Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin (56 page)

Sarah Palin announced her HarperCollins book deal on May 12, 2009, while rumors of the multimillion-dollar deal began months earlier, and negotiations for
Going Rogue
surely commenced no later than early April.

At Sarah's insistence, people in her circle devoted hours to constructing a book that would memorialize the myths Sarah wished to build around her life. Our introduction to Sarah's collaborator on this project, Lynn Vincent—a senior writer for the conservative Christian
publication
World
—came by way of an email from Meg Stapleton, which deliberately misrepresented the nature of the project.

This “in-depth piece on everything Palin,” we assumed, was going to be a favorable piece for
World
.

Vincent wasted no time and contacted me the next morning, Saturday. With that, she began a process that took up hours and days, with especially Ivy Frye (not then a government employee) supplying information, anecdotes, chasing down information, and constructing a sanitized version of all relevant memories. When, on May 11 in a phone conversation, Vincent accidently revealed that this was a book rather than an article, Meg Stapleton immediately emailed,
“I heard you talked to Lynn today and something was mentioned that shouldn't have been. Please keep it a secret until it is announced. I know you recognize the importance!”
After three and a half years, Meg really needn't have bothered; all of us were accustomed to keeping secrets, and one more would simply be lost; a snowflake in a blizzard.

For the next two months, as the manuscript progressed, Lynn Vincent became an insider, bolstering Sarah in times of stress and criticizing foes that continued to materialize throughout the collaboration. In an effort mirroring our op-ed production, Sarah's skills were best confined to offering directives on what needed to be included:

For Sarah, she had other great ideas for material, suggesting
“Lynn—once in awhile check my twitter accnt, I post my principles there as they apply to what I'm doing w policy as governor.”

Second only to Lynn Vincent, Ivy worked harder than anyone on the text, sequestering herself for a while in Hawaii in the late spring, devoting herself full-time to production. Always a researcher, at one point she prompted:
“Lynn—I'll send you my draft. It shows how a Natl
sales tax will further hurt our economy, and what the governor has done on a local and state level to invite business, provide basic services and infrastructure, and eliminate or reduce the tax burden on Akns.”

I always felt that Sarah, in suggesting topics for op-eds that others wrote and she signed, truly believed she was the author or at least had the right to claim authorship. She also found it unpleasant to share credit publicly, making it difficult to elevate anyone to the status of coauthor. Lynn Vincent wasn't mentioned in the book's acknowledgments until after five others who'd helped construct
Going Rogue
, and was cited only for “her indispensable help in getting the words on paper.” Maybe she'd been discarded by then? Knowing Sarah, that was possible, if not likely.

Despite the millions of dollars rolling in from the book and an agent fielding requests for $100,000 speaking engagements, Sarah wasn't financially satisfied. In the midst of this and before the windfall was made public, she initiated a legal defense fund to pay for defending herself against ethics charges while governor. Most of her contributors—including my wife and I—made far less than 1 percent of her new income. We gave to Sarah because she asked, and this was a way to confirm our loyalty. From people far less wealthy, our hero gladly solicited money she didn't need. Nearly $400,000 was raised from April 24, 2009, until the fund was declared illegal in the last week of June, 2010, because the fund inappropriately used the term “official” on its website, implying Palin's endorsement as governor. Sarah blamed bad advice from out-of-state attorneys for the error. The money was returned to contributors. Within hours of the old fund being deemed improper, she launched a new fund and continued to raise money—this time legally—despite having earned an estimated $12 million in the first nine months after resigning. We received several letters begging for money to pay for bills she believed were caused by evildoers.

For Sarah, these were exciting times filled with amazing and great expectations. By announcing her resignation on July 3 (effective July 26),
the multimillion-dollar check would arrive, and she'd be treated like a queen and flown around the world in luxury and paid several hundred thousand dollars to deliver the same speech over and over again. When questioned about her motives, as Ralph Hallow of the
Washington Times
did a week after her good-bye speech, she'd react petulantly and demand a retraction. Regarding the
Times
article, she emailed,
“Ralph is an idiot . . . Dang him—we need to get him to correct this . . . And I didn't resign bc of the ‘tough political hits' as he reports! I did it bc Alaska is getting screwed.”

While “idiots” like Hallow still “bloviated”—using a word popular with Fox News's Bill O'Reilly, one of Sarah's favorite personalities—dealing with them from the outside would become easier and easier. Especially as she was now rich and, once again, had access to the national stage.

For me, however, a final event—seemingly small in scope but symbolic of everything wrong with what we'd done these past years—finally broke me down. Certainly Sarah's quitting hurt. She was turning her back on all she'd promised our state. And no question her motives were material gain, no matter what convoluted reasoning she blurted out in her resignation speech.

More important than Sarah being a quitter, the beginning of the end started with a controversial appointment in March 2009 and led to a feud that left me dumbfounded. With all our mean-spirited ways, never did I believe Sarah Palin would embarrass a man of God and refuse a cherished cause. And for what end? Nothing more than one last attack on a perceived enemy and a few extra dollars. It's as simple and as complex as that.

This painful chapter would complete my journey from true believer, to misguided allegiant, to back home to the simple life I'd been meant to live. With that final break, more than any time in my life, I gave thanks that mine is a loving and forgiving God.

PART FIVE

End Times

36
 

Troopergate: The Sequel?

W
hen resignation day arrived on a Friday, July 3, 2009, Sarah correctly cited the various ethics complaints as distractions to governing, and no question many of them were pointless. But more time sucking than these were the self-inflicted distractions (battles over the state senate seat, Wayne Anthony Ross's attorney general nomination, declining then accepting the federal stimulus money), personal attacks on enemies (Juneau neighbors, Letterman, Gingrich, too many others to list), and trips out of state meant to showcase her national aspirations (annual Alfalfa Club dinner in Washington, DC,
Newsweek
's Women and Leadership Conference in New York, Right to Life speech in Indiana). Not to mention that she had a book deal under way. If attacking a neighbor's reputation was more important than governing, certainly a million-dollar payday was even more so. These were the real reasons government in Alaska was grinding to a halt.

During and after the speech, my phone rang nonstop. A Fox News producer called: “You're the Troopergate guy, right? Can we talk?”

After an “Ugh,” I said no.

Throughout the weekend, I spewed the company line. “This is the
right move for her. The right move for Alaska.” “She's being hounded, can't get anything done for the people . . .”

I filibustered past the truth: since her return after having been on a national ticket, Sarah had come to care less and less about the state of Alaska. Amazingly, despite knowing all this in my head—if not yet in my heart—the process of unraveling my most important non-family relationship had little to do with Sarah's lack of interest in her job or resignation but began behind the scenes in mid-November 2007. At that time, the governor had her first opportunity to nominate an Alaska Supreme Court judge when Associate Justice Alexander O. Bryner retired on October 31. The court, made up of a chief justice and four associates, serves as the ultimate court of appeals for the state's district and superior courts and administers the state's judicial system.

Of all the duties I had as director of boards and commissions, handling judicial appointments was priority number one, with appointments to the state supreme court the most crucial of these. The process was similar to selecting Kim Elton's vacant state senate seat: the governor is sent names of qualified applicants for final selection. In this case, the nominees are submitted by the Alaska Judicial Council (three public members appointed by governors, three members appointed by the Alaska Bar Association, and the supreme court chief justice).