Kohring sought pardon before Bush left office

That according to a letter the longtime Valley lawmaker wrote this month to the Daily News.

"I felt my odds were greatly against me with both requests," wrote Kohring, a Republican who served 12 1/2 years before his conviction in late 2007 on bribery conspiracy and attempted extortion charges.

"But (I) needed to ask anyway, otherwise I'll always wonder if they would have been granted."

Kohring said he requested the pardon in December with a five-page letter to the White House. But in the final days of his presidency, the only prisoners Bush granted early release were a pair of former U.S. Border Patrol agents who shot a fleeing drug suspect.

For now, Kohring remains in a minimum-security prison in Taft, Calif., where he insists he never committed any crime. He is appealing his conviction.

A federal judge in May sentenced him to serve three and a half years. He is one of four former state legislators convicted in the FBI's broad public corruption investigation in Alaska.

Kohring described his pardon request in one of two handwritten letters to the Daily News dated Feb. 2.

In the first, a letter to the editor, Kohring gives an update on his appeal and sounds like any inmate might after a few months in prison. He says he misses his family and friends. He says he's been reading, studying and writing letters.

In the second letter, he talks about his long-shot request for a pardon.

"If I had succeeded, it would have been akin to winning a million-dollar lottery, as literally thousands of prisoners have applied including high-profile people such as ex-Senator Stevens, ex-Congressman Duke Cunningham and ex-Governor George Ryan."

Former Sen. Ted Stevens is awaiting sentencing on seven counts of filing false financial disclosure reports and failing to report gifts. Sen. Lisa Murkowski asked the president to pardon him.

When Stevens didn't get a pardon, Kohring knew he wouldn't either, he wrote.

In hindsight, that's a good thing, he said. "I'd much prefer to win my appeal, be granted a new trial and prove my innocence."