FAIRBANKS -- The day after Sen. Lisa Murkowski won the endorsement of the largest Alaska Native group in the state, her competitors spent Friday courting votes among individual villagers.
All three contenders in the bruising Senate battle were schedule to square off Friday at the Alaska Federation of Natives convention. But AFN Chairman Albert Kookesh said the group canceled the candidate forum to deny free "air time" to Republican nominee Joe Miller.
The decision came earlier this week after Miller filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission saying a political action committee comprised of Alaska Native corporations is illegally spending to get Murkowski elected. The PAC has contended it is operating within the law.
"We didn't feel if he's going to be firing arrows at us that we should be turning around and inviting him into our house," said Kookesh, who is a Democratic state senator from Angoon and board chairman of Sealaska Corp., the Southeast Alaska Native regional corporation.
"Secondly, it's (a) purely political move on our part," Kookesh said during an interview at the convention. "If we're going to endorse Lisa Murkowski, then why should we give him air time on a statewide event that we're having, when we've already endorsed somebody?"
AFN president Julie Kitka said earlier in the week that the forum was called off to make time for people to speak on the issue of subsistence hunting and fishing rights from the convention floor.
Miller on Friday accused the AFN of canceling the forum, at least in part, because he has called for reform to the U.S. Small Business Administration 8(a) program by somehow basing the award of federal contracts on delivering jobs to Native corporation shareholders.
"I think that's part of the reason why the debate didn't happen today. Because the corporations don't want me to talk to the shareholders, be educated by the shareholders and then let them know what my vision is for Alaska. And it's a vision that is absolutely pro-shareholder."
Democrat Scott McAdams on Thursday called the canceled forum a missed opportunity but declined to speculate on why it was called off.
Candidates for governor -- Republican Gov. Sean Parnell, Democrat Ethan Berkowitz and Libertarian Billy Toien -- squared off as scheduled at the AFN convention Friday afternoon.
Miller and McAdams, meantime, spent the day working the crowds or meeting with individual Alaska Native groups in hopes of gaining an edge in the tight, three-way contest. The convention draws 4,000 to 5,000 people each year, organizers say.
STILL ROOM FOR BIG GAINS
In a nearby parking lot sat a brown Winnebago Superchief dotted with McAdams campaign signs. This was home base for the Sitka Democrat, who vowed to shake 1,000 hands at the three-day convention.
"Is he doing very well?" U.S. Sen. Mark Begich asked McAdams wife, Romee, as McAdams sat a booth in the convention lobby. A commercial featuring young Alaska Natives endorsing McAdams played on a laptop in front of him.
While Murkowski has the official AFN endorsement, there's room for candidates to make big gains among individual delegates, Begich said.
He credits his campaign efforts at the convention with helping him defeat former Sen. Ted Stevens -- who is considered beloved in rural Alaska -- in 2008.
"AFN -- the endorsements are what they are, but every single person here is what you work, because at the end of the day, they will vote how they see fit," he said.
McAdams has been appealing directly to Alaska's more than 200 tribes. "They're well positioned to help build our villages," he told a woman who stopped by the table.
A few minutes later he walked the lobby, in a powder blue tie and Tlingit button vest, greeting a man from Kake. When McAdams was growing up in Petersburg, he said, Kake villagers commuted to town to watch "Star Wars."
McAdams said reporters ask him about federal 8(a) contracts more than AFN convention-goers do. They bring up high energy costs and jobs more often, he said.
Miller faced a tougher crowd.
At lunch time, he stood beside a table at the Fairbanks Curling Club, moose antlers hanging overhead.
A trio of women visiting from the Lower Kuskokwim village of Quinhagak listened as Miller kneeled and made small talk. Have you heard about the prototype house -- cheap, but made to withstand brutal Alaska winds -- being built in their town, they asked?
Miller hadn't heard of it, he said.
In Fairbanks for the AFN convention, the group walked a block to Miller's campaign luncheon for a closer look at the most-talked about candidate in this year's election.
While they were here to see Miller, "I'm not voting for him," whispered Jackie Cleveland, 31, after Miller had moved to another table.
Others liked what they heard.
Lorraine Caldwell listened as the Republican talked about Social Security -- it'll have to change whether he's elected or not, he said -- and contracts for Alaska Native corporations. Caldwell, 51, said she lives in Anchorage but is originally from Ivanof Bay. She is Aleut and Russian, she said.
She voted for Miller in the primary, Caldwell said. Since then, he's generated headline after headline of bad press, giving Caldwell pause.
That changed after talking with the candidate Friday, she said. "I'm more open to what he's got to offer," she said.
Dozens of people showed for the Miller luncheon, where volunteers served hot dogs made from moose, caribou and reindeer, one volunteer said. A young boy wearing an National Rifle Association baseball cap and a Joe Miller button on his camouflage vest wandered the crowd.
"The concerns that I'm hearing are similar to the reasons that I decided to run this race, and that is a recognition that this country is nearing bankruptcy and yet this state is dependent upon the federal government," he told the group. "The rural areas even more so than the urban areas."
He met with Cook Inlet Region Inc. and Kitka, the AFN president, earlier in the day he said.
At the meeting with CIRI, Miller was asked about his views on subsistence and other issues, said Terrence Shanigan, an off-duty Alaska State Trooper who said he approached Miller months ago at a fundraiser offering to help with the campaign, advising on rural issues.
Shanigan said he is a shareholder with the Bristol Bay Native Corp. and took the day off from his job. He wasn't working as security, he said.
Miller made national news Oct. 17 when his security handcuffed a reporter after a town hall meeting in Anchorage.
Miller and McAdams planned to debate without Murkowski on Friday night at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Murkowski began the day in Fairbanks, speaking to a miners group, according to her schedule, but soon left for Anchorage, where she planned to judge an adult literacy spelling bee, attend a "young professionals" meet and greet, and a Veterans of Foreign Wars dinner in Eagle River, spokesman Steve Wackowski said.
Wackowski said she didn't attend the university debate because she had planned on attending the AFN forum and previously committed to events in Southcentral Friday night.
By KYLE HOPKINS
khopkins@adn.com