Governor Walter Hickel; how Alaska's new governor will address economic and business issues.

• Author: Richardson, Jeffrey
• Position: Includes related article on the governor's specific intentions

There are some who are convinced that when Walter Hickel first went to Juneau in 1966, he really had his sights on the presidential appointment he accepted two years later. This time around, there seems to be no doubt the new governor will have four years to hatch economic, social and political ideas he has been incubating for a quarter century or more.

While Hickel maintains he fully expected to govern a full term the first time around, he has stated that the two people with the most influence over the state's development are the governor and the secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior. Having held both jobs, Hickel's economic and environmental legacies to date are difficult to pin down. Although Hickel proudly states his philosophies haven't changed over the years, his first term as governor provides few concrete clues as to how his political vision will translate into actual economic initiatives.

In an interview with Alaska Business Monthly just before his swearing-in, Hickel said his first actions to improve the Alaskan business climate would be those arising from his administrative prerogatives as an incoming executive: First, pick a cabinet that generates confidence; second, address the budget, signaling that we mean real business; and third, create the attitude and atmosphere of "can do" from the governor's office."

Observers in and out of the new team predict that preoccupation with such beginnings will keep Hickel from advancing other economic proposals immediately. "I think we're going to focus on the government side," says Vivian Hamilton, Hickel's communications chief.

Although many of the voters who gave Hickel another lease on the governor's mansion were not in the state from 1966 to 1968, some analysts who were remember a preoccupation with petroleum. "The main impact of Hickel's first administration was vigorous pursuit of opening Alaska up to oil development. That was a very major thrust,"says Vic Fischer, an economist, former state legislator and delegate to the constitutional convention that led to statehood. He remembers that leasing of state lands at Prudhoe Bay was "pushed very hard by the Hickel administration."

But attempting to predict the governor's policies on the basis of past performance is difficult for a number of reasons. First, his initial hitch was so brief that he barely had time to stoke a head of policy-making steam. And Hickel's time in Washington was foreshortened by his highly publicized dispute with Nixon over the war in Southeast Asia. Second, Hickel now assumes the state's helm in a world vastly altered in some important ways since 1966.

Hickel, a longtime Alaskan real estate developer, surprised some of his early detractors in Washington by advancing environmental policies considered progressive for a man arriving in the capital with such a boomer reputation. Yet Hickel's avowed environmentalism never has been completely above suspicion for some observers. His oft-repeated credit-taking for inspiring the first Earth Day seems extravagant to some, downright ridiculous to others.

"Hickel has never completely lived down what economist Fischer calls the disastrous results" of the original...