin most evidently when she says “golly” and draws out the “o.” Both have electric smiles and use them like Alaskans with subsidized power bills.

Halcro's not humorless. Last week he had people laughing at a candidates forum at the Alaska Federation of Natives convention, when he was asked whether he preferred stinkhead soup, moosehead soup or herring eggs dipped in seal oil, and said, “Could I get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?” It's just that his wit is usually bone-dry, and he doesn't smile all that much when he's campaigning, although he laughs easily and deeply when he's not before a crowd. Onstage, he often looks pained, his brow furrowed, his dark eyes intense, as though Alaskans' failure to plan for a rainy day is hurting him right now.

When Palin says “Alaskans want hope and opportunity, leaders with vision. They don't want leaders and candidates who are looking at everything as doom and gloom,” it's hard to think she's talking about anyone but Halcro. Yet what's gloomy, Halcro says, is politicians like Palin and Knowles who are promising things they can't deliver, wrapped in political expedience and “glittering generalities.” What's gloomy, he insists, are politicians, especially his fellow Republicans, who keep running on a “don't worry, be happy” platform when there's a whole lot to worry about - and he has the figures to prove it.

Maybe Halcro's bare-bones campaign would be better explained if it were called The Unpopular Talk Express, in which the candidate advocates orphan measures such as tapping Permanent Fund earnings to pay for roads and schools and rural heating, and the state taking children's Permanent Fund Dividends and investing them in an education fund. Halcro is Catholic and a lifelong Republican and he supports a woman's right to an abortion, and he is married to a woman, Vicky Halcro, who formerly worked for Planned Parenthood. He believes same-sex couples should be entitled to the same benefits in Alaska that husbands and wives receive. Although he's seen the incumbent governor, Frank Murkowski, a fellow Republican, almost crucified on this point, thus opening a path for Palin, he does not think the longevity bonus that Murkowski cut should be reinstated, although he says he favors increasing a stipend for low-income seniors. He doesn't like the state's predator-control programs. He thinks the state constitution should be amended with a rural subsistence preference. Knowles and Palin are still running against Murkowski in some ways, not least by attacking the gas line contract Murkowski proposed: and here is Halcro zigging again where they zag, saying there are maybe half a dozen tweaks he'd make to Murkowski's deal, but all in all it's fine. In this way, Halcro has managed to piss off every special-interest group between Eagle and Adak, not to mention both sides of the Juneau aisle.

And still he's not deterred. In fact, Halcro has also managed to earn respect across the Alaska political spectrum for his courage and his quixotic campaign. Almost everyone but Palin insiders concedes he's been a fresh voice in the gubernatorial debates and a welcome insurgent. Almost everyone, from Republican pollster Dave Dittman, to the Anchorage Daily News, which has endorsed Knowles, to the Voice of The Times, which seemed to swallow hard and then endorse Knowles, to Knowles's own running mate, Ethan Berkowitz, who has served with Halcro in the state House, says Halcro is well informed and should be heard. Of course, almost everyone says that and then, in the next breath, says he has almost no chance of being the state's next governor.

Part of Halcro's burden appears to be profound feelings for Palin, the other Republican, and to perhaps a slightly lesser depth, the feelings for Knowles, the Democrat. A good part of it is surely the fact that as an independent, Halcro has no party organization or support, even though a majority of state voters are not registered in either party. And part of the problem may be the vicious circle of traditional two-party politics: few if any voters see Halcro as a way of blocking Palin or Knowles. “Unfortunately, people vote more for what they don't want than what they do want,” says Ivan Moore, a pollster who usually works for Democrats.

Perhaps we're still too set in our ways for Halcro to succeed, especially when often he is not promising things so much as asking for sacrifices. “Since oil, we've turned into a state that doesn't understand the give-and-take of politics,” says Carl Shepro, professor of political science at the University of Alaska Anchorage. “Andrew is trying to change the way we think.”

It's not enough for Halcro that he's committed the all-but-unpardonable sins in Alaska of proposing a raid on the Permanent Fund and not even owning Carhartts. He also doesn't love snow. He doesn't even like it.

Halcro doesn't ski or snowmachine. You won't see him posing with a fish, or walking through the woods with a rifle. Actually, he says he's never even held a gun. Yet he's as all-Alaska as the gas line Palin has touted.

Halcro's family settled in Anchorage in 1965, when he was a toddler. He grew up on the east side. He went to Oregon's Willamette University and then came home when he was 20, after he got his high school sweetheart pregnant. From then until he was 30 and divorced, he was content to raise his daughter and run his family's Avis car rental franchise. But then he wanted to take a different path. So he ran for the Anchorage Assembly, and lost - twice.

“I realized I was a really bad candidate,” Halcro said recently. “To win, you had to know the issues. I didn't know them.”

So he went back a step, to the Sand Lake Community Council, which he chaired. He learned the area's issues. Then he ran for and got his district's state House seat.

In Juneau, Halcro made headlines almost right out of the gate, when he compared subsidies for rural Alaska to sneakers with Velcro fasteners. “When is it time for people to learn to tie their own shoes?” he asked in a speech on the House floor.

Halcro was subsequently invited to a rural-governance meeting, where, he says, the scales fell from his eyes. Ever since, he's been an advocate for rural Alaska. At the time, Albert Kookesh, a state representative from Angoon, said Halcro had become “one of the few legislators who are willing to have an open mind about rural Alaska.”

Halcro did not shy from criticizing other Republicans in Juneau: When he ran for re-election to the House, he blasted Representative Ramona Barnes and Senator Jerry Ward for spending tens of thousands of taxpayers' dollars on travel. Halcro scuffled and chafed and went even further: Barnes and Ward embodied what was wrong with politics, he said. For his troubles, Halcro was denied committee chairmanships and power, even as his party's clout waxed.

Barnes could be a polarizing figure. She had served in the legislature since 1979 and was the first woman to be Speaker of the House, but she was also nicknamed “Rambona,” and others knew better than to cross her. So Halcro wrote an opinion piece for the Anchorage Daily News that was scathing about Barnes.

More than intra-party squabbles, though, Halcro made a name for himself in Juneau by pushing for a fiscal plan. He joined the Fiscal Policy Caucus, a group of moderate Republicans that included Lisa Murkowski, Frank's daughter, who was then in the state House and is now a U.S. senator. They joined with Democrats in calling for taxes and the use of Permanent Fund earnings to close the state's fiscal gap, then estimated at a billion dollars. Their plans stalled, though, and Halcro left the state legislature in 2002 disillusioned - not just with his own party, but with the legislature in general, which he said comprised people whom he wouldn't trust to run a lemonade stand.

Knowles, the governor then, was not Halcro's favorite person either. “He didn't help us at all,” Halcro said recently. “At a time when all of us were putting our political careers on the line,” in the Fiscal Policy Caucus, “talking about using the PFD and taxes, he hid out. He simply wasn't a leader. He was always looking at the next election.” Halcro said he and Berkowitz talked then about Knowles's failings. “I said to Ethan, 'Where is the governor?' and Ethan said, 'I don't know. I've been here for six years and he hasn't even set foot in my office.'”

Berkowitz said recently that he did not recall that conversation. Legislators often diss the governor, he said. And, he said, it's important to remember that Halcro was not exposed and alone in calling for greater fiscal responsibility in Juneau; he was just one member of a group that wanted to balance the budget. Still, Berkowitz credits Halcro now, saying he's been “an important part of the race. He's lent substance to it. It's a good thing for Alaska politics.

“And he's smart.”

Halcro typically speaks without notes, which is impressive but may not always be a good thing. At a recent fundraiser in a private Anchorage residence, he spoke to a small gathering for about 30 minutes about everything from healthcare to pre- and post-kindergarten education to state pensions to the proposed gas line to alternative energy and alcoholism, with a mandatory stop at fiscal responsibility. He spoke quickly and, while he made a few self-deprecating jokes, he was, on the whole, very serious. One listener, Rick Calcote, said he liked some of what he heard, especially about the importance of fiscal discipline, but following Halcro, he said, “is like following a braided river - he goes off on tangents.” Another person in the room that evening, Eric McCallum, was impressed but also troubled. “I wish just once I could vote for the smartest guy in the room,” McCallum said.

McCallum meant that as a compliment. When Palin's campaign manager, Curtis Smith, said something similar, he was not being gracious. “Not only does [Halcro] talk down to Sarah,” Smith complained, “he talks down to Alaska voters.” Others have echoed Smith on blogs and call-in radio shows, dubbing Halcro a “smarty-pants.” Partly that seems to stem from the way Halcro has relentlessly baited Palin as the campaign progressed, needling her about her lack of specificity. At such times Halcro can come across as a scold.

Recently, on the Bob and Mark Morning Show, on KWHL 106.5 FM, Halcro nearly yelled at Palin, demanding that she be more precise about the reason Exxon has not developed gas fields at Point Thomson. At the KTUU debate, he asked Palin what percentage of the state budget is taken up by the constitutionally mandated services she always talks about, and what she would cut. Palin answered by saying she would make sure the state funded constitutionally mandated services.

“Sarah,” Halcro said, “I didn't hear an answer to my question so let me repeat it, and I'll say it slower: What percentage of the budget goes to constitutionally mandated services?” He emphasized each word, the way one might speak to a naughty four-year-old. Palin didn't answer.

Later, when Halcro was asked if he had been a little hard on Palin, he said he had watched Frank Murkowski make promises that Murkowski couldn't fulfill as governor. He had to press Palin, he said, because he is “so passionate” that Alaska's next governor must know exactly what's at stake.

“You spend one year in Juneau to try to find a billion dollars of revenue in this state to fill a budget gap and you learn pretty quickly that there's very few options without oil. And… your candidates tap dance around the issues by talking about efficiencies and priorities. … So if your whole fiscal plan rests on paying for the constitutionally mandated services - public safety, public health, transportation and education - and everything else is on the chopping block, don't you think that you should know that you're talking about 85 percent of the budget?

“So out of that 15 percent that's left, where are you going to cut? Courts?  Corrections? The Department of Commerce and Economic Development? Administration? DNR? Fish and Game?

“Sarah has been promising to reinstate the longevity bonus, fix the state's unfunded mandates, invest more in Fish and Game, and bring back revenue sharing and the power cost equalization program, and she's just not saying how she'll pay for it.”

Halcro may have his qualms about Knowles, too, but he generally goes easier on the former governor in debates. Ultimately, Halcro respects Knowles and thinks Knowles has a better grasp of the issues than Palin does, he says. Still, it's not as though he'll endorse Knowles or throw his votes to him - not yet, anyway. But press Halcro hard enough, tell him there's a figurative gun to his head and he must choose Knowles or Palin, and he says, finally, “Tony Knowles. I trust him more in office - but if everybody who said that they wanted to vote for me actually voted for me, I might win.” He paused a beat, and said, “Says the guy with 7 percent of the vote.”

That was a few weeks ago, however. Six days before the election, Ivan Moore, the pollster for Democrats, said Halcro actually had 14 percent of the vote. Halcro appeared to be picking up votes that otherwise might have gone to Knowles, Moore added.

Halcro had been talking about Knowles over sandwiches at the Denny's on DeBarr Road. For a moment he looked not just gloomy but flat-out sad. Then an elderly, overweight man with a cane made his way to Halcro's table and gave him a check. “Me and the wife like what you say,” the man said. “Thanks for what you're doing.”

Halcro looked dumbstruck, almost embarrassed. A candidate he may be, but somehow he doesn't take money well. It's as though taking anything makes him squirm. It's taken him a while just to learn how to look right into a camera and ask for your vote. “Thank you, sir,” he said in a thick voice to the unsought donor at Denny's. And then, almost too late, he remembered to shake the man's hand, the way a candidate for governor would.

Andrew Halcro has an unexpected quality, one that only emerges after watching him closely over a period of weeks, at forums and fundraisers and coffee shops. Behind the frowns and the tough talk, Halcro sometimes gets choked up. Dave Dittman, the pollster, says he's confident that Palin will win the race by a wide margin. It's hers to lose, Dittman says - and one way, maybe the only way, she could lose it is if she breaks down and cries. So far she's been tough, however. Instead, it's Halcro who's come closest to breaking down on the campaign trail.

It looked like Halcro was going to tear up at the KTUU debate, when John Tracy asked the candidates what the biggest mistake had been in their political careers. When it was Halcro's turn, he said he regretted not reaching out to Barnes when she was sick (Barnes died in 2003), and making amends for the things he'd said about her when he was in the House. “I was raised better than that,” he said, swallowing hard.

Halcro can become even more emotional when he talks about the challenges that he sees facing rural Alaskans, and about what he learned when he studied rural Alaska issues, about the heartbreak and potential promise of the villages and how the state has ignored the possibilities there. At the AFN forum, Knowles seemed to carry the day by talking about what he said was his fight for subsistence rights when he was governor. Yet Halcro did well, too, perhaps better than he had with any other audience in this campaign. The largely Alaska Native audience seemed to feel his commitment to them, even if they weren't quite sure who he was.

“Who is that man?” a woman from the Bethel area asked as Halcro began his speech. The woman, who only gave her name as Ellen, nodded when asked if she liked him, then shushed a reporter.

In the same company, Palin came across as flat, which is mildly surprising, since her husband is part Yupik and she repeatedly invoked her husband's grandmother, Lena Andree, a former Bristol Bay Native Corp. Elder of the Year. Palin's talk about the Alaska Constitution didn't resonate with a Native crowd, perhaps because of the 55 delegates who drafted it, in 1955, only one was an Alaska Native, at a time when Alaska Natives composed 30 to 40 percent of the population.

Palin's message about getting government out of the way so that communities could choose their own paths may have been a miscalculation. Alaska Natives don't necessarily see that they have influence in an unfettered marketplace, said Carl Shepro, the UAA political science professor. “What they need is an equitable distribution of goods and services, and that's not going to happen in bush Alaska if you leave it up to the marketplace. It's not surprising that their perspective is more in line with what Halcro's saying.”

It's hard to say much that's substantial at the candidate forums. They're better suited to a canned approach, 30 seconds about the problem, 30 seconds about how you'll solve it and time's up. Halcro did not pander to the AFN gathering, however. He talked about balancing the budget, but he did it with a palpable passion and respect for Native culture. He didn't talk down to anyone. He empathized with the audience and it came across well enough that they clapped for a virtual stranger. Some cheered.

Visiting Halcro at home, in the spacious Sand Lake house he shares with his wife, Vicky, and their two daughters, provides a chance for him to extend his remarks about Alaska Natives. Hanging on one wall of the home office that serves as his campaign headquarters is a large map of Alaska. Halcro put his hand on it as he spoke.

“Native culture is so incredibly important to this state,” he said. “Rural Alaska is so important to this state. I mean, look, you've got these respected Native elders and respected Native leaders… they talk about how their cultures are on the verge of extinction, and you think to yourself, why? Why can't we balance the damned budget? Why can't we help rural Alaska see its potential? Why can't we make a long-term commitment to help them with energy costs? It just turns your insides out.”

It takes a while to get him there, and even when he does he still wraps his sentiments in numbers. But push some of the facts aside for a moment and you realize that there is more at stake for Andrew Halcro in this race than fiscal policy or a chance to show that he's the smartest guy in the room. The race is really also for him about a chance to save a culture, and a state. That's partly what balancing the budget means to him. “I get a lump in my throat just talking about it,” he says.

Then he clears his throat and keeps talking, with no intention of stopping anytime soon.