Michael Carey's Jim Clark Essay

Anchorage Daily News editorialist emeritus Michael Carey has written the most thoughtful piece yet on last week's plea by Jim Clark, ex-Governor Frank Murkowski's chief-of-staff during Murkowski's sole term.

In Carey's essay, Mike lays out how a mindset of hubris created by long-term political dominance in Alaska by the GOP helped breed the situation where Clark got quite used to doing whatever he thought he could get away with. Carey acknowledges that Clark showed class Monday, and he credits Clark for "poise and remorse" in dealing with that day's public appearances, and in Jim's subsequent written apology to Alaskans. Carey is unsparing in characterizing Clark's soliciting Veco money for poll data on behalf of Clark's boss, as criminal. But Mike, when he writes, "[h]e wanted the money, he wanted it immediately, so he turned to Allen," starts to lose it.

He next paints an accurate picture of the dysfunctional and criminal state of GOP political shenanigans here over the past few years. Although he's a very competent historian of Alaska events, Carey then failed to give much context or depth to the two underlying realities that brought Jim to Bill's door in the first place: the dominance of big oil in our economy, and the deeply flawed campaign financing paradigm. That's unfortunate, because I'm sure Mike knows there is a whole lot of fixing to be done in that sphere. By both parties' infrastructures.

Back in December 1986, I was working for Allvest, the first major private corrections contractor in Alaska. It had been set up when a few partners, including a very recently ex assistant commissioner of corrections, Kevin Bruce, were given a large halfway house contract in Anchorage. Most of the people involved in the company's inception were influential Democrats. Bruce was close to then Governor Bill Sheffield.

The first "sensitive" job I was given there, when administrators felt they could rely on my discretion, was to supervise a crew of "residents" (inmates in a halfway house) who were processing then-Anchorage Mayor Tony Knowles' Christmas card mailing. Thousands of Christmas cards. There were about eight residents processing them most of the time.

What they did was address and stamp the envelopes by hand. Two signed the cards. They were female residents. In front of them was a card with Knowles' real signature. They copied it time and again.

From what I later found out, the cards and stamps were paid for by Allvest, or by its shell company for political contributions, St. John Investments. I was told by a coworker that Knowles wouldn't be billed.

Allvest later was bought by Cornell Corrections in Houston, which is a player in political financing here to this day. Ex corrections commissioner Frank Prewitt had held a later iteration of a position at Cornell, that I'd had much earlier at Allvest, shortly before Prewitt agreed to wear an FBI wire.

I could write for days about episodes like this. Few deal with Knowles, less than third with Democrats. I'm sure Mike Carey knows more than enough of them himself which he hasn't had a reason to write about yet.

I did a couple web searches tonight, trying to determine if Mike had ever commented on public TV, or written about Ray Metcalfe. I'm sure Mike has, but nothing came up. Among the commenters to Carey's article at the blog was former U.S. Attorney for Alaska, Wev Shea. I did the same check on Shea regarding Ray Metcalfe. Again, nothing showed up.

Shea, in his comment says, "[i]f only the Republicans in Juneau and DC would have addressed reality and listened to the concerns of Governor Sarah Palin long before she was elected as our Governor." Rather than provide context, Shea pumps Palin as initiator of the truth, rather than as initiator of a political movement. A damn decent one at that, but Shea has already hitched his wagon to Sarah's train. Forget about Ray, folks. Or, better yet - never, ever mention him.

Some of Metcalfe's supporters even replied to Shea's comment. Shea came back later to thank a commenter who had praised him, but he didn't address any of the comments that asked Shea for more information.

Shea, and certainly Carey are concerned about reform. And they are interested in justice being done once the indictments have been issued. I wish they were curious enough to not only acknowledge Ray Metcalfe for the work he's done, but to use the opportunity of thanking Ray, to ask him, "what else do you know, my friend?"