Tim,

This article is about outside money influencing our elections.  Coghill's record is the perfect example of how outside money is used to hurt the interests of Alaskans.

VECO was the bag man for Big Oil.  VECO got lucrative no-bid contracts from Big Oil and the quid pro quo was that it would either bribe, wine, dine, and assist with campaigns of people like Coghill.  Coghill did not take bribes, but he took VECO campaign money, and their dinners.

The holy grail for Big Oil is the theft of Alaska oil- as is the case today- where billions of dollars of oil is taken, tax free.  Big Oil also enjoys one billion dollars in secret corporate welfare payments per year.  

Coghill voted for SB-21.  He is responsible for this theft.

To enable the theft of Alaska's resources Big Oil (and other outside industries that do business here) use people like Coghill to implement all sorts of new taxes on Alaskans.  Hence the relevance of the examples cited.