Saturday Progressive Blog Roundup - August 23 2008 - Part One: State Fair Parade Edition

Please join the Alaska Democrats, the Mat-Su Democrats, several Democratic Party candidates for state legislative seats, and Diane Benson & Mark Begich, running for seats in the national legislature, at the Alaska State Fair Parade this morning. See my post from yesterday for help on parking and gathering between 10:00 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. this morning.

AK-AL US House candidate Ethan Berkowitz, running against Benson for a chance at the seat in November, will be in Kenai today at noon until 4:00 p.m, for Industry Appreciation Day.

AK-AL US House candidate Diane Benson will be at the Alaska Democratic Party booth today, from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. The booth is at the south side of the fair, near the Red Gate, just to the north of the bar in the tent.

PA welcomed the Alaska Dispatch to our roster of Progressive Alaskan Media on August 14. In today's web edition, I noticed another one of my favorite Alaskan journalists being featured on the Dispatch pages - Rosanne Pagano. She wrote a great vignette about living in the South Addition section of Anchorage.

I wish I could say as much about Amanda Coyne's short, shallow take on how the word got around yesterday, through a series of e-mails with a picture attached, trying to implicate the Fairbanks Diane Benson office in a move, described in one e-mail, as "she's getting ready to endorse Ted!"

Yeah, right.

Ms. Coyne manages to craft a story that leaves the Berkowitz campaign with the last word on this, without - once again, Anchorage media - noting that the figures the Berkowitz Communication Director cites as being a credible poll - were provided to the media by a person who only ceased raising money for the Berkowitz campaign 24 hours a day, seven days a week, last Tuesday morning, as a result of Progressive Alaska's actions. The "poll" was taken weeks ago.

Some people got sucked in by the pollster's total lack of care for what should be a standard - if you're fundraising for a candidate at the time you take a poll for that candidate, you really should make a disclaimer. It should be a no-brainer, as many respondents to our poll on this over the past week have indicated.

The only media outlet to print an Ivan Moore disclaimer on this, to my knowledge, has been the Anchorage Press.

Other people haven't gotten sucked in. Katie Hurley, for example, shows in this interview why I've said many times over the past 13 months, Alaska is the most in-flux political environment in the country. Here's Katie, covered by the Anchorage Daily News political reporter, Sean Cockerham:

Katie Hurley, a former Democratic legislator and a participant in the Alaska constitutional convention, said it's a stronger Democratic primary field in the U.S. House race than in the past. Hurley said she probably won't know which candidate she's voting for until she gets into the voting booth on Tuesday.

"It's good to have competition," she said.

But - wait a minute!

Uh, oh..... Maybe Amanda's right. Dennis Zaki has a picture of a Benson volunteer putting a Ted Stevens bumper sticker on his car.

And a Youtube of that same campaign volunteer delivering some mysterious looking documents to Sen. Stevens' Anchorage campaign office, while he thinks nobody is looking:

That's good enough proof for me, too. Sorry, Amanda.

disclaimer - the author of this article has donated to both the Diane Benson and Ethan Berkowitz campaigns this cycle, and has been volunteering for Diane Benson since 2006 (while he's not secretly working for Ted Stevens)