Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin Read online

  In her mind, Sarah had suffered enough and was entitled to riches, just like biblical Jabez (a frequently used Palin password), whose prayers for wealth were similarly answered by God. All those promises to deliver a better Alaska to our children and use her job “to usher change” were uttered before she understood how un-fun and unglamorous being governor would become—a realization more apparent after biting the apple of national acclaim as the future of the Republican Party.

  On April 21, 2009, five months after she and McCain were defeated by the Obama-Biden ticket, in an email she wrote of the embarrassing fallout from her actions along the campaign trail:

  Ridiculous . . . paying for the damn McCain campaign’s attorneys to vet me!!! Unflippinbelievable. The campaign was so disingenuous, who in the heck has to pay for themselves to be vetted when they didn’t ask for it??? I didn’t hire any attorney—they did! They ran up a bill and left me with it—just like they did with the damn clothes issue. Paying out of my family’s pocket . . . for the privilege of campaigning with a bunch of rich, connected people who have no burden after the campaign ends. . . . They have $ left over in different campaign accounts, but we’re stuck with their bill and a lot of embarrassment. This is an unbelievable chapter in a book.

  (Note: the McCain campaign later revealed that this was not a vetting expense, but a legal bill associated with defending Sarah Palin against ethics charges in her dismissal of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan in a scandal that became known as “Troopergate.”)

  While Sarah Palin’s charisma energized followers, her fragile emotional makeup was unnerving. To stay in her good graces, counterattacking anyone who opposed her became top priority. We went after opponents in coordinated attacks, utilizing what we called “Fox News surrogates”: friendly blogs, ghostwritten op-eds, media opinion polls (that we often rigged), letters to editors, and carefully edited speeches. Nobody needed to be told what to do; we understood Sarah’s silent mandate to do something now. I personally participated in character assassinations, effectively casting undue ethical shadows on her opponents—something I deeply regret.

  Minor slights, many of which would have withered under their inconsequentiality, became magnified obsessions that made governing the state of Alaska a lesser priority. An opponent uttering a statement Sarah regarded as an attack demanded retribution and, if possible, the destruction of that person’s reputation.

  Love thy neighbor? Turn the other cheek? Forgiveness? These New Testament concepts were not part of Sarah’s Old Testament temperament. Both eyes for an eye was the rule, and vanquishing enemies became a goal. Nothing was more important, to any of us working alongside Sarah, than preserving her image or achieving retribution. Not our families, not our friends, not our financial well-being, not the state’s business. Nothing.

  I have no doubt Sarah’s belief in God is real and passionate. Hers just isn’t the same God that I knew growing up, the One who preached the importance of love, honor, and charity. That I turned my back on these teachings and offered her blind allegiance is a cross I will bear forever. As for Sarah, her values—in and of themselves—have little to do with my writing this book. From my insider’s perch from November 2005 well into 2009, I write because I am convinced that her priorities and personality are not only ill suited to head a political party or occupy national office, but would lead to a disaster of, well, biblical proportions.

  How we arrived at this day, where the once most popular governor in America would suddenly leave her fellow Alaskans high and dry, is an incredible story. In our tumultuous journey together, there is much to be learned about human nature, politics, and the dangers of investing blind allegiance in any one person.

  Having reviewed with my coauthors over fifty thousand emails (my nongovernment Yahoo! account emails, either to or from me) during the campaign and administration, my intention is to let recollections and Sarah’s own words tell the tale. You’ll find that the emails quoted in this book provide important insights—not only into the workings of Sarah’s inner circle and how her campaigns were run; but more important, they give us a picture of the mind and motives of Sarah Palin. All emails are reproduced as written—without correcting grammar, spelling, etc. Great care has been taken to quote these emails accurately and fairly, so let me tell you how we’ve identified them in text. Longer emails are set off from the regular text in a bold font; emails that are reproduced within a paragraph are identified with quotation marks and italic type. And one more detail: many of the email quotes are not the entire email, but just portions of it. When you see ellipses marks within an email, part of the email has been left out at that place. And following publishing style form, if the quoted portion of the email begins somewhere other than the beginning or ends somewhere other than the end, no ellipses are used at the beginning or end.

  I remain a staunch Fox News conservative, so let me say—to borrow a phrase—my observations throughout these pages are heavily documented in an effort to remain “fair and balanced.”

  PART ONE

  Only in Alaska

  1

  Alaska: Right Time

  and Right Place

  There is a place. Like no place on Earth.

  A land full of wonder, mystery, and danger!

  Some say to survive it: You need to be as mad as a hatter.

  —THE MAD HATTER, FROM DISNEY’S

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND, 2010

  Within weeks of Sarah declaring her candidacy for governor of Alaska in November 2005, I joined her crusade for change. Once in office, I continued as a troubleshooting jack-of-all-trades while holding the title director of boards and commissions. Working up to eighty hours a week, I maintained that position during her selection as Senator John McCain’s vice presidential running mate and continued after their defeat.

  Over our three years and nine months together, my perceptions of Sarah evolved radically, but whatever I thought, Sarah Louise Palin was becoming an amazing political and social phenomenon. Without experience, pedigree, or worldliness, individuals like her don’t often achieve statewide, much less worldwide, acclaim. Her story is a patchwork quilt of equal cuts beauty queen, lottery winner, political populist, Paris Hilton celebrity, and barnstorming evangelist. There is myth and reality to nearly every one of her story lines, whether it is God’s chosen one, devoted wife, mother, and political maverick—or unhinged diva, thin-skinned attack dog, and self-absorbed zealot. Sarah slipped into and out of these roles and personalities, unpredictably mixing and matching one to another. The complexity of the Palin psyche kept those around her alert, if not eternally anxious. That Sarah achieved eventual political rock stardom amid such interpersonal turmoil is an only-in-Alaska story.

  Despite being a geographically massive state, Alaska’s population is less than that of Austin, Texas. Of our roughly 700,000 residents, about 40 percent live in and around the city of Anchorage. Juneau, the state capital, has no direct roads leading in and is accessible only by boat or plane. While Alaska could literally reach from the Atlantic Coast to the Pacific Coast in the lower forty-eight, locals refer to the state as the “biggest small town” in America. Outside of Anchorage (population 280,000), Fairbanks (metropolitan area population of about 90,000), and Juneau (31,000), we Alaskans hail from towns too small to be dots on most maps.

  When I was two, my father moved our family from central California to Kodiak Island where he taught instrumental music and third grade. While the second largest island in the United States, Kodiak’s population was less than 10,000 back in 1972, with our hometown of Kodiak City home to about 1,100 of these residents. The island boasts rainforests and heavy timber harvesting in the northeast, black shale cliffs in the south overlooking both the Gulf of Alaska and the Shelikof Straits, and sandy, rural, windswept vistas in the southwest, down near Alitak Bay and Olga Bay.

  Like much of Alaska, Kodiak was a throwback to an earlier time, with bars outnumbering churches and schools several times over. Our first stoplight—a blink
ing affair at a three-way intersection—was installed around 1980. For my parents, the adjustment from sunny California couldn’t have been easy. In the worst of the December nights, I gathered branches or snapped apart pallets for firewood, but there was still little heat. In fact, it was not uncommon to find ice in the toilets come morning. We were poor even by local standards. If it wasn’t for the charity of our church, the Kodiak Bible Chapel, and the abundance of salmon, halibut, and crab, we’d have likely starved. As it was, our family of six (two brothers and a sister) often went to bed hungry. Paper routes, frying burgers at a Dairy Queen, and eventually working aboard sometimes dangerous commercial fishing boats became my way of contributing to the family income at an early age. These long hours instilled in me a willingness to work slavishly and an appreciation for people who struggle to keep their heads above water financially.

  And while a person never becomes accustomed to hardship, we on Kodiak Island accept our relative isolation, fickle weather, and the ever-present potential for natural disaster as the price we paid for a lifestyle of freedom and self-determination. For instance, we have a volcano just across Shelikof Strait, Mount Katmai, whose sixty-hour eruption in 1912 represented the largest of the twentieth century. The resulting blanket of soot washed down and covered Kodiak homes with ash that is still evident today when one digs down only a few inches. It was nearly seven years before the acid-choked waters of Kodiak could support a salmon industry again, but most of the island’s early-century population of five hundred elected to remain and rebuild their lives.

  On March 27, 1964, a second massive devastation struck the island. Centered less than one hundred miles away, the largest earthquake ever recorded in North America—magnitude 9.2 on the Richter scale—struck on Good Friday. Chimneys fell, windows shattered, and roofs caved. Devastating waves from an ensuing tsunami splintered homes and moorings. Like before, the citizens picked up, rebuilt, and started over. This far north, we know that it won’t be if we face a next challenge, but when.

  With these extremes, neighbor depends on neighbor when life hangs in the balance. Once we give our loyalty and word of honor, we do so with conviction and faith.

  In Alaskan politics, it is no less true.

  As Sarah Palin rose to prominence as a visible and sometimes controversial mayor from 1996 until 2002, she spoke from the heart about what we had in common as Alaskans, including a desire for freedom, a return to ethical governance, and the protection of our most prized and state-owned resources, especially oil. A tough-talking woman with a reputation for backing her words with action appealed to a broad cross section of our population. Head down, children in tow, and confrontational when necessary, she represented our unique spirit.

  She was photogenic, she was charming, and she spoke to our concerns. Sarah Palin seemed worthy of our faith and trust. She arrived on the political scene at the right time, at the right place; she was accessible, willing to boldly state her case, say “hello,” or simply smile and shake a neighbor’s hand.

  As for her experience, starting out as mayor of a tiny town like Wasilla from 1996 to 2002 wouldn’t inspire executive credibility in most of the civilized world. Yet with only six thousand residents, Wasilla was growing rapidly; it is now Alaska’s fourth-largest city with a population of eleven thousand. With a citizenry that prides itself on being independent thinkers—over 57 percent of registered Alaskan voters are not affiliated with either major political party—the burden of inexperience is not a major priority for most voters. That she engineered the construction of an indoor sports complex in tiny Wasilla was, by our standards, a big deal. (As we discovered years later, it also displayed her ability to downplay critics who complained she raised costs dramatically by failing to secure the land prior to construction, left the city $22 million in debt, and raised taxes to help with financing.)

  Natural resources and the state’s legacy of political corruption are by far the two most critical issues on voters’ minds. Not surprisingly, oil industry money was the primary engine in producing the massive ethical lapses in what eventually became known as the Corrupt Bastards Club: a group of eleven lawmakers who received large campaign contributions from executives of the state’s oilfield service companies in return for political favors; the ensuing investigation resulted in five fraud-related indictments. Emphasizing her record for combating and attacking those whom she called evildoers, Sarah practiced the art of sticking to talking points that resonated with voters: business as usual, bad; oil companies, bad; all establishment politicians and bureaucrats, very, very bad. In a close but unsuccessful bid for lieutenant governor in 2002, she put herself in a bright statewide spotlight.

  Friend and foe began predicting that this “no more business as usual” candidate was a force to be reckoned with. Stories of the housewife-ex-mayor who was toting kids door to door in a red wagon to solicit votes brought to mind that all-important pioneer spirit and mother-bear tenaciousness. Later that image would transition with her famous campaign question, “What is the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull?”

  By this time, I was married, with a toddler and an infant, and I had spent several years in Anchorage working in the airline industry, first as a baggage handler and then in middle management. These responsibilities did not, however, lessen my financial struggles or grueling hours. With economic and personal struggles unabated, I became aware of the nasty state of Alaska’s political elite, people who sold out to special interests in what was a reverse Robin Hood. Our bountiful state wealth was being handed over to oil and gas company executives, to the detriment of Alaskan citizens. My own Republican Party, including Frank Murkowski, had sold us out for political gain.

  When then senator Frank Murkowski (a man we came to call “Murky”) ran for and won election as the state’s tenth governor in 2002, he couldn’t wait to pounce onto a pile of political scat. The seventy-year-old lifetime politician had, as governor, the privilege of appointing his own successor in the U.S. Senate. After interviewing several candidates for show (including Sarah), he appointed his daughter Lisa to the powerful position. In a backroom deal, the senate seat went from father to daughter as if it were a family-owned asset. The governor’s subsequent self-serving actions galled Sarah and thousands like me.

  Much later, in reference to Governor Murkowski’s shocking appointment, Sarah wrote to me, “I despise dynastic succession.” As far as Sarah and many of us on the sidelines were concerned, differences with the Alaska GOP political machine were irreconcilable. Somebody needed to address this egregiousness. I for one knew in my heart that this upstart beauty was the only person willing and able to take on that challenge. While Murky had the GOP machine and big donors, I believed that Sarah Palin had God’s blessing and people’s love and faith. Check and mate.

  As a distant observer, I perceived a principled, clean-house Republican, unafraid of the entrenched good ol’ boys. Possessing Ronald Reagan’s conservatism and principles, she was David to Murkowski’s Goliath. And many of us suspected this was only the beginning. Sarah held similarly larger ambitions. During her 1996 run for mayor of Wasilla, her campaign manager, Laura Chase, once said to her, “You know, Sarah, within ten years you could be governor.”

  “Governor?” Sarah answered. “I want to be president.”

  As if hand delivered by fate, Sarah found a way to establish her anticorruption chops. Shortly after the outrage over dynastic succession—and maybe in an attempt to placate a potential foe—Governor Murkowski appointed the increasingly vocal Sarah Palin to a prestigious and well-paid post on the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (AOGCC), an agency that helps determine how best to safely bring Alaska’s North Slope oil and gas to market. Within the first year of a six-year term, Sarah called out a fellow commissioner for ethical lapses and later resigned when told she was under a gag order and could not publicize her complaints. The commissioner in question happened to be the Republican Party chair, Randy Ruedrich. He eventually paid a hefty fine for p
assing along confidential committee documents to oil interests. Equally troubling to many was that as GOP Party chair, Ruedrich’s job was to solicit oil money from the industry’s top executives for political candidates. That he was simultaneously on the AOGCC was another example of grimy politics. What’s more, Sarah also exposed him for running Republican Party business from his AOGCC office, a violation of using state resources for political activity.

  When later running for the GOP nomination for governor, Team Palin summarized this saga in an email written to counteract an editorial in the conservative Anchorage Times suggesting that she was a political lightweight:

  Ruedrich was fined the largest ethics violation amount in state history. . . . I was the chairman of AOGCC, and was Ruedrich’s ethics supervisor. I was not going to let the integrity of this quasi-judicial agency go down the toilet by allowing the many questionable actions of a political appointment (who also happened to be the GOP boss) go unchecked. . . .

  As Ruedrich was investigated by the Dept. Of Law, Murkowski promised to set the record straight . . . so the integrity of AOGCC, which regulates 20% of the U.S. domestic supply of energy, would be restored. Murkowski broke that promise . . .

  I’m the only Republican candidate who stood up to Ruedrich and Murkowski . . . I did so at personal cost, including leaving a $124,000-year top-level state job.

  While Sarah exaggerated the importance of the AOGCC (Alaska supplies not 20 percent but only about 2.4 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy), she displayed an early hyperbolic willingness to attack and defend.