Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin (12 page)

Just as signage and visuals built name recognition and signaled momentum, we understood that accessing and playing to what Sarah would later label the “lame-stream media” was vital. In her own frenzied way, she surreptitiously came up with a brilliant—though not ethically superior—way of landing free access to newspaper space. As with many actions, this was born of her frustration with and anger at our rivals.

Sarah grew agitated over her perception that John Binkley was copying our campaign website and stealing her best lines. In this email to Curtis Smith, owner of the public relations firm we used for web design, Sarah went ballistic:

Three days and much discussion later, copycat foes were still a hot-button topic, but this time Sarah was upset over our ideas being ripped by Troy Maulden, the Alaskan Independence Party candidate for lieutenant governor. It began when Sarah emailed me,
“Now Troy's doing the ‘take a stand' thing, is including excerpts from his GOP address, and is referencing Abe Lincoln . . . all things we've been doing!”

As I came to understand what was expected of me, I fed into Sarah's frenzies. Taking initiative, I emailed Maulden:
“Grrr . . . Troy. First you adopted ‘more of the same' and now ‘take a stand'??? Make up your own stuff buddy!!!! You're an excellent researcher . . . but this is getting frustrating man.”

Unable to shake free of her frustrations with John Binkley, whose webpage imitations continued to fester, Sarah went back to that topic in an email to me:

Next day, the outrage continued to build.
“Just heard Bink's radio commercial about ethics and experience . . . gag . . . we said that first.”

Nobody cared much that nearly every campaign in history spoke of ethics and experience; they now belonged to us.

As we swore that ours was a high-road campaign, Sarah's outrage over perceived intellectual pilfering did not seem an overreaction—the color red and references to President Lincoln, as well as ethics, were ours. Stealing her words and ideas seemed abusive and wrong, like the kid sitting next to someone copying his hard-earned math answers on the final exam. Only we couldn't raise our hand and tell our teacher. To me, there seemed little or no recourse. Sarah, however, had a brainstorm. In the midst of an April '06 outrage, she wrote a draft for a letter to the editor and asked us what we thought.

My response? I loved it. My only suggestion was that she change “Johne,” since she was the only one I knew who called him that.

On its face, the letter looked like a joke, having Sarah sing her own praises, leaving an identity trail by using Johne instead of John, and sounding as if a random supporter might actually notice and care enough about a website rip-off to make it a major attack point. A few weeks later, the
Peninsula Clarion
newspaper carried the letter to the editor. Except for a bit of needed polishing, this was identical to the original draft. Sarah had found a name to take the place of
XXXXXX
in the husband of one of our web designers, who signed and claimed authorship.

Despite knowing about the ruse, we felt proud to have Sarah's words see the light of day. Nothing struck me as wrong about attaching someone else's name to a letter written by the candidate about herself, especially since Sarah's mounting frustration was like air pressure threatening to burst a balloon. This direct attack on Binkley provided her important psychological decompression.

Largely from this successful placement, we realized that, like omnipresent red signs, letters appearing in the editorial pages of the
Anchorage Daily News
, the
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
, the
Juneau Empire
, and a host of smaller newspapers across the state were important for message building and demonstrating grassroots support. One supporter summed up their power when she wrote me,
“When I was talking to people in line at the post office last night, almost everyone I chatted with in line made reference to the letters to the editor. Frank, I see what
you mean, that is an extremely powerful venue to get the message out to the masses.”

Sarah, deciding this would become a priority, gushed,
“That's brilliant about the letters. It's free, it's powerful. . . . I know I always read the letters to the editor, sometimes I learn more there than in any other parts of media!”
In another instance, she noted,
“It is such a quick and easy way to keep your name and message in the limelight.”

The issue became: how do we take maximum advantage of this free publicity? As with campaign buttons, we'd become a factory and mass-produced them. To do so, we enlisted secret letter writers. One longtime Palin friend sent in four letters:
“OK, I'm all lettered out for now. Here's four. Do with them as you will. I know the ADN editor is pretty sharp. I don't know how you can make sure that no 2 people sign the same letter but I'm sure you have something in mind.”

As for how we might find names to claim authorship, Sarah had ideas:
“We need to find folks to sign & submit—even Trevor—and I don't think he's considered a ‘campaign volunteer' is he? so they wouldn't print that as a disclaimer. So, Trevor's one. Stephanie can be two. Tara three. Dave four. (I mean their peeps . . . or their family members.)”

By the time we had this process humming, there were letters of high praise for Sarah and harsh criticism of opponents submitted en masse to the entire print media. Coordination became tricky, so we provided specific instructions:

Sarah realized there was a need for discretion.

Even while we were operating a letter-manufacturing plant, Sarah, always aware of the importance of image, cautioned:
“gotta' just make sure it doesn't look like a manufacturing plant of letters going on . . . and that they're not dups. thanks guys! (I know you already know that!). love ya . . . you're all AWESOME.”

In an email string on April 4, 2006, Sarah wrote,
“I feel like we are the last of the innocents.”
In that same email she spelled out in blunt terms what was required of our coconspirators:
“let's remember to tell people that when they offer to help but don't know what to do. They can loan us their names for a letter, and they have to be ready to confirm that they authored the letter when all those various newspapers call them for confirmation.”

If it sounds as if Sarah was asking the borrowed names to lie when editors asked if they authored a letter, it's because we “last of the innocents” were doing exactly that. What is amazing to me is that nobody—not me, not Sarah, nor anyone I am aware of—regarded this as an ethical limbo dance under that higher standard to which we'd vowed to uphold. Maybe other campaigns also did this stuff, but we'd promised to be unlike other campaigns. Hadn't we pledged not to be part of the same ol', same ol'?

Scott Heyworth was not part of this massive process. At one point, however, he became concerned we might be editing some letters to the editor. He warned,
“My only concern was if
[
Sarah
]
and the campaign got caught proofing letters . . . Explosive. One email could kill you.”

Editing?
Ha!
We were actively writing the darn things. Unrepentant, Sarah wrote,
“Scott, I wouldn't be reading their letters! It's the thank you's I'd be keeping in touch with.”
Sarah's response had the desired effect of placating Scott Heyworth.

With that blatant cover-your-ass lie to Heyworth—witnessed by a host of us who knew better—the limbo dance of truth had just dropped a bit lower.

Tragically, not one Rag Tag noticed.

10
 

Tumultuous Victory

O
n May 29, 2006, about three months before the primary, our numbers appeared strong. Hoping to build enthusiasm, we immediately emailed our supporters the current Dittman Research poll findings:

Against all odds, we were trouncing the entrenched Republican machine. Everywhere Alaskans traveled and whatever media they accessed, they saw the name Palin. Button, banner, yard sign, and letter manufacturing were clipping along seven days a week. Having saved our pennies, in the last few weeks, we launched radio and television ads that featured an assured, professional candidate. The message we sent out was, “You know, thankfully, I'm going to be a different kind of governor, and, thankfully, I'm also running a different kind of campaign!”

This was the political Cinderella story, and it was up to the voters to put the glass slipper on the princess from Wasilla. When playing to ever-growing crowds, Sarah had a way of making each person feel as if she knew him or her personally. She spoke of family, hard work, and making dreams come true. As a result, citizens grew increasingly enchanted.

But our success did not come without sacrifice. On the personal side, my family struggled with time away from one another and tight finances. My wife felt the burden of balancing a starving checkbook, raising two kids, and trying to get me to pay some attention to family. In a note that tore me apart, she wrote:
“Are you sure you have been reimbursed for everything? I was only able to pay $1000.00 on our credit card this month and we still have a balance of $1587.53. . . . I am really getting nervous about our spending. The last thing we need is to be in the hole a ton after this campaign . . . it keeps me up at night and I am tired and weary.”