Only two weeks stand between candidates for 50 state House and Senate seats and Election Day, but many voters probably haven't seen or heard much about them yet. Those ubiquitous, everything for everyone political ads are just beginning to hit the airwaves.

Why?

Money, in part, and a bombastic political climate that so far has made it hard to get a word in.

Not as much is being donated to political campaigns this year, and much of what is available is going to the high profile, highly contested races for the U.S. House and Senate, political consultants and pollsters say.

The state's senior Republicans -- U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, who's so far spent the campaign season on trial in Washington, D.C., and 18-term incumbent Congressman Don Young, who's under investigation -- face their most serious challenges in years from Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich and former legislator Ethan Berkowitz, both Democrats.

Then there's Gov. Sarah Palin, who has spent the last seven weeks crisscrossing the country and hogging headlines, both in her new role as Republican John McCain's vice presidential running mate, and as the target of investigations here looking into the propriety of her dismissal of the state's public safety commissioner.

That Wall Street meltdown doesn't help much, either.

"When people are uncertain, they clamp down on their discretionary spending, and certainly throwing money at political campaigns falls into that category," said Ivan Moore, a pollster and consultant who often works for Democrats but this season says he has only two candidates -- Republicans -- in the state House races.

"It's been very tight, very tough, for challengers across the board," he said.

All 40 House seats are in contention every two years. This time around, eight candidates are unopposed, including Anchorage Reps. Nancy Dahlstrom, Les Gara, Lindsey Holmes and Anna Fairclough; Fairclough faces an opponent only on paper -- Bill Gossweiler will appear on the ballot, but has withdrawn. A dozen other House seats in Anchorage districts are contested.

Of the 10 Senate seats up this year statewide, three are uncontested; the fortunate Democrat in one of those, Anchorage District M's Hollis French, is one of the few candidates who's been on the air already. Three other Anchorage Senate races are contested, as is retiring Sen. Lyda Green's District G seat in the Mat-Su.

TIMING OF ADVERTISING

Television and radio ads about the State house races started hitting the air last week, and Moore and others say the local races should start picking up media steam today. Campaigns spend their money first buying broadcast time in the days leading up to the election, then work back from there.

"Depending on your budget, the typical way of doing things is you buy the last week, then you go back a week, then you go back three weeks," said Marc Hellenthal, like Moore a consultant and pollster.

"That's how we bought for people who didn't have very much (to spend)," said Jim Lottsfeldt, another consultant who schedules media buys for candidates, targeting "the final two weeks, three weeks if you're a little better heeled."

"Money is across the board less than it has been," Hellenthal said.

SPENDING CONCERNS

That's been true since Anchorage Assembly campaigns in the spring, Lottsfeldt said.

Partly that's because of anxiety over plunging stock prices and the underlying credit crunch. But the ongoing federal corruption investigation that has put three former state lawmakers in prison, Stevens on trial and others awaiting trial has discouraged contributors, too, most of the consultants said.

"Some of it is just, people just don't want to contribute to candidates," said pollster David Dittman. "They just want to stay out of the limelight, as far as the investigation and things like that.

"The other part is the stock market, people just don't have the money. ... Just talking to candidates, people that used to be able to afford polls, can't now."

Much of the Alaska political money that is available probably is being sucked up by the federal campaigns, Moore said.

Federal Elections Commissions reports show the four surviving congressional candidates -- Stevens, Begich, Young and Bertkowitz -- collectively have received more than $5 million from thousands of individual contributors in the 2007-2008 election cycle. Most of those contributors are Alaskans.

"Races of that magnitude can't happen independently of everything else, without impacting it to some degree or other," Moore said.