Can Obama break the Democrats' 44-year dry spell in Alaska?

[babylonsister]

Claiming the Last Frontier by Charles Wohlforth
Can Obama break the Democrats' 44-year dry spell in Alaska? According to our long-suffering author, the chances are better than they've ever been.
Post Date Wednesday, July 23, 2008



Vic Fischer's history as a Democrat in Alaska reaches back to before Alaskans could vote for president, when he was a delegate to the state's Constitutional Convention in 1955 and 1956. It's been a hard slog since then. In 1964, Alaska went for Lyndon Johnson, who won all but six states. That's it in 49 years of statehood.

But on July 8th, Fischer attended the opening of Barack Obama's office in Anchorage, the first such Democratic presidential campaign office anyone can remember, where he found himself surrounded by some 400 people, more than could fit in the building. An Alaska Public Radio Network reporter asked Fischer for his reaction, and for a moment he stammered, uncharacteristically inarticulate, until he simply said, "It's a miracle."

As a lifelong Alaskan Democrat myself and veteran of countless lost causes dating back to fourth grade, when I was the only child in my class to support McGovern over Nixon, I knew how he felt. We've seen victories in local and state politics--I myself served two terms representing Anchorage's most liberal district on the Municipal Assembly--but we never, ever hoped to win Alaska's electoral votes for a Democratic presidential candidate.

We're so used to losing at the top of the ticket that we think about the presidential nominee mainly in the context of how Republicans can use him to shoot down our state candidates--as they did to torpedo former Governor Tony Knowles's run for the U.S. Senate in 2004, with an ad that showed his head floating next to John Kerry's. As Knowles said, "Hanging the national Democratic label on somebody was worth 4 or 5 points right there."

So, how could it be that a Democratic presidential candidate was opening field offices all over our state, hiring a staff similar in size to the largest in-state campaigns, and going on the air with TV commercials in June? Obama's even thinking about visiting up here. No major party presidential nominee has come to Alaska since, er, Nixon in 1960.

more...

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=5a43f2f1-0c94-49ee-a46f-4d239145eb80