When Scott Ogan (R - Evergreen) was first accused of ethical improprieties in relation to his "consulting" work, he was steamin' mad, lashing out at those ne'er do wells who dared accuse him. Soon thereafter, though, he adopted a tone of resigned patience, as of a parent with a troublesome child. In the midst of the original burst of pubicity, he appeared on Nellie Moore's "Talk of Alaska" with the stated goal of "educating" people about why it should be just fine that a company involved with a highly technical and controversial resource extraction technique should want to hire him - a rural cabinetmaker - as a "consultant," when that company had a major financial incentive in legislation crossing his desk. Hard to say which was the better choice, PR-wise.

I won't spend much time undermining Ogan's half-baked reasoning in defense of his position, or making the obvious points that his work gave rise to a clear conflict of interest and an appearance of impropriety. I really want to look at two other points.

The first is that Ogan really seems to believe that all this is and should be perfectly acceptable (just like Baby Hulk does on a much larger scale). Ogan even acknowledged that he was being paid for his "knowledge of the way the system works;" in other words for his insider connections and know-how. But that's what lobbyists do. It's bad enough that lobbyists get trained on the public's dime in the first place - but doing it while you're in office? And not seeing that it's a problem? I guess that's what happens when a political party becomes too closely aligned with an interest group - the distinctions among the Alaska Republicans, the Legislature, and the extractive industries are just not clear anymore, even (or maybe espeially) to those in the mix.

The second point is that I'm nonetheless uncomfortable with the whole recall effort - call it the Gray Davis Blues, but I'd rather see Ogan go down the same exit ramp as ol' Jerry Sanders.