Palin e-mails reveal a powerful ‘first dude’

Nearly 3,000 pages of e-mails that the first gentleman, Todd Palin,  exchanged with state officials draw a picture of his influence on policy in the Sarah Palin administration. Other e-mails are still being withheld by the state of Alaska.

Officially he was the first gentleman of Alaska. More people called him the “first dude.” But newly released e-mails show that Todd Palin was busy doing more than snow machine driving and salmon fishing during Sarah Palin’s two and a half years as governor and vice presidential candidate.

Nearly 3,000 pages of e-mails that Todd Palin exchanged with state officials, which were released to msnbc.com and NBC News by the state of Alaska under its public records law, draw a picture of a Palin administration where the governor’s husband got involved in a judicial appointment, monitored contract negotiations with public employee unions, received background checks on a corporate CEO, added his approval or disapproval to state board appointments and passed financial information marked “confidential” from his oil company employer to a state attorney.

While 1,200 separate e-mails were released this week, 243 others were withheld by the state under a claim that executive privilege extends to Todd Palin as an unpaid adviser to the government. Still, just the subject lines of those e-mails provide a glimpse of the ways the Palins divvied up their responsibilities when she became governor in December 2006, less than two years before Republican Sen. John McCain pulled her onto the national political stage by nominating her as his vice presidential candidate.

You can read all those e-mails in msnbc.com’s searchable online archive, created in cooperation with a legal services company, Crivella West. We’re still going through the documents, and invite readers at msnbc.com to search for themselves, connect the dots with public issues, and send us an e-mail with your own analysis.

The still-secret e-mails between Todd Palin and senior officials reach into countless areas of state government and politics: potential board appointees, constituent complaints, use of the state jet, oil and gas production,  marine regulation, gas pipeline bids, postsecondary education, wildfires, native Alaskan issues, the state effort to save the Matanuska Maid dairy, budget planning, potential budget vetoes, oil shale leasing, “strategy for responding to media allegations,” staffing at the mansion, pier diem payments to the governor for travel, “strategy for responding to questions about pregnancy,” potential cuts to the governor’s staff, “confidentiality issues,” Bureau of Land Management land transfers and trespass issues and requests to the U.S. transportation secretary.

Also withheld: a discussion of how to reply to “media questions about Todd Palin’s work and potential conflict of interests.”

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