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Reps. Jim Himes and Mikie Sherrill are Democrats from Connecticut and New Jersey, respectively, and members of the New Democrat Coalition.

The U.S. economy is rebounding from Covid, showing strength and resiliency, but real economic challenges remain. Due to the global pandemic and weak supply chains for critical goods like microchips and semiconductors, American consumers are feeling the stress of inflation at the supermarket and used car lots. The good news is that Congress is working to find agreement on a bipartisan innovation bill that addresses these issues by strengthening our supply chains, supercharging American innovation and helping America outcompete nations like China.

We must take urgent action to make critical investments in American innovation, reduce our reliance on despotic regimes and expand economic cooperation with our allies across the globe. The bipartisan innovation bill will not only be good for our economy and our pocketbooks, it's also critical for our national security. The Russian war in Ukraine and escalating Chinese aggression toward Taiwan show why Congress must swiftly send this legislation to the President's desk.

Following World War II, the U.S. established a global rules-based order that values democracy, free markets, and human rights. We made a generational investment in groundbreaking basic research that has driven American innovation since. We invented the microchip and supplied the world with this critical technology. Now, however, the U.S. finds itself overly reliant on external partnerships to maintain and increase our technological edge. Experts in national security and intelligence recognize that our investment in research and development is insufficient and our unrivaled human capital is underutilized.

In addition, the security of our supply chains is under threat as Russia invades a sovereign neighbor that is a key agricultural exporter and China threatens the independence of Taiwan, which supplies 90% of the world's chips. Depending on critical materials from autocrats, whether minerals from Russia or semiconductors from China, puts the security of the U.S. and our allies at risk. In just a few weeks, we've seen how Europe's dependence on Russian energy has made it vulnerable to supply chain disruptions and limited its ability to take action against a murderous tyrant. We could be in a similar bind if China invades Taiwan, causing us to lose our largest source of semiconductors.

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The New Democrat Coalition led the charge for this legislation and helped pass a strong innovation bill that will strengthen our supply chains, advance American scientific and technological leadership, and ensure America leads the global economic order. America once led the semiconductor market, and we can do it again. The bipartisan innovation bill will keep us competitive by increasing manufacturing everywhere and helping American businesses supply the world. It invests in research including artificial intelligence, quantum computing, biotechnology, and advanced energy and domestic microchip and semiconductor manufacturing.

The U.S. is already increasing domestic production. Intel recently announced a new chips production facility in Columbus, Ohio, and this legislation will turbocharge these efforts. Ramping up production at home will enable us to meet high demand and reduce inflationary pressures, produce more goods, and prepare for the future so events on the other side of the world don't impact Americans' lives. Failure to boost production at home and in allied nations leaves us vulnerable to supply disruptions.

This bill will also help bolster diplomatic ties with Taiwan and respond to the Chinese government's genocide of the Uyghurs through sanctions, export control restrictions, and multilateralism. By advancing this legislation, we can defend democracy, diversify and secure global supply chains, help American businesses relocate operations back to the U.S. and allied nations, and reinforce trading partnerships with nations like South Korea and Australia. When America leads, our world is safer.

By quickly passing and enacting the bipartisan innovation bill, we will set America up to lead the 21st century innovation economy with democratic values, create long-term supply chain stability in an uncertain world, and counter the influence of tyrants and autocrats around the world. This is America's moment to lead. We can't let it pass.

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Op-Ed: Congress must pass an innovation bill to fight inflation, boost national security - CNBC

Theres a bit of a family debate at The Bulwark regarding what Democrats should do to improve their electoral prospects. Some of us join Democrats like Ruy Tuxiera of the Liberal Patriot and William Galston and Elaine Kamarck in the belief that if Democrats want to climb out of the hole theyre in, they should disabuse themselves of several myths, such as that people of color will reliably vote D or that turnout is the magic bullet, and pivot hard to the center.

Others disagree. Observing yet another Big Lie-proselytizing, Ivermectin-hawking, full-on Trump cultist running for officethis time for Wisconsin attorney generalJonathan V. Last marvels that somehow the problem is Democrats being out of step? Why, he asks, does no one ever say Republicans Have to Stop Acting Crazy or Voters Will Punish Them?

It is a challenge of our time that one partyor at least a significant chunk of ithas become deranged. Many Republicans believe that the 2020 election was stolen, that COVID restrictions were fascism, that January 6 was a false flag operation by the deep state, and so on, and yet it is the Democrats who are perceived as out of the mainstream. How can that be? The majority of the country believes in none of those demented ideas, and in normal times, the very craziness of the GOP would repel voters.

But as Last concedes, when voters are dissatisfied with the state of things, they punish the party in power. That benefits the out party almost without regard to the nature of that party. The GOP is currently the only not Democrat party (or the only one that countssorry Libertarians and Greens), and therefore it is seeing gains as Bidens popularity sags. The Democratic party is now regarded more negatively (55 percent) than the GOP (51 percent).

This may be bad news for the health of democracy, but it is understandable as a matter of electoral politics. Why? Because Democrats have forgotten what they grasped in 2020 when they united behind Joe Biden: the overriding obligation to win. Thats rightnot to pass generational reforms, not to save the planet, but just to govern in a fashion that prevents the Q-Anon-indulging, Putin-friendly, truth-optional, insurrectionist party from returning to power.

In order to win, not just in 2022 but for the next several cycles or however long it takes for Republicans to regain their sanity, Democrats must prioritize broadly popular policies, they must tell the voters what theyre doing, and they must hang the crazy around Republicans necks.

It isnt that Democrats have done nothing popular. They just havent advertised it. In fact, theyve buried it. Included in the American Rescue Plan (which was too big and probably contributed to inflation, but thats a discussion for another day) was one policy that really was life-changing for many Americansthe child allowance. This passed into law. Parents of 60 million of Americas 73 million children began receiving a monthly check from the IRS of $300 a month for young children and $250 a month for older ones. According to a Columbia University study, child poverty in America declined by 40 percent during 2021 due to COVID-era spending and 25 percent of that reduction was due to the child allowance. Under Biden, child poverty reached its lowest rate in American history.

Have you heard about this dramatic accomplishment? President Biden mentions it from time to time, and its included in White House talking points. But it should have been shouted, broadcast, trumpeted, and crowed over. As Winston Churchill advised King George V when the latter had trouble getting his message across, If you have an important point to make, dont try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third timea tremendous whack. Democrats should have crowed about how Republicans talk about being pro-family, but Democrats really delivered.

Sadly, the program has now lapsed, a victim of Democratic infighting. Perhaps if Democrats had boasted properly, it wouldnt have died.

Nor have Democrats talked up the good economic numbers. With the exception of the inflation rate, the economic story is remarkably good. The unemployment rate dropped from 6.2 percent when Biden took office to 3.9 percent today. Skeptics might attribute that mostly to the waning of COVID, but that shouldnt stop politicians from bragging. They get blamed for things they arent responsible for, so they might as well take credit for things they didnt really affect. Hiring is robust, wages are rising, unemployment is low, and the Dow is at 35,000.

How about that bipartisan infrastructure bill? All of the lead pipes in America are going to be replaced, saving God knows how many kids from brain damage. The legislation will begin the important process of mitigating the effects of climate change by building dykes, dams, and other infrastructure. It will repair roads, bridges, and airports, and do much more. Have you heard about it? My guess is hardly at all and then only in reference to Democratic infighting over whether the physical infrastructure bill was going to be held hostage to the human infrastructure bill they were also considering in 2021.

The story of Bidens first year-and-a-half could have been about the robust recovery, the dramatic support for struggling parents, and the passage of the much-overdue infrastructure plan. Instead, the message from the Democrats in Washington was that Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema were traitors and enemies who stood in the way of a bill that was never described in any way except as a price tag. A bunch of progressives wanted to spend another $2 trillion and Manchin and Sinema thought it was a bridge too far. Since most Americans are probably ideologically closer to Manchin and Sinema than to Bernie Sanders or Pramila Jayapal, the message they received was that the Democratic party was not representing them. Ninety percent of the attention has gone to what Democrats were (unrealistically) shooting for rather than what they achieved. So they drowned their own accomplishments in a miasma of recriminations.

Nor have Democrats competently pushed back on defund the police and abolish ICE and other left-wing slogans that Republicans have employed to great effect to tar their whole party. Yes, President Biden has proposed $32 billion spending on police training and crime prevention. And yes, he had a good one-liner in his State of the Union address. Dont defund the police. Fund the police. He said it three times. Well done. But it should have been said 3000 times, and not just by Biden but by Kamala Harris and his cabinet members and leaders in Congress and surrogates of every kind. They needed a bullhorn or Churchillian pile driver on that issue.

They used to be better at this.

As someone who was on the other side for decades, I well recall that when Paul Ryan supported a plan that would permit Americans to funnel up to 40 percent of their Social Security taxes into private retirement accounts that would earn higher returns and be heritable by heirs, interest group ads depicted him as a ghoul who was willing to wheel granny off a cliff . I also recall the libelous ads run against George W. Bush in 2000 that falsely suggested he was soft on lynching. And the Obama campaign commercial that falsely pinned responsibility for a womans cancer death on Mitt Romneys firm.

All of that was scurrilous and I would nevertruly neversuggest that Democrats lie about Republicans. But why can they not tell the truth?

Rick Scott, chairman of the Republican National Senatorial Committee, is out with a plan that explicitly calls for raising taxes on 57 percent of American households. According to his plan, All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount. Currently over half of Americans pay no income tax. Could Democrats make something of that? And if not, what are they doing in politics?

Democrats have bickered over voting rights bills, focusing on trivialities like the number of days of early voting or whether an absentee ballot application had to be requested or should just be mailed to everyone. Thats nothing. The real threats are elsewhere, such as Republican proposals to make honest mistakes by election officials subject to criminalpenalties. Thats intimidation and goes to the heart of fair election administration. Further, its inexplicable that Democrats have not used their slim majorities in Congress to reform the Electoral Count Act, whose ambiguity makes election stealing easier than it needs to be. If they need a refresher, the American Law Institute has just put out a blueprint.

Finally, at least one reason that Democrats are perceived to be out of the mainstream is that the right-wing information ecosystem relentlessly nut picks the most outlandish things any Democrat says or does and magnifies it out of all proportion. They also lie incessantly. And it has an effect. Like toxic sludge, it seeps out of the realm of talk radio and Fox and Facebook and convinces even people in the middle that Democrats are too extreme.

By contrast, Democrats have utterly failed to elevate the profiles of sinister figures like Paul Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Madison Cawthorn, or Lauren Bobert. These Putin-defending, white supremacist, malevolent creeps are rock stars among the far right, but virtually unknown to most Americans. Where are the Democratic ads pointing out that the way you get in trouble in todays GOP is by standing up for the rule of law and the Constitution (see Cheney, Liz and Kinzinger, Adam), but not for attending a conference organized by a Holocaust-mocking white supremacist? We used to say the ads write themselves, yet the Democrats cant seem to manage it.

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It's hard to remember now because history is pretty hazy, but it was just three years ago that Joe Biden was considered too decrepit, too corrupt, too out-of-touch ever to be president. And that wasn't just the view from the right, by the way. They mostly stayed out of it. That's what faithful Democrats were saying.

In 2019, three separate neoliberal news outlets, the Guardian, the Week and CNN, all published op-eds with the exact same headline: "Why Joe Biden Shouldn't Run for President." Other publications made the same point with equal vehemence. "I really like Joe Biden, but he shouldn't run for president," said a columnist for USA Today.

HOUSE REPUBLICANS SEND LETTER TO HUNTER BIDEN LAW FIRM SEEKING PRESERVATION OF RECORDS '

U.S. President Joe Biden (R) delivers remarks during an event to mark the 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act with Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Barack Obama in the East Room of the White House on April 05, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

"Joe Biden is not helping," declared Rolling Stone as if the goal was to help. And actually Biden's family agreed with this. This is true. They did not want him to be president, either. Some of Biden's closest relatives assured friends that Biden was running merely to work off the grief from his son's death two years before. It made a kind of sense. He needed to get out on the road and clear his head and a campaign was the way to do that.

He knew he wasn't going to win. And for months, it seemed all but assured that he wouldn't win. Biden's first debate performance in June was widely written off as a disaster. It seemed pretty obvious he had zero chance of the nomination and then Bernie Sanders started to win primaries. For the second presidential cycle in a row, Sanders proved to be the only Democrat in the field with legitimate grassroots support. Donors saw this and they panicked. The guy who hates billionaires! What's he going to do to Wall Street?

So, Sanders was unacceptable to the people who fund the Democratic Party, but there was a problem. What were the options? Pete Buttigieg and Beto O'Rourke? No. Both had turned out to be lighter than air. Elizabeth Warren, double no. Kamala Harris was horrible on every level. Absolutely nobody liked Kamala Harris and for good reason. So, it turned out to be Joe Biden by default. "Get out of the Biden signs. We're all in," and of course, the media got the message immediately. By the time he was inaugurated, here's what the Press Corps was telling you about Joe Biden.

US GENERAL SAYS COUNTER-TERRORISM EFFORTS ARE MORE DIFFICULT AFTER BIDENS AFGHANISTAN WITHDRAWAL

Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Barack Obama, and U.S. President Joe Biden arrive for an event to mark the 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act in the East Room of the White House on April 5, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

DANA BASH: Anybody who has any connection to reality about what is going on around them should have watched that and said, "The adults are back in the room."

CORNELL BELCHER: It seems as though we have a professional adult once again in the White House who's just simply doing the work.

FAREED ZAKARIA: Really, the theme I would say is the adults are back.

BIDENS TITLE 42 IMMIGRATION DECISION WILL CREATE A NATIONAL CATASTOPHE

JEMELE HILL: Still, it is a relief to have adults in charge.

JOHN BRENNAN: Now we have adults in the White House.

DON LEMON: OK, the adults are back in the room.

PSAKI SAYS DOJ ABLE TO PROBE HUNTER BIDEN INDEPENDENTLY DESPITE PRESIDENTS ASSERTION SON IS INNOCENT

NICOLLE WALLACE: There is a sense, I think, the world over, that the adults have returned.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: We have an adult in the White House now and it's glorious.

These people. Never an original thought among them! "He's an adult. It's glorious." Well, half true. Biden is certainly an adult. He'll be 80 this fall, but no one in Washington thinks the Biden presidency is glorious anymore. They think it's a disaster. Polls show that voters strongly agree. Joe Biden is now the most unpopular person in virtually any room he enters. If you doubt it, watch the scene at the White House today. You've never seen anything like it.

JOURNALISTS CAPTIVATED BY OBAMAS JOKES AT WHITE HOUSE OBAMACARE EVENT

It's the president United States in his own house, shunned. Nobody would talk to him. So Biden wandered off, looking vacant as a crowd formed around a former president, Barack Obama, who was obviously deeply grateful for the attention. And then it got worse. It got much more poignant than that. Biden tried to horn in on the conversation swirling around Obama. Everyone involved in that conversation, including Kamala Harris, who supposedly works for Biden, ignored Biden completely. Biden desperately tried to get Obama's attention. He puts his hand on Obama's shoulder. He even calls him "Barack" like they're friends, but Obama blows him off. He acts like Biden is not even there. Ask yourself if you have ever in your life, seen anything sadder than that?

It's awful. Now it's true that Barack Obama has never liked Joe Biden. For the eight years they worked together, Obama mocked him relentlessly as an old White guy. He did his best to keep Biden at the periphery. That's where he got the Ukraine account fatefully, but even someone as arrogant as Barack Obama can pretend, if he has to pretend, and that's the point of the video. Obama no longer has to pretend. He can tell the world in the clearest possible terms that he has no respect for Joe Biden because at this point, nobody has respect for Joe Biden. Even Biden's most faithful supporters in the Press Corps have turned on him. Watch this.

JON KARL, ABC: For President Biden, the outlook is pretty grim: war abroad, anxiety at home and inflation at its highest level in 40 years.

HARRIS EXPLANATION FOR MASK-LESS SCHOOL VISIT: MASKS WERE OPTIONAL FOR STUDENTS

TOM COSTELLO, NBC NEWS:Sky high inflation is erasing bigger paychecks. While hourly earnings are up 5.6% over last year, nearly one in five workers says they run out of money before they get their next check.

ABC NEWS ANCHOR: You have historic inflation. You have record gas prices. Americans are feeling it.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, POLITICO: Biden's numbers have dropped by double digits with young voters, and they were a big part of his coalition in 2020.

WHITE HOUSE STANDS BY OPPOSITION TO WAR WITH RUSSIA DESPITE EVIDENCE OF ATROCITIES

JON KARL, ABC: Voter anxiety is about more than rising prices or Russia's war in Ukraine. Violent crime in American cities remains persistently high and there is a growing problem at the border.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN: President Biden's approval rating still hasn't found bottom and it's been slowly trending down all year.

Wait a second. Correction! Breaking news. It looks like inflation is real. It's not transitory. It's actually making us poorer. Crime and disorder in the cities are real, too. And guess what? It looks like a totally pointless war with Russia is not as popular as we thought it was. You're not a traitor for not wanting it. All of a sudden, they're admitting all of this. For months, Biden's been telling us that every bad thing you notice around you is, of course, Vladimir Putin's fault and the media have backed him up, but suddenly they aren't backing him up anymore. Ready to be shocked again? A group of liberal toadies demolished the Biden White House's favorite talking point.

BIDEN LOOKS ON AS DEMOCRATS GUSH OVER OBAMA AT WHITE HOUSE EVENT

President Biden speaks about status of the country's fight against COVID-19 in the South Court Auditorium on the White House campus, Wednesday, March 30, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

JONATHAN LEMIRE, POLITICO: And every time we talk about gas prices, Democrats and President Biden say, as always, "Putin's price hike." They're trying to blame, of course, the Russian president and the invasion of Ukraine for the jump in prices, but of course, as polling suggests, this president is going to take a lot of the blame here.

JON KARL, ABC NEWS: Biden has called it a "Putin price hike,' but most Americans aren't buying it.

ABC REPORTER: With the midterms now just a few months away and inflation at a record high, the president is now putting the blame squarely on Vladimir Putin, calling this the "Putin price hike," but his Republicans and the president's critics have been quick to note gas prices were already rising before Russia started this war.

CNN GUEST WARNS TAPPING INTO OIL RESERVES WONT HELP US GAS PRICES: IF WE DONT REFILL WERE IN TROUBLE

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN: The White House is trying to do both: blame Putin, blame the oil and gas companies, but Americans just don't agree.

What? Now they tell us. Is your head spinning yet? Yeah, OK, just one more. Here's Sandy Cortez, who has finally turned on Joe Biden. That was just a year and a half ago that Sandy's job was to use all the street cred she earned growing up in the leafy suburbs of Westchester and then heading off to Boston University, to use all of that urban credibility to convince the young people that actually Joe Biden was OK. Yeah, he's old and White, but go ahead and vote for him anyway. He's got Sandy's seal of approval.

Selling Joe Biden was her job, and of course, she did it. She's always been more, much more, a dutiful party apparatchik than a revolutionary, but not anymore. Sandy Cortez sees change coming. If there's one thing she's good at, it's knowing the prevailing wind, so she's happy to attack Biden.

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: We need to acknowledge that this isn't just about middle of the road and increasingly narrow band of Independent voters, but this is really about the collapse and support among young people, among the Democratic base feeling like they are not, that they worked overtime to get this president elected and they aren't necessarily being seen.

GAS PRICES TREND LOWER FOLLOWING PETROLEUM RESERVE RELEASE

U. S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks at the rally where she endorsed progressive candidates in upcoming election for city wide offices in City Hall Park. (Photo by Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Oh, so Sandy's out? That means everyone's out. What's going on here? Well, exactly what it looks like. The Democratic Party and its media wing have decided to jettison Joe Biden. There was never an official order to do this. What you're watching here, as always, is the hive mind at work. Democrats have the same reactions because they have the same instincts, "Biden is week, we must get rid of him."

Now, to most people, that sounds harsh and unforgiving, but in the animal kingdom, it's an entirely natural response. It's the first rule of dog packs. For example, if a single dog wavers or lags behind, the other dogs will kill him, even if they're from the same litter. Yes, it's fratricide, but it's nothing personal. It's a matter of group survival and that's exactly how the Democratic Party operates.

AXIOS REPORTER SAYS BIDENS ECONOMIC ACCOMPLISHMENTS ARE LARGELY IRRELEVANT AMID HIGH INFLATION, GAS PRICES

Individuals are irrelevant to the party. The group is all that matters. No one at the DNC actually cares about Joe Biden or ever has, or for that matter, cares about George Floyd or Greta Thunberg or David Hogg or anyone else they tell you is an irreplaceable hero. All people are expendable. What matters is the party and the party matters because in numbers, there is power. And of course, on some level, Joe Biden knows this. He's spent his life in the Democratic Party. He's never worked outside of the Democratic Party, so he understands how this ends. Inevitably, after 50 years, it is his turn to be eliminated. Will he scream for mercy like Beria did or will he take it like a man? That's the only question.

Biden can't lead, therefore, at some point soon, he won't be allowed to lead. It's that simple and if you doubt it, watch Biden talk sometime. Biden the other day told us that Jill Biden was, in fact, once Barack Obama's vice president.

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President Biden and first lady Jill Biden speak with the NORAD Tracks Santa Operations Center on Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., via teleconference in the South Court Auditorium on the White House campus in Washington, Friday, Dec. 24, 2021. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

PRESIDENT BIDEN: And I'm deeply proud of the work she's doing as first lady with Joining Forces Initiative. She started with Michelle Obama when she was vice president and now carries on.

You know, it feels mean even to play that, but it's not a unique example. We see examples like that every single day and his fellow Democrats see them too. So, they've decided to replace Joe Biden, period, but how will they do it and who will they replace him with? That's what we don't know.

This article was adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the April 5, 2022 edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight."

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Tucker Carlson: Democrats have decided to replace Joe Biden, we don't know who with - Fox News

One Democrat in McLean County has filed for countywide office ahead of the spring primary election, and she's new to politics and government.

Laura McBurney of Normal said she decided to run for county clerk after Run for Something, a political organization that recruits young progressives, asked her to seek the office.

In a very short period of time, I found that I really care about all of the services provided through the clerks office, McBurney said.

Republican incumbent Kathy Michael is running for a fourth term as county clerk. Both candidates are uncontested in the June 28 primary. The general election will be Nov. 8.

McBurney said her background is in retail and office administration. She is a stay-at-home mother who homeschools her three children. The county clerk handles all election matters in the county outside of Bloomington. McBurney said she plans to advocate for greater ballot access for all, but she doesn't see the county clerk as a partisan office.

My views tend to lean toward being progressive, but I dont think that is reflective of serving as the county clerk, she said.

McBurney added she would support it if the county someday made the county clerk an appointed position. The McLean County Democratic Party has advocated for creating a countywide election commission. Bloomingtons elections are handled by a nonpartisan election commission.

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Political newcomer is the only Democrat to run for countywide office in McLean County - WGLT

By ART CHANCE

Sarah Palin has been at war with all-things-Republican since the turn of the century beginning with attempts, mostly by proxy, to wrest control of the Republican Party away from then-party Chairman Randy Ruederich.

Palin made her move into state-level politics in 2002 with a second-place finish to Loren Leman in the Republican Primary for lieutenant governor.Frank Murkowskis successful run for governor meant that his long-held U.S. Senate seat would be open; under the law in effect at the time he could appoint his successor.

At this stage of her career, Palin had a resume that would look fairly impressive for a Mat-Su Valley state House seat.Shed been on the Wasilla City Council and had been a two-term mayor of Wasilla, where shed had a government about the size of a suburban real estate office, and for which she had a city manager to do all the detail work.She threw her hat in the ring for appointment to the U.S. Senate, and she did so vociferously.There were others who may have received some consideration, but the choice seemed to come back to Sarah Palin or businessman and former State Sen. John Binkley.

I think it is a fair assessment that the contrarian wing of Republican/conservative voters largely supported Palin and the Republican/conservative voters who had an inkling how government worked supported Binkley, though some did so reluctantly.

The new governor had two bad choices, so he made a worse one: He appointed his daughter, Lisa, whose resume was little if any more impressive than Sarahs.His administration was doomed the day he did that. I know; I was there.

Gov. Murkowski tried to placate Palin with one of the best patronage jobs in state government under the governors direct appointment authority a commissioner at the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, at the time the highest paid job in the Executive Branch that didnt require some sort of professional credential.It actually paid more than the governor or any real commissioner was paid.

Sarah wasnt placated.To make it worse, her old bte noir, Randy Ruedrich, was also appointed an AOGCC Commissioner, so they worked together.This didnt end well.Her appointment went over so poorly that the Legislature passed legislation establishing qualifications for AOGCC commissioners, a bill known in the Capitol as The No More Sarah Palins Law.And the Legislature also took away the governors senatorial appointment authority.Now, when an Alaska U.S. senator resigns or dies in office, we elect rather than appoint the temporary placeholder.

AOGCC is administratively attached to the Department of Administration, where my Division of Labor Relations was located, so I spent a lot of my Monday in staff meetings with Palin.Its fair to say that those of us who had real jobs and real responsibilities werent nearly as impressed with her as she was of herself.

It didnt take long for the trouble to begin: Palin started complaining that Ruedrich was doing Republican Party business on state time. Id had a couple of issues with Ruedrich about such things and Ruedrich was prone to pronounce the relevant state laws and rules as stupid.I wasnt reticent to tell him that those laws were because of people like him.Ruedrich got a stern talking to or two and the kerfuffle seemed to have played out.

Some time later I was summoned to the commissioners office and into a meeting with our deputies and the governors special assistant assigned to Administration. The special assistant told us that Palin had written the governor with her complaints and said that she had brought them to the commissioner of Administration, who had done nothing.I dont think the Governors Office believed it any more than we did, but we were told to fix it.One of the deputies and I adjourn to my office to try to figure out how to fix it.

For those of you who think you know about this from reading Going Rogue, almost nothing in Palins account is true.That said, I wont call her a liar because I know her well enough to know that she believes whatever falls out of her mouth is true.

I suggested that we order her to Juneau for an investigatory interview.The deputy replied that she wouldnt come to Juneau.I said, Good. Order her to Juneau and if she wont come, just fire her.He said, Shes Sarah Palin.I said, OK, we treat them like classified, unionized employees and do the whole due-process drill.

I generated the notice memos to them; Ruedrich as the object of the investigation and Palin as a material witness.We set a meeting with each of them the following Monday in Anchorage.We instructed Ruedrich that he wasnt to discuss the matter with anyone except as necessary to prepare his defense and, since she wasnt accused of anything, we instructed Palin that she wasnt to discuss it at all.Those memos were designed to raise the hairs on the necks of state employees, but I dont think they had much effect on either of them.

The deputy showed up to meet with Palin, who acted surprised: Oh, I should have called you; Randy and I had a good talk and worked it all out.

There went a thousand bucks or so of the states money for a useless trip to Anchorage and we no longer had a complaint.So, maybe peace would descend on the land.It lasted a little while then the news exploded that Palin had resigned because we didnt deal with her ethics complaints against Ruedrich.Palin immediately became the Anchorage Daily News and every Democrats favorite Republican.Then the voters foolishly elected her governor.

Palin became the best governor the Democrats ever had since Bill Egan in the 1960s.In her two years as governor, the General Fund expenditures soared from $6.7 Billion to $9.3 Billion.She worked with the Democrats to get one of their fondest hopes of the oil era: a revenue scheme based on oil revenue rather than oil production. Its known as ACES Alaskas Clear and Equitable Share.

Those of us who had been around since the beginning understood that the state could never pay and supervise lawyers, accountants, and auditors who could go toe to toe with the oil companies, so we established a taxation and royalty scheme based on simply counting barrels of oil.Even so, we were in constant litigation with them.The complex ACES tax scheme put a lot of money in the State treasury but it has never been audited, and probably couldnt be.

In the waning days of Murkowskis term, his Administration negotiated a deal for a natural gas line with the producers.Malcontents in the Department of Natural Resources leaked the details to Pravda, excuse me, the Anchorage Daily News, before it could be announced and ADN/Democrat opposition killed the plan.

When she became governor, Palin sought out the malcontents from the Murkowski Administration and brought them into her Administration.The DNR malcontents, some with TransCanada ties, made a deal with TransCanada, which gave them a half-billion dollars of Alaskas money for starting a gas line, and for which we have seen nothing.In the ensuing years nobody has shown any interest as to where the money went.

I was a front page writer on the Red State political blog back in 2008.The Red State management were big Palin propaganda fans.I said shed never propose a budget cut and that her Ethics Act problems were of her own making.If youre doing something privately, you go to the states ethics attorney, tell them what you want to do, and if the attorney clears it, the state defends you against ethics complaints.The only logical reason for Palin not going to the ethics attorney is she didnt want to tell the Department of Law what she was doing.That got me banned from Red State; people who really like Palin really like her and facts and reason have no impact on them.Palin quit and her defenders havent had much to say.

Fast forward a little more than a decade: Palin is rich, single, trim, has had a bit of work done, and is letting herself be seen tete a tete at dinner in fancy New York restaurants with a former National Hockey League player.I thought shed never put herself before a hostile press again. There some interesting allegations in Joe McGinniss book, The Rogue, but maybe she thinks memories have faded or nobody cares.

Palin has the money and name recognition to win the late Congressman Don Youngs seat.Shell leave every other Republican bruised, bleeding, and broke.The communists, excuse me, Democrats will pour money into Alaska to defeat her and that will spill over into the other races.We face for the first time since 1973 having a Democrat U.S. Representative, as a result.

We may well have a Democrat/fake independent governor, too, with Bill Walker. And the one person Palin hates most, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, may well survive.

Palin has had a good run as the home wrecker of Alaska Republican politics.

And, before one of the trolls brings it up, she didnt fire me.I retired June 30, 2006, long before she was even the nominee.I must confess she made me a good bit of money; when she did some really stupid things with the unions, they knew who to call.I named the new drives on my boat Sarah.Giddy-up Sarah!

Art Chance is a retired Director of Labor Relations for the State of Alaska, formerly of Juneau and now living in Anchorage. He is the author of the book, Red on Blue, Establishing a Republican Governance,available at Amazon.

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Art Chance: Palin is finishing what she started, as every Democrat's favorite Republican - Must Read Alaska