Hullabaloo

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

 
Republican Revolutionary

by digby

I mentioned the other day that I went to school in Fairbanks Alaska and I still have a lot of ties up there, so I have some knowledge of the strange Alaskan political world. It's an odd amalgam of libertarian, populist, exceptionalism and yes ... socialism. They have a tremendous sense of pride in the state and consider themselves rugged individualists but also can't survive without a large amount of oil profits, federal largesse and military spending. But there is a strain of political weirdness that exceeds even that odd mixture and it's the secessionist movement started by a freaky guy named Joe Vogler who I knew from his notorious letters to the editor and his petition drives to secede from the union.

Here's a link to the wiki page on Vogler:

(1913-1993) was the founder of the Alaskan Independence Party and active in politics, regularly running for public office in Alaska for many years.

Vogler was born April 24, 1913, on a farm outside Barnes, Kansas. Joe Vogler attended the University of Kansas on a scholarship in 1929. He graduated with a law degree in five years and was admitted to the Kansas State Bar. Vogler moved to Alaska in 1942 and worked for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at Ladd Field (now Fort Wainwright) in Fairbanks until 1951 when he began mining on Homestake Creek. He filed for 80 acres of homestead land off the Steese Highway and acquired 320 acres near Fairbanks off Farmers Loop Road, but did not farm. He spent fifty years as a miner and developer in Alaska. He was noted for an antipathy toward aspens, and the term "Voglerizer" for highway brush trimmers has come into the informal vernacular around the Fairbanks area.

Vogler was murdered under suspicious circumstances in 1993. Manfried West confessed to the killing the following year. Vogler was buried in Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Canada, fulfulling a wish that he not be buried under the American flag. His second wife, Doris, who died of cancer in January 1992, is buried next to him.

Political career

Vogler's involvement, some may say notoriety, as a political figure began in earnest in 1973. Early in that year, he began circulating a petition seeking support for secession of Alaska from the United States. Alaska magazine wrote a piece at that time, in which Vogler claimed to have gathered 25,000 signatures in 3 weeks. This petition led Vogler down a path of activism which he would pursue for the remainder of his life.

During the 1970s, Vogler founded the Alaskan Independence Party (AIP) and Alaskans For Independence. He also claimed to have organized the meeting which led to the formation of the Libertarian Party in Alaska. The AIP and AFI, as Vogler explained, were intended to function as strictly separate entities — AIP primarily to explore whether the 1956 vote by Alaskans authorizing statehood was legal, and AFI primarily to actively pursue secession for Alaska from the United States.

The Alaskan Independence Party quotes Vogler as stating "I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions."

Vogler would serve as the AIP's standard-bearer for most of the party's first two decades. He ran for governor in 1974, with Wayne Peppler as his running mate. Jay Hammond was elected over incumbent governor William Egan, with Vogler trailing far behind. Typical political discussion of the day contended that Vogler was a "spoiler," and that the result would have been different had he not been in the race. However, this campaign opened up the doors for non-major party candidates to run for major offices in Alaska, and generally this accusation is leveled during every election cycle.

Vogler switched to run for lieutenant governor in 1978, with Don Wright running for governor. Wright was also the AIP's nominee for governor in 2002. This campaign for governor was dominated by the extremely controversial primary race between Hammond and Walter Hickel. There was also an independent candidate in the race, Tom Kelly, who was a cabinet member under Gov. Keith Miller (1969-1970). There was little hope for the AIP ticket to gain much attention due to these factors.

Vogler also ran for governor in 1982 and 1986. Several incidents during these campaigns raised his profile as a "colorful character." In the 1982 race, Vogler was taken to task for comments made during a debate. The issue of moving Alaska's capital appeared during the election, as it has on and off since 1960. The media and political pundits took great fun over Vogler's debate remarks that Alaska should "nuke the glaciers" along the coast of the Gulf of Alaska and build a freeway to Juneau. Vogler would later contend that what he said was misinterpreted.

Vogler's running mate in 1986 was Al Rowe, a Fairbanks resident and former Alaska State Trooper. Rowe took out a series of newspaper ads, fashioning himself in the image of Sheriff Buford Pusser. These ads were a major attention getter during the race. Between Rowe's ads and the turmoil existing in the Republican Party over the nomination of Arliss Sturgulewski, the AIP ticket was able to garner 5.5 percent of the vote, gaining the AIP status in Alaska as a recognized political party for the first time.

More on Vogler, here. There's a memorial to him on the Alaska Independence Party web site.

Now all states have their political weirdos and Alaska excels at creating them. But if the rumor is true that Palin once belonged to this party, or even attended their convention as alleged by two different people who were there, it's hard to see how they explain it away. These people have as much in common with a fringe militia movement group as a political party, even by red state standards.

According to Pat Buchanan, Palin was a member of his Pitchfork Brigades in 1996 so it isn't all that unlikely that she would have ridden the extremist wave that crashed over the country during the early and mid 90s and culminated in the Oklahama City bombing in 1995. Being for Buchanan after that would have been a natural progression for such a person. If she attended the 1994 Alaska Independent Party convention then she was walking perilously close to Tim McVeigh territory.

This woman seems to have come from the radical fringe of the conservative movement and if she had run for Governor in a state less tolerant of eccentric extremists, she probably could not have won because of it. It's not just the social conservatism, although she's way out there on that. It also appears that she may have traveled in some strange and sometimes violent far right circles that were prevalent in the Western States a decade and a half ago. It isn't just John McCain's judgment we should be worried about.


Update: Looks like hubby Todd was a card carrying member. Here's the AIP web site.
I don't know how common it is for governors to address rival parties' conventions, but Governor Palin addressed theirs in 2008.


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digby 9/02/2008 03:30:00 PM |