1950s

By the 1950s, he was the finance chairman of the Republican Party and, in 1952, received the backing of businessmen in Anchorage for the territorial governorship, but Benjamin Heintzleman was appointed instead.^[5][6] In 1953, Hickel along with the national committeewoman for Alaska, the vice chairman for the territorial party and his wife went to the Republican Party's western conference in San Francisco and was later elected as head of the Anchorage Republican Club.^[7][8] In December 1953, he and eighteen other prominent Republicans from Anchorage sent a letter to Governor Heintzleman requesting the resignation of Robert DeArmond and that he be replaced with somebody from Anchorage, and they later telegrammed Secretary of the Intertior Douglas McKay asking him to build up the party and also asked Heintzleman to reconsider his decision to cancel his meeting with them.^[9][10]

First governorship

Hickel in 1969

Hickel was elected as Alaska's second governor in the 1966 state general elections, defeating his Democratic rival and incumbent governor Bill Egan. Hickel's first governorship, the second in the young state's history as well as Alaska's first Republican governorship, oversaw the discovery of oilfields at Prudhoe Bay in 1968, a factor that would prove politically decisive in later years. Hickel, a moderate Republican and environmentalist, did not push for heavy oil exploitation. Nevertheless, during his first few months in office, his administration approved the sale of oil leases on 37,000 acres of the North Slope despite opposition from Alaskan Natives. In November 1968, Hickel's department of transportation began construction on a 400-mile road from Livengood to Prudhoe Bay that would later be known as the Hickel Highway.^[11] The same year, Hickel appointed Ted Stevens to the United States Senate to replace the recently deceased Bob Bartlett.^[12]

Like his predecessor Egan, Hickel sought to improve relations with Alaskan Natives in seeking resolutions on Native land claims. A group of Native Americans from Interior Alaska, including Morris Thompson and Don and Jules Wright, played major roles in his 1966 campaign and subsequent governorship.

Interior secretary

The Nixon cabinet poses for a photograph, days after Nixon's inauguration as president. Hickel is slightly left of center.

Hickel in 1970

Richard Nixon's election as U.S. President in late 1968 led to an offer to Hickel from the President-elect to serve in the United States Cabinet as Interior Secretary. Initially, Hickel declined the cabinet offer. Nixon replied that his decision was final. Hickel would recall years later that he cried afterward and announced that he would be resigning from the governorship to go to Washington.^[13]

Hickel's nomination was met with what he later wrote was a newspaper "smear" campaign of false and "crazy accusations" that he had a corrupt and anti-environmentalist record as governor.^[14] Opposition to his nomination was led by influential columnists Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson. Newspapers opposing his nomination included the New York Times^[15] and the Los Angeles Times. In the Senate, his confirmation was opposed by, among others, Democratic senators Walter Mondale and George McGovern. Sierra Club director David Brower testified in opposition to Hickel. The Senate nevertheless confirmed his nomination on 23 January 1969.^[16]

Upon becoming the federal Secretary of the Interior, Hickel proved to be a strong environmentalist, supporting strong legislation that put liabilities on oil companies operating offshore oil rigs as well as demanding environmental safeguards on Alaska's growing oil industry.^[17]

Hickel's centrist voice inside the Nixon Administration eventually led to confrontations with the President. In 1970 following the shooting of college students at Kent State University by the Ohio National Guard, Hickel wrote a letter critical of Nixon's Vietnam War policy and urging him to give more respect to the views of young people critical of the war, writing in part, "I believe this administration finds itself today embracing a philosophy which appears to lack appropriate concern for the attitude of a great mass of Americans – our young people." That dissent garnered worldwide media attention, and on November 25, 1970, Hickel was fired over the letter. Days before he lost the office, Hickel had told CBS' 60 Minutes that he would not quit under pressure and that he would go away only "with an arrow in my heart, not a bullet in my back."^[17][18] Hickel's undersecretaries, such as Leslie Glasgow, who was in charge of Fish, Wildlife, Parks, and Marine Resources, were also dismissed. After less than two years in Washington, Glasgow returned to Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where he was a professor with expertise in the study of wildlife in the marshes.^[19]

Second governorship

A blanket primary held on August 28, 1990, resulted in Arliss Sturgulewski, a member of the Alaska Senate from Anchorage since 1979, winning the Republican nomination for governor of Alaska. Winning the Democratic nomination was Tony Knowles, the immediate past mayor of Anchorage.^[20]

The Republicans chose as their nominee for lieutenant governor Jack Coghill, a fellow state senator from Nenana. Coghill had held elected office continuously since 1957 with the exception of relinquishing the mayorship of Nenana for approximately two years, when the 1967 flood forced him to move from the city limits temporarily. Coghill had also briefly worked as a special assistant to Hickel during his first governorship.

Sturgulewski, who won the Republican nomination for the second consecutive time against mostly conservative opposition, was criticized by many Republicans for her positions on issues such as abortion and capital punishment. Following a contentious meeting between Sturgulewski and prominent conservative Republicans held in the home of David Cuddy, Coghill felt that it was impossible to continue to run on the ticket with Sturgulewski. After Coghill met first with Hickel and then with Edgar Paul Boyko, the idea was hatched to run a slate of Hickel and Coghill under the Alaskan Independence Party banner. AIP chairman Joe Vogler was brought from Fairbanks to Anchorage immediately prior to the deadline for political parties to substitute their nominees.

John Lindauer and Jerry Ward, who had been chosen in the primary as the AIP ticket (and would, eight years later, win another blanket primary as the Republican Party's nominees for governor and lieutenant governor), stepped aside, largely alluding to the illness of Lindauer's wife as the reason.^[21] Hickel and Coghill prevailed in the general election.

Although he had common ground with the Alaskan Independence Party in fighting restrictions on land use imposed by federal environmentalism, Hickel had been one of the most influential historical proponents of Alaska statehood and never endorsed the AIP's secessionism, prompting some party faithful to petition for his recall. He rejoined the Republican Party in April 1994, near the end of his term.^[22]

Hickel wanted to build a water pipeline from Alaska to California in 1991.^[23]