'Crude Awakening': An inside view of Alaska

'Crude Awakening:

Money, Mavericks,

and Mayhem in Alaska'

by Amanda Coyne

and Tony Hopfinger

Nation Books, 282 pp., $26.99

Consider this book an introduction to the Alaska state of mind that produced Sarah Palin.

That would mean an adolescent mind that still needed a generous Uncle Ted Stevens in the U.S. Senate to bring in federal dollars to develop resources and build an economy. Add a selfish attitude toward the immense wealth from oil and consider the potential for corruption.

Of course, none of this would have produced Palin had she not been an outspoken outsider with a knack for being at the right place at the right time and saying what people wanted to hear.

"Crude Awakening: Money, Mavericks, and Mayhem in Alaska" is a history of Alaska politics and oil development, all well-told if a little overburdened with statistics by Amanda Coyne and Tony Hopfinger, co-founders of AlaskaDispatch, an online news site devoted to covering the state.

They obviously love the place but don't let that stand in the way of seeing its flaws. And the biggest, they say, is that the state got addicted to the 13 billion barrels of oil discovered under Prudhoe Bay in 1967.

Taxing it meant no state income tax for individuals and lots of money for the state to spend.

The oil companies fought to cap the tax, and Bill Allen, founder of a prosperous oil-field service company, spread around oil wealth to help legislators see things the industry way. (He ended up in prison on charges of bribing legislators. He also admitted doing favors for Stevens, the longest serving U.S. senator in the country's history.)

The shenanigans over oil did not start or end with Allen, and the book pays particular attention to the actions of Gov. Frank Murkowski, who may be most responsible for putting Palin in the limelight. Not by his championing of her, which he once did, but by his mistakes: secret dealings with the oil industry, appointing his daughter to fi! ll his U .S. Senate seat so he could become governor, and naming Palin to a commission regulating oil production. That's where she exposed her fellow commissioner, who happened to be the chair of the Alaska Republican Party, for leaking confidential documents to a lobbyist for a gas-drilling company.

Until then, Palin's political exposure had been as a Wasilla City Council member, then mayor, unsuccessful candidate for lieutenant governor and campaigner for Murkowski.

Her actions on the oil commission allowed Palin to make a favorable contrast between herself fresh, young face and the old-guard Republicans so soaked in oil money a newspaper column referred to many of them as the Corrupt Bastards Club.

As Palin made her run for governor in 2006, details were coming out about the FBI investigation of Allen and Stevens (before his death in 2010, his conviction was tossed out because of prosecutorial misconduct). The timing of the leaks could not have been better for Palin, and she won in a three-way race with 48 percent of the vote.

There's been lots written about Palin since then, but what makes this book worth reading is that it is written by Alaskans, about Alaskans and with an inside view of what a different place it is.

The authors say the worst thing Palin did in Alaskans' minds was to quit the governorship instead of staying to help teach the adolescent the importance of finding something to replace its addiction to its dwindling supply of crude.