Meet Sarah Palin’s Radical Right-Wing Pals

In the afternoon of Sept. 24 in downtown Palmer, Alaska, as the sun began to sink behind the mountains of snow that flank the picturesque Mat-Su Valley, 51 years, Mark Chryson sat for an hour on a bench Park, reveling in tales of his days as chairman of the Alaska Independence Party. The stocky, gray-haired technician waxed nostalgic about quixotic battles to abolish taxes, support "traditional family" and the secession of the United States.

As long as Alaska remained under the boot of the federal government, said Chryson, IAPA has to stand on guard barrier to a new world order. He invited a journalist Show see some articles in his pickup truck that were intended for personal protection. "This here's my dog attack," he says with a laugh, defer delivery exuberant 8-pound butterfly his passenger seat. "Her name is Suzy." Then he fired a 9-millimeter Makarov pistol PM - once the issue of standards revolver Soviet cops - out of his glove. "I have enough weapons to raise a small army in my basement," he said, clutching the gun in his palm. "Then, if most people in Alaska." But Chryson added a message of reassurance to the residents of this remote place that some people in Alaska call "48". "We want to go our separate ways," he said, "but we're not going to kill you. "

Although Chryson belongs to a fringe political party, which advocates secession of Alaska from the EU, and organize ideas with other secessionist movements from Canada to the Deep South, it is not without influence of the State policy, particularly the rise of Sarah Palin. An obscure figure outside of Alaska, was Chryson political fixture in the birthplace of the Republic Vice-President candidate in more than a decade. During the 1990s, when AIP Chryson directed him and another radical right winger, Steve Stoll, played a quiet but central role in the election as mayor Palin of Wasilla and the definition of its political agenda after. Both Chryson Stoll and not only contributed to the Palin campaign financially, they have played major roles behind the scenes in the camp Palin before, during and after his victory.

Palin Chryson successfully as it has advanced a series of anti-tax, pro-firearms, including one that amended the state constitution of language to better facilitate the formation of anti-militia government. She joined in their vendetta against several local officials they did not, and listened to their advice on hiring. She tried to name Stoll, a John Birch Society activist known in the Mat-Su Valley as "Black Helicopter Steve," an empty seat Wasilla City Council. "Every time I showed up to his door was open," said Chryson. "And this policy continues when she became governor."

When Chryson first met Sarah Palin, however, he did not really trust his policy. It was the early 1990s, when he was a member of a libertarian local pressure group called SAGE, permanent or against government excesses. (SAGE's founder, Tammy McGraw, Palin was coach of birth.) Palin has been a leader in a pro-sales tax citizens group called WOW, or watch on Wasilla, winning its policy before its identification 1992 campaign for City Council. Although he was impressed by his skills, Chryson Palin welcomed the election of caution, thinking it was too close to Democrats on the board and too pro-tax.

But soon, Palin and Chryson discovered that they could be useful to each other. Palin is running for mayor, while Chryson was about to take the presidency of the Alaska Independence Party, which at its peak in 1990, managed to elect a governor.

The AIP is born of the vision of "Old Joe" Vogler, a hard-bitten former gold miner who hated the U.S. government almost as much he hated wolves and environmentalists. His resentment peaked in the early 1970s when the federal government has begun installing the Alaska oil and gas pipeline. Powered by rabies raw - "The United States made a colony of Alaska," he said author John McPhee in 1977 - Vogler said a maverick candidacy for the post of governor in 1982. Although he has lost, Old Joe has become a force to be reckoned with, and a constant source of amusement for Alaska of the political class. During a discussion governor in 1982, Vogler proposed d ' use nuclear weapons to destroy the ice blocking roads in Juneau. "There is under gold!" He exclaimed.

Vogler is another step to run governor of the mansion in 1986. But the fortunes of the AIP suddenly changed four years later, when Richard Nixon Vogler convinced of the former interior secretary, Wally Hickel, for a period of Governor of his party under the banner. Hickel coasted to victory, overflow moderate Republican and a centrist Democrat. A Republican running archconservative AIP candidate Jack Coghill, was elected lieutenant governor.

Hickel failure thereafter as governor of the press for a vote on independence rankled Alaska Old Joe. With the sponsorship of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Vogler is scheduled to present its arguments in favor of Alaska before secession United Nations General Assembly in late spring 1993. But before he could, Old Joe's long, strange political career ended tragically in May that when he was assassinated by a fellow breakaway.

Hickel joined the Republican Party of the year after the death of Vogler and did not re-election. Lt. Gov. Coghill of the campaign to succeed him as a candidate for governor AIP ended in disaster, he peeled away just enough votes Republican, Jim Campbell, throwing the election of Democratic Governor Tony Knowles.

Despite the disaster, Coghill clinging to the AIP as president for three years. When he was asked to resign in 1997, Mark Chryson replaced him. Chryson pursued a dual policy of cozying up to secessionists and right-wing groups in Alaska and elsewhere, while trying to replicate the success of the AIP with Hickel to the infiltration of the mainstream.

Unlike some radical right, Chryson not put forward its ideas chartered with anger or paranoia. And in a state where gun rights of ownership and often a genuine religious fervor, Chryson was able to present himself as a typical Alaska.

It rose through the ranks of reducing the AIP of the platform to a single page that "90 percent of the people of Alaska could accept." This means washing of the old platform that Chryson called "racist" while taking into account the state of the Christian right more and more movement emphasizing the commitment to the AIP " traditional family. "

"The AIP is very family-oriented," said Chryson. "We are for the traditional family - father, mother, children - because we all know that Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. And we are not so Heather has two mommies. This is not a traditional family. "

Chryson to further streamline the AIP by the platform secessionist softening its language. Instead of calling immediate separation from the United States, the platform is now demanding a vote on independence.

Yet Chryson maintains that his party remains committed to full independence. "The Independence Party in Alaska had links to almost all independent movement in the spirit world," exclaims Chryson. "And Alaska is not the only place that the subject of separation. There are at least 30 different states are not talking about some kind of separation from the United States. "