Anchorage Daily News

If you listen to the recorded conversation between Frank Bailey, Gov. Palin's head of boards and commissions, and Alaska State Trooper Lt. Rodney Dial, you have to conclude two things: He is trying to get trooper Mike Wooten fired and he claims to be doing so on behalf of the governor and her family.

If Bailey hasn't resigned or been fired by this morning, then it should happen by lunchtime.

Bailey either was blowing smoke when he insinuated he was speaking for the governor, or he really was acting at the governor's request. Either way, he was way out of line.

His message was clear, no matter that the Wooten inquiry already had been done and discipline imposed: Trooper Wooten should be fired.

Unless anyone in Gov. Palin's family or her administration had new information, or filed some sort of new complaint against Wooten, they had no business trying to get him fired.

Wooten and the governor's sister divorced in 2005 and have since been locked in a bitter custody battle. An internal trooper investigation found that Wooten violated trooper policies for making threats about the governor's father, drinking in a patrol car and giving his stepson a Taser jolt. He also broke the law by taking a moose on his then-wife's tag.

In 2006 Wooten was given a 10-day suspension, later reduced to five days, and a warning that any more violations would end his career.

That did not satisfy the governor's family, and both family and staff members talked with the Department of Public Safety about it.

Questions about the safety of the governor and her family were legitimate, given the bitterness of the divorce and reports that Wooten made statements that no Alaska trooper should be making.

Alaskans are right to ask if Wooten should still be a trooper, if justice was done in the investigation that ended in a five-day suspension, and if the confidentiality provisions of state law keep too much of trooper disciplinary investigations in house.

But these issues are separate from the behavior of the governor and her staff.

For anyone on the governor's staff -- or her husband Todd Palin -- to press anyone in the Department of Public Safety to fire Wooten was just wrong.

Frank Bailey clearly crossed that line. He has to go.

The question remains about who else might have crossed the line. Todd Palin did, but he's not a state employee and we don't expect him to resign as First Gentleman. Still, he shouldn't have been talking to Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan in the governor's office.

The governor said Wednesday that her then-chief of staff Mike Tibbles was right to make what she says were only informational inquiries about Wooten. Maybe so. But last month, she said that Monegan had never been pressured by anyone in the administration to fire Wooten. Whether the governor knew it or not, someone in her administration did, and she acknowledged Wednesday that a series of contacts from her staff about Wooten could sure look like pressure.

So it's good the Legislature has hired independent investigator Stephen Branchflower to find out who did what in raising concerns about Wooten, and at whose direction.

For now, Mr. Bailey should go.

BOTTOM LINE: One way or another, Mr. Bailey should leave the state payroll.

Bad ballots

State did a poor job with naming

Looking at the state of Alaska's official ballots for this month's primary, you'd never know Alaska features two major parties.

The ballot labels obscure that fact.

Oh, the Republicans have a ballot, called "Official Republican Party Ballot.

But if you want to vote for a Democrat in the Aug. 26 state primary election, the ballot you want is the "Official A-D-L Party Ballot."

A-D-L Party? There's no such animal. The state Division of Elections made up the name to describe the primary ballot that includes Democratic, Libertarian and Alaska Independence Party candidates.

Democratic Party officials rightly complain this is unfair. A-D-L doesn't mean anything to anybody.

The Democrats and the two minor parties participate in an open primary, in which any registered voter can vote. Candidates from the three parties are listed on one ballot.

The Republican primary is closed to voters who belong to other political parties. To get this ballot, voters must be registered Republican, undeclared or nonpartisan.

In the 2006 primary election, the state used different terminology. It called the ballot with Democrats and the minor parties the "combined ballot," according to Division of Elections Director Gail Fenumiai, in an e-mail responding to a complaint from a Democratic official.

But that caused confusion with voters, Fenumiai said.

That may be so, but the Division of Elections made a worse choice this year, using initials nobody's heard of. The state should simply have listed the names of the parties.

BOTTOM LINE: The state's use of the acronym "A-D-L" to describe one of the primary election ballot choices was a big mistake.

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