His frustration came to a head after he heard Republican presidential nominee John McCain and Palin tout her reputation as a reformer focused on saving taxpayer money. He didn't feel much better when a campaign ad called them "the original mavericks," and said: "She stopped the 'bridge to nowhere.' "
Weinstein need only glance across the salmon-rich waters separating his city from Gravina Island to see what he believes are millions of dollars being spent unnecessarily. Why, he asks, didn't she stop that?
Geographic limitations
Ketchikan is on Revillagigedo Island, about 35 miles wide and 55 miles long, a stretch of rugged hills, mountains and spruce. Residents talk of reaching into the clear water and grabbing wriggling salmon with their bare hands. Locals drink rainwater, rarely use umbrellas and hide their garbage from black bears. It is a place where many residents own boats, and the 600-student high school mascot is the king salmon.
It started as a fishing enclave of Alaska Natives, then white settlers built a thriving logging industry. But the city's last major pulp mill shut down in 1997, and nearly 500 jobs were lost.
"Ten percent of our economy disappeared overnight," Weinstein said. "That's why projects like the Gravina access project became all the more important."
Tourism is now Ketchikan's main source of income, with 1 million visitors annually. Between May and September, cruise ships the size of stadiums -- often several at a time -- stop daily, unleashing passengers to admire the abundance of totem poles and stop at the dozens of stores selling necklaces and earrings made of gold nuggets and violet-blue tanzanite.
Todd Phillips and his wife, who own a shop on Main Street, moved here from Denver 11 years ago because they liked the region's tranquillity and entrepreneurial potential. But the city needs to grow, he said, adding that Palin was right on the bridge issue "in the beginning, and she should have followed through with it."
Now, Phillips said, "we feel like we just don't count. We're just a forgotten dot."
Ketchikan, with its vast stretches of protected wetlands and forests, has little room to grow. About a quarter-mile across the Tongass Narrows waters sits the mostly flat and vacant Gravina Island, about 21 miles long and 10 miles wide, and ripe for commercial and residential development. A 10-minute ferry boat ride takes passengers and their vehicles from one island to the other.
