Anchorage Daily News

The network of media experts and political operatives who built Alaska's campaign for ANWR have longtime ties to the Republican Party and efforts by industries to change federal environmental laws.

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Former Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., chaired the House Resources Committee before he lost his seat in 2006. He joined Pac/West as a senior partner and is national chairman of Partnership for America.

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The president of Pac/West Communications, the company with a $3 million state contract to "educate" Americans about Alaska oil drilling, is Paul Phillips, a former Republican state senator from Oregon. Phillips was known as his legislature's "premier operator," both praised and criticized for his sly mastery of the legislative process, according to the Oregonian newspaper.

A consummate dealmaker and pro-business Republican, Phillips was investigated for mixing politics and private consulting. A 1990 ethics fine may have derailed congressional aspirations, said the Oregonian.

But Phillips was re-elected, retiring in 1996 to work for Pac/West.

Using Alaska's funds, Pac/West funded a media-message group, Americans for American Energy. The group's address was the Golden, Colo., office of a subcontractor, Policy Communications Inc., which received $125,000 for professional services in May and June last year, according to state billing records.

Policy Communications is headed by Jim Sims, the former communications director for Vice President Dick Cheney's 2001 energy task force. That task force became controversial when environmental groups accused the White House of letting energy companies help set administration policy. Its inner workings remained guarded after federal courts ruled they were protected by executive privilege.

Meeting regularly with the state's D.C. office was Pac/West executive vice president Tim Wigley, who has been involved in similar campaigns involving logging ("the healthy forests initiative") and changing the Endangered Species Act (the Save Our Species Alliance). According to his company biography, Wigley is a graduate of the American Campaign Academy, a tactical training organization set up in the 1980s by advisers to Republican leader Newt Gingrich.

Wigley was author of a 2005 e-mail, later leaked and published on the Internet, explaining how the forest-products industry finally succeeded by stealing the rhetoric of environmentalists to win over urban and suburban voters.

The latest well-connected political addition to Pac/West is former Rep. Richard Pombo, the California Republican who took control of the powerful House Resources Committee two years after Alaska Congressman Don Young was required by term limits to give up the reins.

Pombo lost his seat in 2006, facing a flood of campaign funding from environmental groups and reports of his own close ties to associates and clients of convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Pombo joined Pac/West in February as a senior partner and told reporters his first job involved a trip to Alaska.

Pombo was introduced this month as the new national chairman of Partnership for America, which bills itself as a "grass-roots alliance" promoting freedom, jobs and a clean environment. Like Americans for American Energy, the Partnership gives as its headquarters the Golden, Colo. office of Pac/West subcontractor Sims.

Reporter Tom Kizzia can be reached at tkizzia@adn.com or in Homer at 1-907-235-4244.