The Los Angeles Times reported:

These days, many such queries about Monegan — or anything else involving Palin’s record as governor — get diverted to McCain staffers. A former Justice Department prosecutor from New York flew in recently to advise the governor’s lawyer and field reporters’ calls about Monegan. Soon after, Palin’s willingness to cooperate in the Legislature’s probe of the affair ended.

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In stubbornly independent Alaska, the sudden intrusion of a political campaign into so many corners of state government — not to mention Wasilla, where a dozen or more campaign researchers and lawyers have also begun overseeing the release of any information about Palin’s years as mayor — has touched a raw nerve. McCain staffers have even been assigned to answer calls for Palin’s family members, who have been instructed not to talk.

The partisan spillover of the presidential campaign into the statehouse, political analysts here say, now threatens Palin’s most powerful political capital in Alaska: her commitment to transparency, her willingness to forge bipartisan alliances with Democrats to advance her legislative agenda, and her battle to upend the good ol’ boy network.

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“This Palin VP thing has Alaskans all stirred up. Much like Palin divided the Republican Party, she has managed to divide the state over her national candidacy,” conservative talk-show host Dan Fagan complained in a commentary last week.

“My fellow conservatives, remember how frustrating it was when Bill Clinton committed perjury and liberals looked the other way. As conservatives, we are no better unless we demand full disclosure from our governor,” he said. " . . . No politician is so popular and charismatic that they should be above accountability and telling the truth."

Most of the battle lines have been drawn around what is commonly called Troopergate: allegations that Monegan was fired in July because he had refused to terminate Palin’s former brother-in-law, a state trooper whose divorce from Palin’s sister was messy.

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Meanwhile, the blogs in Alaska have been full of rants about the McCain campaign. “A pack of high-powered East Coast lawyers are the new artisans of the Palin ‘image.’ If anyone has a question about Palin’s 20 months as governor, ask the McCain campaign, because apparently no one else can give you the answers. This is not going over well in Alaska,” one blogger wrote last week.