ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Aug. 28 (UPI) -- Alaska's business community may lose a major booster in the Senate, but candidate Frank Murkowski is not about to abandon his base of support after handily winning the Republican nomination for governor.
Murkowski captured more than 69 percent of the Republican votes in Tuesday's state primary with a campaign based largely on freeing the Alaska's natural resources industry from the regulatory shackles that he contends pose a threat to the future economic security of the 49th state where future budget deficits have been projected as high as $1 billion.
"We were able to focus in on the natural attributes of Alaska, as opposed to saying, 'We're going to simply pick this up (budget deficit) by taxing it,'" Murkowski said Tuesday night as he prepared to formally launch his campaign against Democratic Lt. Gov. Fran Ulmer.
As the ranking Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Murkowski has been an unabashed champion of the industries that provide scores of jobs and tax revenues to Alaska by exploiting the region's vast resources of petroleum, minerals, fish and timber. He was a leading advocate of allowing oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve and has campaigned this summer on pledges to rev up the mining and fishing industries.
"Alaska's fishing families are under assault from farmed salmon, depressed prices and continuing environmentalist attacks," Murkowski said Tuesday at a rally in Kodiak, a hub of the state's fishing industry. "If I am elected governor, my administration will defend Alaskans from such attacks by providing both science-based fisheries management and aggressive legal defense."
Murkowski's speech was largely a broadside at an Aug. 18 lawsuit field in federal court by the environmental group Oceana over the federal government's alleged failure to reduce the deaths of whales and dolphins caught in commercial fishing nets. Since seafood is Alaska's leading employer, sticking up for fishermen is as much a priority in Alaska as championing farmers in Iowa or autoworkers in Michigan.
Oceana's lawsuit is based on the contention that the government is obligated to cut such "commercial bycatch," but to Murkowski, it is another example of environmental elitism from the Lower 48 that unfairly punishes hard-working Alaskans who are skilled resource managers in their own right.
"I pledge to do everything that I can from my Senate seat to defend Alaska fishermen from this attack," he told the gathered fishermen in Kodiak. "And if I win the election in November, I will seek to intervene in the suit as governor. This is a very serious threat, and I take it very seriously."
Ulmer has taken a softer approach to the often-complicated matters involving natural resources and the economy. While she also favors opening ANWR and improving the climate for mining, her rhetoric pertaining to the seafood industry has been heavily colored by what she called her "immersion" in fishing matters for the past three decades.
"There are no simple solutions to the complex challenges facing our fishing industry. As your governor, I will forge a strong working partnership with the commercial fishing community to solve the marketing, research and development, fleet management, and quality challenges which we face," she said in a campaign letter to members of the United Alaska Fishermen.
Ulmer launched her first campaign trip across the huge state -- dubbed the "Tour de Fran" by her campaign staff -- as the Democratic nominee Wednesday. Murkowski held a media-savvy photo opportunity with legendary test pilot Chuck Yeager in Anchorage during the 5 o'clock news window.
--
(Reported by Hil Anderson)
