The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin

  In such an adulatory atmosphere little attention was paid to the fact that, as she’d done in Wasilla ten years earlier, Sarah was peopling her administration largely with high school friends and/or born-again Christians, whose qualifications in no way matched their job descriptions.

  She named born-again Talis Colberg, who ran a one-man law office in Palmer, as state attorney general, and Wasilla High friends Joe Schmidt, Franci Havemeister, and Curtis Menard respectively as director of prisons, director of the division of agriculture, and director of the Alaska Railroad. This took cronyism to a level that not even Frank Murkowski had dared to contemplate.

  The first glimpse she gave the public of how her religion spilled into areas of policy came five days before Christmas, when she said that while she had no choice but to comply with a state supreme court ruling that extended health and retirement benefits to same-sex partners of state employees, she would seek an amendment to the state constitution that would overturn the court order. She signed a bill that called for a nonbinding referendum on the issue in April.

  As the legislature convened for its annual session in mid-January, Sarah grew nervous about delivering her first State of the State address. “This was the moment,” John Bitney said. “This was it. She was going to stand in front of the legislature and give a live, televised, forty-minute ‘what the hell is going on’ speech to a bunch of political insiders who thought she was a fluke.”

  Bitney, a friend of Sarah’s since their days together in a junior high school band, was perhaps the most politically astute of the campaign operatives who’d taken jobs in the new administration. As Sarah’s legislative director, he was particularly eager for her first major address as governor to be a success.

  He spoke to her privately only minutes before she appeared. Her nervousness was apparent. “It was time for her to go on, and I remember coming in and saying, ‘Sarah, let’s say a little prayer together.’ The best thing I’d found to calm her down before big moments was prayer. I held her hands and we bowed our heads and she gave a nice little out-loud prayer asking for strength and for the ability to speak from the heart and praying that God would help her deliver a good speech. Then she went out and she hit it out of the park, every bit as much as she did at the Republican National Convention.”

  The highlight of the speech was her announcement that she would jettison the natural gas pipeline agreement that Frank Murkowski had reached with energy producers and would instead present a bill called the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act (AGIA) during the legislative session.

  For a generation, Alaska had been seeking a natural gas pipeline to complement the Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline that carried North Slope oil from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez. AGIA would be Sarah’s attempt finally to turn the dream into reality. “Like a knight slaying a dragon, she used a mighty ax to kill the proposed contract that former governor Frank Murkowski negotiated with the state’s major oil producers,” the Daily News wrote.

  Columnist Tim Bradner added, “Gov. Sarah Palin put on a superb performance in her first State of the State address … She was articulate, forceful, cheerful, warm and full of energy as she laid out her vision for the state and a natural gas pipeline. It was fun to watch her work the crowd in the legislative chambers, as if she were still on the campaign trail. Some political leaders sway events by sheer charm and personality, and Palin may have this gift.”

  Her charm was less evident offstage. During her early months in office, another of her long-suppressed attitudes, her distaste for people of color, became manifest. As governor, Frank Murkowski had given state jobs to about two dozen members of racial or ethnic minorities. After he lost the primary, he directed all state workers to help Sarah get elected. About twenty minority employees formed a coalition called the Diversity Group. They worked as campaign volunteers for Sarah when not on the state clock. Almost as soon as she was elected, she ordered them all fired.

  “She didn’t keep any of them,” John Bitney told me. “I said, ‘Wow, you could at least keep one, for appearance’s sake,’ but she wanted every one of them gone: Filipinos, Hispanics, blacks, Samoans, Koreans. Nobody who was dark skinned got a job and a lot who were dark skinned lost jobs to make space for the white guys. Her chief of staff, Mike Tibbles, came in one day and said, ‘They’re all fired. That’s what she wants.’ I was like, ‘All of them?’ He said, yes, all the dark-skinned people had to go.”

  The racially motivated firings received no attention in the press. “None of these were director-level positions. They were like fifth-tier, so nobody knew. They were fired only because they weren’t white. I remember the NAACP threatening to picket at the Anchorage inaugural ball in March 2007, but they backed off. Sarah just isn’t comfortable in the presence of dark-skinned people.”

  She had pledged to cut state spending, but she did not hesitate to use government money to finance initiatives that might turn her personal religious convictions into law. The referendum on same-sex benefits was a case in point. Sarah believed that a strong anti-gay turnout would pressure legislators into placing the constitutional amendment on the 2008 general election ballot. She therefore pushed the referendum bill through the legislature, even setting aside $1.2 million to cover its cost. This was more than four times the amount that had been paid in benefits to the fewer than one hundred same-sex couples who qualified.

  Anchorage Democratic state representative Mike Doogan said, “If our purpose is to find out what Alaskans think about same-sex benefits, we should pay twelve thousand bucks and get a scientific opinion poll, not pay $1.2 million for an unscientific poll.”

  BOTH SARAH and Todd had told people in Wasilla that if Sarah were elected governor, one of her first orders of business would be to have Mike Wooten fired.

  In January, Todd went to Walt Monegan’s office and recited the laundry list of the trooper’s offenses that he and Sarah had compiled. Monegan explained that all those had already been investigated, leading to Wooten’s suspension. He also said that if he fired Wooten now, for conduct for which he’d already been disciplined, the trooper would likely sue the state and would no doubt prevail.

  Todd said he wanted criminal charges filed against Wooten for shooting the moose—which was quickly becoming the most famous dead moose in Alaskan history—without a permit. Monegan explained that because the incident had occurred more than three years earlier it was unlikely that a prosecutor would pursue the charge. Further, if charges were filed, they might be filed also against the woman who had willingly allowed Wooten to shoot the moose on her permit, and against the man who’d butchered it knowing it had been illegally taken.

  As Monegan put it in a later deposition, “Todd Palin reacted very negatively to that assessment and insisted that Trooper Wooten and only Trooper Wooten should be charged.”

  SARAH INTRODUCED her AGIA bill on March 2. The “inducement” part of the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act obligated the state to pay up to $500 million to offset the costs that a pipeline builder would face. There were some who questioned whether such an expenditure was consistent with Sarah’s pledge of fiscal conservatism, but the outright lust that Alaskan legislators felt for a gas pipeline was so intense that it overrode such concerns.

  Looking at Sarah’s first hundred days in office, the Daily News found that, unlike her rocky start as mayor of Wasilla, she was “enjoying an unusually long honeymoon with both lawmakers and the public.” The newspaper did its part to keep the honeymoon going, writing that Sarah had “the aura of Joan of Arc” and, later, that “Compared to the legislature, Gov. Palin looks like Joan of Arc, with a better smile and personality.”

  A poll put her approval rating at 73 percent, with only 7 percent of respondents expressing a negative view. Reports had even surfaced on a few blogs that she could be the vice-presidential nominee on a ticket headed by Rudy Giuliani. “Oh, come on,” Sarah said. “I got enough to worry about here in Alaska for the next four years.”

  As spring 2007 approached, things could sca
rcely have been better for her. Not only did Todd win the Iron Dog, but Wasilla High won both the boys’ and girls’ state basketball championships. No longer could Wasilla be called “The Hovel That Hugs the Highway” or “The Mistake by the Lake,” as appeared in the Daily News.

  Moreover, the referendum that Sarah hoped would lead to a constitutional amendment to deny health benefits to gay partners of state employees passed by a six-point margin—hardly a public clamor, but enough to motivate the House Judiciary Committee to approve moving forward with the proposed amendment.

  On April 24 she chose a grizzly bear with a salmon in its jaws as the symbol to appear on the Alaska state quarter. “I think nothing could be more Alaskan,” she said. “I like to think this is a mama grizzly doing what she does best: taking care of her young.”

  And Sarah’s relentless lobbying for AGIA paid off. Bradner’s Legislative Digest website noted that “Lawmakers would like to do real surgery on this plan, but Palin has them cowed with an aggressive public relations campaign that combines weekly radio talks and op-ed articles.” The extent of the cowing became clear on May 11, when the legislature passed the AGIA bill with only a single dissenting vote.

  In late May, polls showed Sarah’s approval rating climbing to an astonishing 90 percent. She had become the most dazzling star ever to shine in the Alaskan political firmament.

  Anchorage right-wing radio talk show host Dan Fagan wrote in the Daily News in late June that “Tony Soprano has nothing on Sarah Palin. A small town hockey mom with the clout of a mob boss … Barracuda Palin can have you swimming with the fishes, never to be heard from again … While she’s whacking people left and right she also charms the public and the media … How does she do it? … She has a heart of gold [and] … she is obsessed with integrity.”

  She remained obsessed also with Mike Wooten, complaining to Walt Monegan in a midsummer e-mail, “He’s still a trooper and he still carries a gun and he still tells anyone who will listen that he will ‘never work for that b————(me)’ because he has such anger and distain [sic] towards my family.”

  In mid-July, at Todd’s insistence, she fired John Bitney. This was his punishment for having dared to embark on a romantic relationship with the estranged wife of a friend of Todd’s. Bitney’s abrupt dismissal demonstrated how much power Todd wielded in Sarah’s administration. Andrew Halcro wrote on his blog, “In six months, Bitney guided the governor’s policies through the legislature, including her hallmark, AGIA. But John Bitney made the fatal employment mistake: he got on the bad side of Todd.”

  Bitney agrees with Halcro’s assessment. Speaking to me at his home in Big Lake in late August 2010, he said, “Todd and I were very close friends. When he was in Juneau, he’d come down to my office every day. I’d boot everybody out and shut the door and it was just the two of us sitting there, a couple of old friends saying, ‘Here we are in this position and, wow, what a crazy ride to get here’ and ‘Hey, did you see so-and-so?’ and ‘Check out the caboose on that one’ … just buddies. We could let our hair down.”

  Or so he thought. “I was in the inner inner circle, and that’s what created the dramatic blast,” Bitney said. “Debbie was very close to Todd. He’d relied on her to help him raise their kids, and Scott was a friend and business partner. He had woven them into his family, and by being perceived as breaking up the marriage, I was violating his family circle. It was maybe even worse than breaking up his own family, because it was the part of his family he thought was stable. It was the best part of his family from that point of view.”

  Bitney had no doubt that in firing him Sarah was only obeying Todd’s order. “Todd is the one you want to watch out for,” he told me, “because he’s the most emotionally unstable. Sarah is just flighty in terms of, she goes with the wind, the flavor of the day. She wants to see herself on TV every day, so whatever that takes. She may harbor a grudge—and she does—but she doesn’t act upon them unless she finds that it’s in her interest, that it can be woven into whatever her script is for the day. She doesn’t forget, but she waits for the opportunity to come around to get you.

  “Todd—oh, no, he’ll go proactive. He’ll call in the carpenters to put up the fence; he’ll not only get me fired, he’ll call my new boss and try to get me fired again. Todd is the one who’s really vindictive. He holds grudges and he’s obsessive about them and he doesn’t let them go.”

  Afterward, if anyone asked Todd about Bitney, all he would say was “Who?”

  Later in July, expanding her horizons, Sarah flew to Kuwait to visit Alaska National Guard troops stationed there. Except for vacations in Hawaii, it was the first time she’d traveled outside North America. She was asked how she felt about Track enlisting. “I would be willing, because I support our troops, and I support my son’s independence,” she said.

  Spurred on by a worshipful press, Alaskans could scarcely contain their midsummer enthusiasm for Sarah. At the annual Governor’s Picnic in Anchorage on July 28, she shouted, “I love you!” to the crowd. The Daily News reported that the crowd “replied in kind in so many ways, lifting thumbs, smiling big and screaming words of encouragement …”

  Was physical attractiveness part of her magic? Absolutely, a female singer said from the bandstand. “Is our governor a babe, or what?” she asked rhetorically.

  Sarah was so popular that some speculated that in 2008 she might challenge Alaska’s congressman Don Young or even U.S. senator Ted Stevens in a Republican primary. Both men were under FBI investigation as the Justice Department extended its corruption probe from Juneau to Washington, D.C. But such a bid, Sarah told the Daily News, “isn’t real bright on my radar screen. Just being governor is keeping my plate very full.”

  Having already spurned Juneau for her inauguration, Sarah announced in late August that she planned to be the first Alaskan governor not to live in the state capital year-round. She’d live in Wasilla and work out of her Anchorage office except when the legislature was in session. She did not announce that she’d be billing the state a per diem charge for every night she slept at home.

  She kicked off September by giving a lengthy interview to one of Alaska’s most able journalists, Tom Kizzia of the Daily News. Discussing the cozy relationship Alaska politicians had long enjoyed with the state’s business leaders, she said, “I am not from that other world. My dad, as a school teacher, wasn’t a mover and shaker developer making big bucks off of property development. My husband isn’t that way. I am not raising my kids to be that way … If you want to be in public service, it is being willing to serve Alaskans for the right reasons. It is having to have a servant’s heart … It’s not to get rich.”

  Kizzia mentioned complaints that it was a conflict of interest for Todd to work for BP while she, as governor, was making decisions that affected the oil company’s ventures in Alaska. Sarah seemed ruffled. “But what is unethical about Todd working?” she said, neatly dodging the point of the question. “He’s created to work. I respect him for wanting to work. I would disrespect him if the father of my children did not want to work. Todd loves his job. He loves his crew. He loves the schedule and I say more power to him.”

  When Kizzia asked how her children had adapted to her being Alaska’s chief executive, Sarah softly began what would grow into a deafening drumbeat: that some people were picking on her kids. “Just a few individual incidents,” she said, “Like, you know, ‘Your Mom sucks as governor. So here’s what I’m going to do to you next time I see you.’ Something like that coming around in an e-mail to one of the girls.”

  She never produced evidence of such an incident. But at that point the Alaskan press and public were believing everything Sarah said.

  She added that the burdens of the governorship put no strain on her family because they were used to her working around the clock. “Don’t know if people are aware,” she said, “but being mayor and manager of the city of Wasilla for those six years was quite taxing also, timewise, and it took a huge commitment to
get the job done there also.”

  Kizzia didn’t seem aware that far from handling managerial chores herself, as mayor, Sarah had employed a full-time manager to deal with Wasilla’s day-to-day business.

  Returning to her comfort level, Kizzia asked, “What does it feel like to be called the most popular politician in America?”

  “Well, I haven’t heard that one,” she said, but then attributed her popularity to “Americans’ desire for change.” She didn’t say “Alaskans”; she said “Americans.”

  It would be almost a year before John McCain would wave his wand, but Kizzia mentioned “talk out there” of Sarah being a vice-presidential nominee.

  “Um, haven’t really contemplated that.”

  Was she sure she wouldn’t be tempted by the prospect of higher office?

  “Something very, very, very drastic would have had to have happened to get me to think along those lines,” she said, “because, again, I feel that I certainly have a responsibility and an obligation that I will be fulfilling. That is putting my name on the dotted line to serve as governor for four years; that’s what I believe I should be doing.”

  Stephen Haycox, professor of history at the University of Alaska Anchorage, soon chimed in with an op-ed piece for the Daily News that ran under the headline “Palin Interview Bolsters Positive Image.” He wrote that Sarah’s girl-next-door persona was a “refreshing image at a time when the rich and famous and the hobnobbers are in trouble.”

  Haycox noted that “Some critics, particularly those in her own party, have suggested that the governor is simply a canny politico, capitalizing on the missteps and isolation of her predecessor, cynically cultivating an image of hometown wholesomeness for the sake of ambition.”

  He said, however, “her interview did not suggest canniness; rather, it sounded thoroughly genuine, as have most of her public statements since she first broke into public consciousness,” and he quoted George Burns about the qualities most important to an actor. “Sincerity and honesty,” Burns said. “If you can fake those you’ve got it made.”