In April 2006, then-Gov. Frank Murkowski's popularity sagged among the worst of any governor in the nation, and the state waited to see if he would run for re-election.
Anchorage pollster David Dittman -- who later became Murkowski's campaign strategist -- said he came up with an idea. While everyone was mad at Murkowski, Dittman would conduct a poll asking people about good things Murkowski had done as governor.
The poll cost $20,000. Dittman said in an interview last week that, as best as he can remember, Murkowski's chief of staff told him to send the bill to Veco Corp.
Wait. Is that legal?
In the corruption trial of former House Speaker Pete Kott, a former Veco executive testified that the oil field services company routinely paid for all or parts of political polls -- usually at the request of candidates. The executive said the company paid for "upwards of 100" polls over the years.
Wait. Will any of those politicians get in trouble? The answer last week appeared to be no. At least not with the state. Not under Alaska's current campaign laws.
The trial of Kott on federal bribery and conspiracy charges has put former Veco chief Bill Allen, one of the premier campaign donors and kingmakers in Alaska history, in front of a jury under oath. Secret recordings played in court, along with the testimony of Allen and his lieutenant, ex-Veco vice president Rick Smith, exposed a series of what appear to be under-the-table campaign contributions by the company to Alaska politicians.
Just don't expect the state watchdog agency that oversees campaigns to investigate. Every poll that's been mentioned in the trial is more than a year old -- just past the statute of limitations -- said Brooke Miles, director of the Alaska Public Offices Commission.
And other polls that sound fishy could be perfectly legal.
Murkowski, for example, wasn't yet officially a candidate for governor when Veco paid for the $20,000 poll. So even though corporations are banned from giving contributions to candidates, campaign disclosure rules likely wouldn't have applied because Murkowski hadn't formally declared he was running for re-election, Miles said.
Now APOC wants some of those rules to change. The commission voted unanimously earlier this month to ask to increase the statute of limitations on campaign finance rules from one to four years.
On Friday, Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, said he planned to file a bill that would do just that.
The statute of limitations was already four years in Alaska until 2003, when it was shortened at Murkowski's request. That year, Murkowski introduced legislation to reduce it from four years to two. The Legislature ended up passing a bill that cut it to one.
ANYBODY CAN BUY A POLL
In an interview last week, Dittman said he rarely worked for Veco and someone else must have done most of the polls that Rick Smith, the former Veco executive, talked about on the witness stand.
Dittman said he performed a Veco-paid survey on behalf of Sen. John Cowdery in 2004. Last June, Veco also paid Dittman for a $3,200 poll about then-Sen. Ben Stevens, who had already filed a declaration of candidacy with the state but eventually decided not to run for re-election.
Around the same time, Dittman worked as a Murkowski strategist, helping steer the direction of the governor's underdog re-election bid. At a June 16, 2006, party celebrating the launch of Murkowski's campaign, Dittman stood on a desk and predicted the unpopular governor would pull off an upset.
About two weeks later, Veco paid for a poll in Murkowski's primary race that cost $5,200, Dittman said.
Murkowski, who was a registered candidate by then, did not report the poll as a campaign contribution.
Another Anchorage pollster who often works with Republican candidates is Marc Hellenthal. He said he's conducted "quite a few" polls paid for partly by Veco, plus a few that the company paid for entirely, over the past 30 years.
Like Dittman, Hellenthal said Veco paid him for a poll last year on Ben Stevens.
He said he told his clients, including Veco, not to share poll results.
Did he have an inkling there was a problem in Veco paying for the polls?
"I assumed they were doing it to handicap races. They have been a major, major, major source of political contributions for 25, 25-plus years," he said. "When they're playing that heavy, they really need knowledge to know how to effectively channel their funds."
Miles, the APOC director, said any company or association can pay for political polls about candidates. It becomes illegal when they give those poll results to one candidate but not another. Political action committees are allowed to donate polls to one or more candidates as long as the cost doesn't exceed campaign contribution limits and the costs are reported as donations.
Dittman and Hellenthal said Veco wasn't the only special interest paying for polls -- labor unions and other groups do it too.
Hellenthal said he knows, for example, that the state teachers union -- NEA-Alaska -- frequently polls in political races because "they share results with my clients."
NEA-Alaska president Bill Bjork said the union's political action committee paid for poll questions in about half the legislative races in last year's elections to help it decide which campaigns to get involved in. The poll results were then told to dozens of people on the political action committee.
"Our (Political Action Committee for Education) is given instructions that this is confidential information. That said, there's 52 people who know in broad strokes what the poll says," Bjork said.
Anchorage pollster Ivan Moore works for NEA and said the union conducts surveys only for its own internal purposes, not to help out politicians. "They conduct themselves to the letter of the law, and any attempt to compare their conduct to the admitted illegal behavior we have seen from Veco is frankly outrageous."
VECO PAID FOR MULTIPLE SURVEYS
Ray Metcalfe, a campaign finance watchdog and potential U.S. Senate candidate, called on APOC last week to poll all 60 Alaska lawmakers to see if Veco paid for polls in their elections.
One of the accusations against Kott is that Veco bought him a $2,750 poll, though Kott said on the witness stand that he didn't want the poll and didn't use it.
To make their case, prosecutors played a phone conversation secretly recorded between Smith and Allen talking about Kott.
"We got him a poll, 'cause his guy (Kott's campaign consultant, former Rep. Jerry Mackie) wanted him to have a poll. ... So he was getting it done, and I called Dittman and says we'll take care of it," Smith tells Allen.
In one of the wiretapped phone calls played for the jury, Smith asks Dittman about a poll he was doing for Kott. "We want to take care of that, OK?" Smith asks.
"OK," Dittman responds.
Smith then instructs him to "do what you have to, bill it though us, send it to my attention, that kind of thing." Dittman says OK.
In another call, Smith called Kott.
"Hey I just got off the phone with, with Bill (Allen). You know, we did a poll for you. ... You know that, don't you?" Smith asks.
"Yeah," Kott replies.
Later in the conversation, Smith mentions another candidate: Earl Mayo.
"We did a poll for Earl too," he says.
Mayo, who ran unsuccessfully for the state Senate against Wielechowski, said he leaves all the polling details up to Hellenthal's company. "Nobody tells me nothing and I don't ask," he said.
Hellenthal acknowledged there was talk of Veco paying for a Mayo poll, but said it never happened.
On the witness stand, Smith, the Veco executive, said poll results paid for by the company were given to candidates. In fact, he couldn't remember a Veco poll that didn't end up in the hands of a candidate or a candidate's consultant or staff member.
As for why Veco would pay for the polls in the first place?
"In most the cases, we were probably asked by candidates," Smith said.
Find Kyle Hopkins' political blog online at adn.com/alaskapolitics or call him at 257-4334.
