KTUU.com | Alaska's news and information source | Democrat Bob Poe announces plan to run for governor

Democrat Bob Poe announces plan to run for governor

by Jill Burke
Wednesday, January 7, 2009

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- If Gov. Sarah Palin decides to run for a second term, at least one person has come forward to say he's ready to battle it out.

Democrat Bob Poe said he plans to seek his party's nomination for the next gubernatorial election in 2010.

Poe is a former state commissioner, and he previously served as the CEO of the Anchorage Economic Development Corporation.

He said he's ready to take on the state's top job, and he's doing it, in part, because Palin hasn't been paying enough attention to the needs of the state.

"It's a really big deal to most Alaskans how our economy moves forward and the role state government has in that," Poe said. "I'm concerned that right now there's not much attention to running state government, there's a lot of attention to running for something else."

But a Palin spokesman says the governor has been putting her foot forward with state issues since returning from the campaign trail.

"It is unfortunate that Mr. Poe would claim, counter to the obvious facts, that the governor is putting national political aspirations above her role as chief executive of the state," Palin administration spokesman Bill McAllister. "Since the election, the governor has spent less than a day out of state attending to partisan politics, and has rejected literally hundreds of invitations to appear on national television and radio programs and in the country's foremost magazines and newspapers."

Poe plans to formally announce his plan to run for governor during a press conference Thursday.

Contact Jill Burke at jburke@ktuu.com