Anchorage Daily News

2008 was the year Gov. Sarah Palin offered America a memorable image of Alaska and -- accurate or not -- made it stick with a joke about hockey moms, pit bulls and lipstick.

Palin was catapulted onto the national political scene when she was picked by Republican presidential candidate John McCain to be his running mate. The pick was surreal for some Alaskans, expected by few, cheered by many.

Palin electrified the Republican base and gave McCain, for a time, what he needed most -- an infusion of energy that boosted what had been a lackluster campaign. Yearend news roundups this week inevitably showed her now-famous joke from her Republican National Convention speech:

"You know, they say the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick."

Conservative Republicans embraced her. Some cringed later when she stumbled badly in one-on-one interviews with national news anchors.

As America saw more of Palin the initial excitement about her faded, but a fierce cadre of defenders said she remained just what the country needed -- a maverick who with McCain would change politics-as-usual in Washington, D.C.

At home, the wildly popular governor found some of her support gone. Some Alaskans felt that national politics had changed Palin from the personable Sarah they knew into McCain's pit bull. Some resented the picture Palin presented to the country of what it means to be a real Alaskan.

THE CORRUPT

2008 was the year Alaskans had to face a future without Uncle Ted.

After representing Alaska in the U.S. Senate for 40 years, Republican Ted Stevens was defeated by Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, a Democrat, in an extremely close race. Stevens was within a few thousand votes of winning despite having been convicted in federal court the week before Election Day of seven felonies for failing to disclose hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts and work to renovate his Girdwood home.

In the end, Stevens was brought down by the same thing that ended the careers of several other Alaska politicians -- corruption and getting too cozy with Bill Allen, former head of Anchorage oil services company Veco Corp.

At year's end, Stevens was still fighting the guilty verdict and vowing to clear his name. He has asked for either a new trial or to be acquitted. He is expected to be sentenced in early 2009.

Stevens wasn't the only politician summoned to the courthouse in 2008. By year's end, the number of current or ex-legislators convicted had risen to four, with one more awaiting trial. The latest was Sen. John Cowdery, 78, who pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe another state legislator in exchange for support of oil tax legislation that Veco's Allen wanted in 2006.

So far, there have been 10 criminal convictions -- one U.S. senator, four legislators, one lobbyist, three businessmen and a chief of staff to a former governor -- arising from the ongoing FBI investigation into public corruption in Alaska.

OIL'S RISE, AND FALL

The dizzying rise and then collapse of oil prices also was big news in Alaska this year, where 90 percent or more of general state revenue comes from oil. Oil prices peaked in July at more than $144 a barrel. By mid-December, prices had slipped to below $30 a barrel, their lowest level in five years.

The volatility in oil prices has state officials uneasy about the state's financial future. Revenue Commissioner Pat Galvin estimates the state will have $4 billion less in the current budget year than the record of nearly $11 billion last year in unrestricted revenue.

OUR ALASKA WORLD

On Easter, a familiar tragedy played out in the Bering Sea. The 200-foot Alaska Ranger sank after the fishing vessel lost power and then went into reverse. Five of the 47 crewmen died.

Six months later, the 93-foot Katmai sank in a storm off the Aleutian Islands when the processing ship lost steering and began taking on water. Seven of the 11 crew members were lost.

During the summer, three serious grizzly bear maulings in Anchorage had residents on edge. A sow with cubs, who later was connected by DNA to one of the maulings, was killed by state biologists. Her cubs were sent to a zoo.

Musher Lance Mackey brought a smile to just about every Alaskans' face by again being the first person to both win the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race and the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in the same year.

"I'm not much to brag very often, but ... I'm going to this time," the 37-year-old throat cancer survivor said of his second victory. How did he do it? With an old musher's trick. He snookered four-time Iditarod champion Jeff King and his faster team by pretending to sleep at a checkpoint and sneaking out instead, ahead of King who finished second.

In late November, a man who had been fired from Central Peninsula Hospital because of unsatisfactory work went back the next day armed with a rifle and handgun. Joseph Marchetti killed one former supervisor and injured another before being killed in a standoff with police.

As the year wound down, there was another death, not one that stayed in the headlines but deserves to be remembered. Evan Lee Minnear, a Fort Richardson military police officer, was shot and killed outside the Woodshed Bar in Anchorage after trying to defuse a dangerous situation by approaching a man who fired a gun into the air. The man, a convicted felon just 16 days out of jail, instead shot Minnear, police say.

He was just trying to help, his family said. That's the way he was.

Minnear, of Anderson, Ind., had recently returned from a 15-month deployment to Iraq.

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