Rumors abound that Chuck Kopp, legislative aide to Senator Fred Dyson, is telling folks that his boss is retiring and that he intends to run for the state Senate seat in Eagle River. Dyson was first elected to the legislature in 1996 and has served in the Senate since 2002.

Fiscal conservative former Rep. Nancy Dahlstrom is also rumored to be interested in the seat. However, if Rep. Bill Stoltze, who is also in that district decided to run for the Senate, it would be his for the taking.

Kopp was Sara Palin’s very short lived public safety commissioner who resigned after it came out that he had been had been investigated and reprimanded for a sexual harassment complaint made by an employee when he was the chief of police in Kenai.

Most recently, Kopp’s name has also been in the news for being the brother-in-law of Judge Paul Pozonsky. Alaska Department of Labor hired Pozonsky as hearing officer last year, even though he was being actively and openly investigated by the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office at the time of his hire. Too, the job was only open to Alaska residents. Pozonsky has recently been charged, among other things, for pilfering cocaine while on the bench in Pennsylvania.

Questions quickly arose, and keep arising, about possible political patronage. But Kopp has denied that he had anything to do with the hiring, and told the Anchorage Daily News in December that he didn’t know that Pozonsky had even applied for the job until the hiring was in process.

“I knew that he retired from his job (as a judge) and I was informed afterwards that he had applied. And I never communicated with Department of Labor or the governor’s office, or anybody. That was strictly all his doing,” Kopp told the ADN.

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com