WASHINGTON — The state is so undeveloped, there are more caribou than people. It's so remote, Americans have to pass through another country to drive there. And it is so sparsely populated that the state has only one congressman in the U.S. House of Representatives.
But Alaska's one House member and two senators speak loudly and carry very big sticks in Congress--especially when it comes to shaping energy and environmental policies that now are moving to center stage. Indeed, as President Bush's energy program heads to Capitol Hill, no state will wield more per capita clout than Alaska.
The state's junior senator, Frank H. Murkowski, is chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which will write major elements of Bush's energy law. The senior senator, Ted Stevens, heads the Appropriations Committee, which holds the purse strings for the entire federal government, including the Energy Department. Alaska's sole House member, Don Young, is a powerful senior member of the committee that oversees policy concerning natural resources.
Alaskans also have infiltrated the White House. Two former Murkowski aides led the staff of Bush's energy task force, jokingly referring to themselves as the "Alaska jihad."
Ironically, the Alaska crowd faces its toughest fight in Congress over the energy policy plank that hits closest to home: Bush's call to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration. The Alaska delegation--all Republicans--has been pushing this effort for years, to no avail.
But the delegation's clout gives the proposal life it would not otherwise have--and gives Bush a powerful cadre of allies committed to other elements of his hopes to increase domestic energy production.
"I'm proud of this president," Young said. "The energy sources are there. We just haven't had the will to develop them."
Constituency Counter to Mainstream U.S.
The Alaskans for years have been pursuing such policies as "lone riders," said Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), who has worked with Young on the House Resources Committee.
But with the energy problem now at the forefront of the congressional agenda, Miller added, "they are fortified. They have their hands on a lot of levers."
The Alaska delegation also represents a constituency whose views of energy and natural resource policy are, like the state itself, far removed from the rest of the nation.
