From Sean Cockerham in Anchorage –

Sheldon Fisher and Ralph Samuels are going after their opponents in early T.V. ads in what will be an advertising-filled campaign season.

Fisher, running against Congressman Don Young in the Republican primary, has two campaign spots. One says Young is beholden to special interests and mentions the Coconut Road earmark controversy, Young’s support of the “liberal union card check bill” and his attendance record in Congress.

I haven’t seen Samuels’ commercial but his campaign sent out a script saying the state spends too much while it has taxes that “punish the private sector and cost Alaskans jobs” (he’s talking about oil taxes but isn’t specific in the ad.) The Samuels campaign statement says he “humorously suggests” in the commercial that you’d think a Democrat was governor.

Poll numbers publicly released so far suggest Samuels and Bill Walker are way behind Sean Parnell in the Republican primary race for governor. But Walker today posted on his campaign web site that there’s a Craciun Research poll suggesting he’s actually in first place when likely primary voters are told he “supports the All-Alaska gasline,” while Parnell backs an AGIA line and Samuels a “small volume bullet line.”