What's Ted's connection?

Lisa Murkowski

Lisa Murkowski purchased a Kenai River waterfront lot at a price below market value, but set to increase greatly in value due to a new road funded by Murkowski’s own earmark of $6 million. [Lisa's deal, Anchorage Daily News, 7/19/2007]

Murkowski earmarked federal appropriations of $6 million for this road near her Kenai River lot, which is known as the Keystone Drive project and which abuts the property of about 50 residents. Don Young and Ted Stevens each earmarked an additional $1 million for the road in 2006. [Entire Alaska Delegation Contributed Earmarks To 3 Mile Road, Talking Points Memo, 8/7/2007]

Ken Boehm, chairman of the conservative-leaning National Law and Policy Center of Falls Church, Va., filed an ethics complaint against Murkowski on July 25, 2007, charging that her 2006 purchase of the land for less than its market value was an illegal gift. The complaint also charged that Murkowski filed false information about the land deal on her annual financial disclosure and obtained special treatment on a mortgage from the Ketchikan bank where her sister serves as a director. U.S. Senators cannot accept gifts worth more than $250. Murkowski paid $179,400 for the lot; others estimated its value to be $100,000 or more above the amount she paid. The day after Boehm filed the ethics complaint, Murkowski announced she would sell the land back. [Murkowski to sell back Kenai property, Anchorage Daily News, 7/27/2007]

Murkowski is also connected to the Gravina Island Bridge, nationally known as the Bridge to Nowhere. Murkowski’s mother Nancy is co-owner with her three siblings of a 35-acre parcel of land on Gravina Island. The plot is valued at $245,000 and is less than a mile from the proposed bridge. Any bridge providing better access would increase the value of their property, but the Murkowski family has taken umbrage at any suggestion of impropriety. Murkowski called her family’s undeveloped Gravina parcel “a worthless piece of property.” [Don Young's Way, Wall Street Journal, 2/7/2006]

VECO employees are the top contributor to Lisa Murkowski, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, with $45,250 in contributions since 1989. [Center for Responsive Politics, Retrieved 9/10/2008]

Murkowski was appointed by her father, Frank Murkowski, to replace himself in the U.S. Senate when he left the Senate to become Alaska’s Governor in 2002. [Gov. Frank Murkowski picks daughter for his Senate seat, Associated Press, 12/20/2002]