Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin (34 page)

Eventually, even national polls, including one by
GQ
magazine asking about GOP vice presidential preferences, came under our manipulative assault. The team, as far back as 2006, during the Alaska governor's race, went so far as to perfect a way to “power vote” using computer software that voted, cleared cookies so that poll administrators couldn't track the email address, then revoted over and over—a process similar to the one allegedly used to help Bristol Palin reach the finals of the TV show
Dancing with the Stars
in 2010. We became invested in manipulating poll results, as if this indicated some kind of reality and shored up our boss's public persona wherever lacking.

Poll rigging was fun and games compared to other imagined concerns. With growing conviction, Sarah continued to believe that her administration had leaks and spent hours trying to devise ways to ferret out the culprits.
“Someone leaked my internal email from this morning to an ADN reporter. It's now posted on the blog. This is amazing. These recepients are our team members.”
She often copied Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell on these messages, as if he needed to know that he and staff were not above suspicion. In a Sarah-inspired strategy, we might leak false information to a single person to see if that information ended up in the media. At one point, Sarah planted a rumor through her Yahoo! account that Kris Perry was pregnant. Sarah believed that if the information did pop up in the media, she could assume her emails were being accessed. For all our clandestine efforts, however, I don't recall catching anyone in the act. Over time, John Bitney, Kris Perry, Ivy Frye, Mike Tibbles, and half of Juneau fell under the blanket of suspicion. In all likelihood, I did as well. Sarah also feared that her home and office were bugged. Under her orders, I arranged to have the head of her security detail, Gary Wheeler, sweep both the Anchorage and Juneau offices as well as the governor's mansion for electronic surveillance. She genuinely feared that there were spies watching us, waiting to take some piece of information out of context and destroy her.

Besides Andrew Halcro and Dan Fagan's harassment, other critics demanded constant monitoring. An acerbic blogger who went by the name of Syrin from Wasilla was the source of many hours of discussion, analysis, and reaction, dating back two years. In typical fashion, she set Sarah and Todd into a mental flameout when she wrote in her blog:

When Syrin was outed midyear and revealed to be Sherry Whitstine, a forty-six year old Wasilla Christian conservative, Ivy Frye (heroically) called her at home on a Saturday afternoon and told her, “You should be ashamed!” According to an email from Ivy,
“I saw [Whitstine] at a luncheon about 2 hours before I called her. What prompted the
call was she went home and blogged that the governor sent her mother (Sally Heath) and her babysitter (me) as spys to the luncheon and she named us by name.”

Syrin/Whitstine was not the only critic whom we felt the need to address. The list of those worthy of at least a portion of our time became long, but one person in particular rose to the top of the heap and eventually led indirectly back to the Troopergate disaster. We generated at least a hundred emails and strategies to deal with State Senate President Lyda Green, whom Ivy Frye had once worked for and now despised. Seventy years old, and both a fellow Wasillan and a fellow Republican, Green had the audacity to criticize Sarah in the Mat Maid Dairy debacle in 2007, eventually calling for an audit. That October, Sarah provided to a long list of her confidants the following heads-up regarding Lyda calling for an audit of MatMaid due to “improprieties” and “conflicts of interest.”

Sarah decided that Lyda's
“goals are evidently not our goals.”
A relationship that was once cordial grew toxic. As a result, Green had to be dealt with. When she decided to run again for the state senate seat in late 2007, Sarah actively plotted against her, even suggesting in an email,
“Hey—Ivy even lives in
[
her
]
district come to think of it! Never hurts to rumormonger.”
From her governor's office, Sarah instructed me to seek out opponents to run against Green (as well as other legislators she regarded as personal enemies, such as state representative Mike Hawker). As 2008 rolled in, the feud grew. Sarah suggested that
“the only way
[
her staff
]
can work with Lyda is to just keep remembering she's ‘Mean, Mean Lyda Green.' ”
Sarah tossed Lyda into the same cesspool as other longer-term political terrorists:
“Gag. I'm tired of every word I say being picked apart and misconstrued, when lyda, halcro, fagan, etc get away with outright lies. Especially untruths coming from lyda—she's
the sen prez and must quite spinning these things without beibg held accountable.”

Adopting the same ad hominem language formally directed at Fagan, Ruedrich, Halcro, and the Murkowskis, Sarah remarked,
“She's full of bull. . . . She needs to be called on her lies.”

Green, in Sarah's mind, seemed to be part of a core of critics who complained about everything she did. When the governor made plans to travel out of state to son Track's army infantry graduation, Lyda joined Dan Fagan in criticizing Sarah because her arrangements conflicted with the scheduled State of the State address. Sarah's response was, “[
T
]
his is an unfortunate indication that some would rather spend time and resources on things other than working together and progressing this state.”

As if we weren't busy enough chasing down critics, the bombshell of bombshells was about to explode: out of the deepest blue, in an email sent while on a flight delay in Seattle, Sarah announced to her remaining Rag Tags on March 3, 2008, that she was pregnant.
“Did Todd tell you?! He was supposed to as he visited with you three (Ivy Frye, Frank Bailey, Kris Perry) lately . . . If he chickened out, here's the scoop: (and only those very, very close will know, for as long as possible so our critics won't have one more thing to criticize) . . . the secret news is that you'll all be aunties, in May. (Oh, Frank, you'll be an uncle.)”
She ended her message with a
“Whoo-hoo!”

In addition to being stunned that our governor, leader, and sometimes rumored vice presidential candidate was with child, we all felt firecrackers of joy. Kris wrote back,
“Holy flippin' cow!!! How exciting, I think I'm gonna cry because that's the best darn news I've heard in a long time.”
Hoping that she could keep matters hushed a bit longer, Sarah added,
“But shhhhh, because I'm getting as big as a house, can't hold my stomach in anymore, but don't want folks to know for as long as humanly possible.”
She hinted at the potential of this being a special-needs child, but did so without a hint of sadness—in my mind exhibiting some of that strength of character that first drew me to her campaign.

As I sat dumbfounded, blinking away misting eyes and staring at
these messages, I suddenly recalled a conversation I had with Sarah in early 2006, when she asked, “Frank, do you and Neen plan on having more kids?”

“I don't know,” I answered, “but a large family is something I always wanted.”

“What do you think it would be like—” Sarah paused, failing to suppress a sly smile “—to have a pregnant governor in the governor's mansion in Juneau?”

My eyes lit up, and I said something like, “That'd be a first—and sweet!”

Now, two years later, I reminded Sarah of that moment:
“OMG Do you remember sitting in the campaign office shortly after it was open before things got busy. . . . I was playing the keyboard getting ready for our open house, and you talking about what it would be like to be the first Governor to have a baby?? Absolutely amazing.”

Could she have calculated the public relations advantages of having a child while governor? At that moment the possibility did not enter my pinging mind.

Kris broke my brief introspection when she addressed Sarah's “big as a house” comment:
“I just saw you and you most certainly are not. I couldn't tell a darn thing.”

When Sarah arrived in Juneau shortly after her startling announcement, she had a rosy glow, and, knowing now what to look for, I noticed the bump under the scarves she wore in a crisscross. We hugged while I stumbled through an emotional congratulations.

“Shhhh!”
she hushed, pointing to the door of Tibbles's office. “Tibbles doesn't know yet. It's still a secret.”

My eyes watered from smiling so much as I nodded agreement that her secret was safe with me. If ever there was a moment when I'd have understood her desire to resign and reprioritize her life, this was it. Never had I seen Sarah so happy and each of us became infected with her emotional Mardi Gras.

Her desire to keep the pregnancy under wraps “as long as humanly possible” lasted all of one day. On March 4 spokesperson Sharon
Leighow reported,
“Unfortunately, Dan Fagan called me this morning and asked me if you were expecting.”

Sarah responded,
“What a fat idiot he is.”
She also wondered about how he heard, since the circle of trust in this matter was so small. She wrote,
“My conspiracy theory mind wonders if anyone has access to our emails. Nothing would surprise me.”
Not long after, she stated more emphatically,
“Something's tapped or bugged. How else would he even know to ask less than 24 hrs after only a few people knew?
” Whatever the source, with Fagan somehow in the know, Sarah had no choice but to go public on March 5.