Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin (26 page)

Without missing a beat, Tibbles—who would have to wait a few weeks for his own appointment to COS—immediately recommended that another bureaucrat, fifty-four-year-old Mike Nizich, be named deputy chief of staff. Tibbles suggested that because Nizich had worked in the administrations of five different governors—including the two we'd just defeated, Murkowski and Knowles—his “bureaucratic fortitude” would be a valuable asset. On its face, the man's entrenched career made him seem like he should be Sarah's least likely appointee; throughout the campaign she wore out our ears with “We will bring in new faces, new ideas.”

When she endorsed the always-been-there-in-government Nizich nomination, I stuffed a cookie into my mouth to keep from yelling, “What about all our promises? No, no, no, no!” We were twelve hours into the formation of the Palin administration, and our assurances of no more career politicians and lobbyists were being vaporized. In moving from campaign to governing, down was now the new up. If the likes of Kris Perry (and me) survived until inauguration, we'd be reporting not to Sarah but to Tibbles, someone she'd once cursed as an unethical evildoer for his painful and deceiving campaign ads. This new inner circle would become the “Juneau-ites” that Todd, who remained silent throughout this meeting, would later grumble were “just humping her leg.”

During the forty-minute meeting, I was given the title of deputy director for the transition team, for which I was to recruit, conduct background research, and pour over resumes from potential members of the incoming administration. No mention was made of a role for me once the Palin team officially took office in less than a month.

For the next three weeks, I waited and watched as Tibbles engineered future positions for those he favored. When my name was not one of them, with pounding head and heart I approached Sarah and her chief of staff in our Anchorage offices. Knowing that Sarah was typically in a “mood” these days as inauguration pressures mounted, I tiptoed as if through broken glass to plead my case. Failing to convey the casual tone I desired, I asked, “Sarah, have you thought about where I might fit into the administration?”

With that too-busy-to-be-bothered shrug, she replied bluntly, “I don't know.”

“With my background, I thought
efficiency auditor
of some sort.” In a briskly worded run-on sentence, I explained that while it would take some time, I had a passion for streamlining operations and saving money, like I had for the campaign—when we had few resources. I'd done this previously at Alaska Airlines, managing a million-dollar budget. Whatever Sarah might have thought, Tibbles dismissed the notion, saying only, “That's not going to work.”

A few days later, I expressed interest in becoming deputy commissioner of administration. This position, I contended, would take
advantage of my information technology and human resources experience in the airline industry and called for skills that I'd demonstrated throughout the campaign. Tibbles belittled the suggestion. His ticket to influencing what confederate Bitney once claimed was $13 billion under the governor's control seemed reason enough to deny me any significant role.

Over the next weeks, jobs in the administration filled up quickly. Bitney was named to the cabinet as director of legislative affairs. Another name that would figure prominently in Sarah's future was her new communications director, Meg Stapleton, a former KTUU television reporter. Ivy Frye was named director of boards and commissions, a cabinet-level position responsible for recruiting and screening applicants for a cross section of government jobs and commission appointments.

With the inauguration imminent, Sarah's moods swung wildly but tilted toward feeling overwhelmed. She acted put upon, often angry, and stressed to the point of chipping. Sean Parnell sent Sarah an innocent heads-up about the scheduled open house at the twenty-six-room governor's mansion in Juneau in December, suggesting that she have staff attend to the details. Sarah responded:
“I am swamped Sean, and there's been lots of assumptions that I have all the info. on upcoming events. I don't. and I need to plan for many things (even around Todd having to go back to the slope this week), including organizing four kids and their futures in the next four years.”

Curiously, she copied me on her reply, as well as Tibbles, Bitney, Ivy, and Kris Perry, as if to make certain that we all knew what a terrible life she was now leading. Sarah made it sound as if she'd just unhappily learned she was going to be governor of Alaska, when, of course, she'd been planning for this for more than a year. A little later, when names of commissioners and deputy commissioners leaked to the media ahead of formal announcements, finding out who was responsible once again took priority over all else. She wrote Tibbles—but, interestingly, not Bitney—of her findings, while blind-cc-ing several others, including me, about one potential hire in
particular: Karen Rehfeld for director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

In demanding to know who had told Bitney about the OMB hiring, Sarah was sending a warning that she'd find the culprit and deal with him or her in due course. Since I was still without an assignment after the first of the year, my insecurities led me to conclude that Sarah, by blind-copying me, suspected my involvement in the information leak. Ivy Frye, also one of the email's recipients, likewise grew concerned. When I wrote Sarah directly, letting her know I hadn't even been aware of Rehfeld's status, she came back with one of her simultaneously hard and soft replies (emphasis is mine):

In response, I did my best to put this to rest—while expressing my current distrust of Ivy in maintaining confidentialities:
“I got a little ‘confuzzled' when you fyi'd me and Ivy together about leaking info. . . .
Sorry . . . she's not company i'm 100% comfortable in keeping. I'll take off my tin-foil hat and say three times ‘I'm not paranoid.' ”

Sarah claimed that her cc's were all part of a calculated strategy when she wrote:
“ccing Ivy is our way of reminding her she'd better not screw up with ‘leaks' of her own.”
In other words, Sarah copied me because I held her trust, but she copied Ivy because she did
not
trust her. If I'd had enough guts, I would have requested the Sarah Palin secret-email cc decoder ring.

On November 11, week two of her pending administration, the
Anchorage Daily News
reported a scheduling change for the inauguration before it was official. Sarah, in a now-patterned response, let us know how incensed she was over the leak: “[
The leak
]
was a quick lesson for me that NOTHING is confidential . . . between that and the comments i'm receiving about my ‘chief of staff' and other positions supposedly already filled, I will remain as tight-lipped as possible through this transition.”

As these distractions assumed disproportionate importance, someone should have asked,
Who cares
? We had a four-year commitment ahead of us, and here we were trying to track down leaks on appointments and swearing-in dates and times. As if this wasn't eating up enough time, we never did cease scrutinizing radio critics Dan Fagan and Rick Rydell, ex-opponent and blogger Andrew Halcro, and the biased reporting of the
Daily News
. Sarah eventually wanted others closely monitored, including state senate president Lyda Green and Linda Kellen Biegel, a blogger who calls herself Celtic Diva. When radio host and critic Shannyn Moore disagreed with the governor on nearly every issue, Sarah believed she understood why:
“The only time I met her, I think she told me she was Miss Homer(?) and we were in a pageant together (Miss Alaska), which don't remember—I think she was insulted that I couldn't remember her.”
There was, it turned out, a good reason for Sarah not to remember Shannyn: Shannyn Moore never was in the Miss Alaska pageant. Within months, the list would grow exponentially.

By Inauguration Day, Sarah was as crazed as in the final days of the election. Todd stepped back in and repeated earlier instructions for
us to back off and cease bothering her.
“
[
Sarah
]
has alot of pressure on HER,”
he emailed.
“Getting prepared for her
[
inaugural speech
]
tomorrow is no easy task, please allow her to concentrate on that task with out any distractions. End of story.”

At one point in late December, Sarah said to me, “Frank, I want you to be wherever I'll be. I just don't know whether that's in Juneau or Anchorage yet.” Yet by January 2007, Chief of Staff Tibbles had yet to find me a job in the new administration. Where I once received up to two thousand emails a month from Sarah and the staff, I was down to fifty or so a week. With every passing day, I felt that a return to being a simple man, living a modest life, was inevitable.

By this time, the positions of responsibility were mostly filled. With my feeling that at least one foot was already out the door, Sarah finally and suddenly took initiative on my behalf.

On January 7, she let me know that she had told Tibbles not to put me off any longer. She also told him in no uncertain terms to get it done today.

With his back to the wall, the next day Tibbles assigned me a position he likely hoped I'd reject: assistant to the commissioner of the Department of Administration (DOA). Not director or deputy director, but assistant—way down in the administration food chain. For all intents, I'd been pushed aside—out of sight, out of mind—but not quite pushed out. On the positive side, however, in the DOA I'd be largely shielded from Sarah's chaotic management style, the frantic phone calls, and the knee-jerk reactionary stuff that filled our days and nights. Helping to ease my mind, given Sarah's dizzying mood shifts, I suspected that my hiatus would be temporary.

I told myself there were worse things than learning a new job in a plush office. I'd bide my time, do my best, and trust in God that this was part of His plan.