snedden.t was snedden's connections with fred seaton, secretary of interior, helped ted stevens to get a job as a solicitor with the department of interior. so all this time that this was happening, snedden was working on the outside, and ted stevens was sort of laboring inside the bowels, with fred seaton of the interior department, pushing alaska statehood. >> narrator: together seaton and stevens put interior's resources to work helping the statehood cause with information and occasionally political clout. >> seaton, snedden, and stevens worked very closely together, not so much to gain votes for statehood as the tennessee plan delegation was doing but to neutralize the opponents, or the obstructionists, as i call them, who were always doing things to try to prevent the bill from getting to the floor. >> narrator: the statehood campaign was media savvy. alaskans understood that national press coverage would influence congress. [musical intro] ♪ >> good evening. this is see it now, produced

snedden met with editorial boards of major national newspapers. >> what snedden did with the editorsnd publishers in america was sell them on the virtues of alaska, of what alaska could add to the union, that alaska would be an economic boost to the country. >> the george gallup poll in the late 1950s--1956, '57, when congress was debating the alaska statehood bill-- was running in the high 80s for statehood. 80 anything in a gallup poll is eyebrow-raising. >> narrator: yet a few powerful committee chairmen, mostly conservative southern democrats, kept the statehood bill bo

snedden met with editorial boards of major national newspapers. >> what snedden did with the editorsnd publishers in america was sell them on the virtues of alaska, of what alaska could add to the union, that alaska would be an economic boost to the country. >> the george gallup poll in the late 1950s--1956, '57, when congress was debating the alaska statehood bill-- was running in the high 80s for statehood. 80 anything in a gallup poll is eyebrow-raising. >> narrator: yet a few powerful committee chairmen, mostly conservative southern democrats, kept the statehood bill bottled up with no chance for a floor vote. the alaskans needed some kind of political dynamite to explode that logjam, or statehood would never burst free. as 1958 began, alaska's statehood delegation marked the anniversary of their arrival in washington, d.c. they still had no prospect for a vote on statehood. ernest gruening knew one of the keys would be the wily majority leader of the senate. >> we have a majority of members on both houses according to their statements to us. but lyndon johnson could achieve or k