The acting commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Cora Campbell, is a 31-year-old woman from Petersburg with a college degree in education, a long family history in the commercial fishing business, and a reputation for having served two governors well. Her father, Gary Slaven, was once chairman of the Alaska Board of Fisheries. Those who know the daughter say she is smart.

State e-mails indicate she had the sense to caution former shadow Gov. Todd Palin, a Bristol Bay commercial fisherman, against telling his wife and then-Gov. Sarah, to invite floating processors into the bay to alleviate the fears of fellow fishermen of a possible market glut of salmon. A market glut would, of course, drive down prices, and no fisherman wants that. Campbell, then Cora Crome, wisely warned that inviting in floating processors in an effort to keep salmon prices high in a fishery in which the Palins were working could raise ethics problems for the governor.

And, as everyone knows, Gov. Palin had ethics problems. They were some of the reasons she said she quit halfway through her term. There were too many complaints, she said. That Campbell helped Sarah avoid another one is to Campbell's credit. So is the fact that Gov. Sean Parnell, the governor now in charge, says he likes and trusts her.

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These are the facts on which she should stand for confirmation before the Alaska Legislature, and the rest of the crap being uttered by her supporters, with a hint of the same coming out of her office, should stop now.

Campbell does not have "decades'' of experience in Alaska fisheries, as some of her supporters claimed this week, and she has not, as claimed on the ADF&G website, "been working in the fishing industry since the early 1990s."

Campbell was 11 years old in 1990. She would have been 16 by the middle of the decade. In the early 1990s, she might have been riding along on her dad's fishing boat at times; she might even have been pitching in on deck. But she certainly wasn't working in the sense that any adults know working unless Slaven was beating her with a whip like some modern day version of Jack London's "Wolf Larsen,'' the captain of the vessel "Ghost'' in the novel "The Sea Wolf.'' And I truly, truly doubt that.

What Campbell, or her staff, is doing now is engaging in what you might call "resume inflation." It's the wrong road to head down.

It came to a head this week when the Grand Camp of the Alaska Native Brotherhood voiced the opinion that the Legislature should refuse to confirm Campbell as commissioner because of her limited experience.

"We have serious concerns that someone so young and inexperienced and who has such close ties to the commercial fishing industry will lack the maturity and judgment to negotiate the difficult issues facing Alaska and to serve the many constituents for Alaska's wildlife resources," the Brotherhood's Richard Jackson said. "We are urging Gov. Parnell to broaden the search for qualified candidates and to weigh the concerns of the ANB-ANS Grand Camp."

This led one of her supporters to pick up the commissioner's suggestion of lengthy experience and run with it.