Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin (52 page)

Them's Fightin' Words

I
f Sarah was having a tough time of it with her return to Alaska, Wayne Anthony Ross was about to be roughed up even more. His confirmation hearing for attorney general did not go well, and a history of blunt comments made for painful sound bites. Tim Towarak, chairman of the Alaska Federation of Natives summed up the feelings of many who took offense to WAR's rhetoric when he said, “It almost looked like [Governor Palin] was rubbing our face in Wayne Anthony Ross's appointment . . . Like rubbing our face on the ground, saying, ‘Here, take this.' ”

To make matters worse, WAR weighed in on the battle to fill Kim Elton's vacated senate seat. When Sarah sent names back to the senate Democrats (including two already rejected) after having refused all previous nominees, her move was declared improper. Ross told
Daily News
reporter Sean Cockerham at the time, “It seems to me the most important thing that can be done by the senate is not argue with legal or illegal but to appoint somebody to represent Juneau.” When Ross denied making the statement, Cockerham—a widely respected reporter—produced the tape of their interview. As a private citizen, a person might be forgiven for offering ill-conceived legal advice. As candidate for AG, Ross's lack of concern for “legal or illegal” and subsequent denial were awarded a failing grade.

The wave of negative reaction to past and present statements came as a surprise to Sarah. She emailed me, Meg, Ivy, Kris, and Todd:

On Thursday, April 16, 2009, the legislature voted down, for the first time in Alaskan history, a governor's nomination for attorney general. The tally went 35 to 23 against. House Speaker Mike Chenault, a Nikiski Republican said, “I think he is too controversial for the state of Alaska. We've got in some people's mind a controversial governor, and I think that he just has too many controversies out there.”

In a telephone interview with the
Anchorage Daily News
, Sarah said, “I think there was a lot of politics of personal destruction involved in this and that's a shame.”

Ross, who I personally believe would have made a fine attorney general, hid his disappointment like a true gentleman by suggesting to the newspaper, “I had a neat office for two and a half weeks, and I was attorney general under the law for two and a half weeks for the state of Alaska. And the big question I have now is whether they will put my picture up with the other [former attorneys general] for only two and a half weeks' service.”

For WAR's supporters, Sarah received much of the blame for his failure when on the day of the vote she was in Indiana speaking at a Right to Life event. They claimed she should have remained in state to collect votes for her friend and candidate. Instead, the sense of the legislature was that she simply did not care enough to be present. Formerly rabid supporters were saying that for Sarah, being an involved governor at this stage was so “yesterday” and that she was clearly absent mentally if not physically from her duties. This growing impression that she cared less about affairs of state and more about the national stage did not serve well toward Ross's chances of being confirmed.

Sarah never did feel she should be bound by legislative or political rules in pursuing political appointees (or most other ambitions). In addition to having championed a “goofy” candidate for the state senate seat who simply changed party affiliation in order to be eligible (and totally unacceptable), she responded with a resounding “Amen, brother” when it was suggested (by me, I am embarrassed to admit) that
“you shouldn't be bound by
[
Alaskan Democratic Party
]
rules . . . on filling legislative vacancies.”

Exhibiting that rogue spirit and being desperate over WAR's rejection, Sarah seriously plotted to circumvent all those pesky procedures that ought not apply to her. In what she considered a serious proposition, she wanted to know if it was legal to hire WAR as an assistant AG, then later designate him permanent AG. She wondered what the public's reaction would be, as well as the legislature.

Sarah never did go that route, as she received a strong reaction from those around regarding the potential PR disaster such a move would become. Eventually, with reluctance, our governor named respected attorney Daniel Sullivan to the post. But her disappointment lingered. She wrote:

The war for WAR ended in a miserable defeat, and as she indicated the day before his rejection, Sarah proved herself much more out of touch with Alaskans than she ever imagined.

For those residing next to the governor's mansion in Juneau, Sarah Palin seemed not only out of touch, but also totally out of her mind.

In a controversial decision, when Sarah became governor, she decided to avoid Juneau, the state capital, and elected to work out of our Anchorage offices, a relatively short commute from her Wasilla home. There was running commentary about how the lights in the governor's mansion were never on because the place was always empty. Except for during the legislative sessions, from January to April, the criticism was valid. In front of staff, Sarah made no bones about her hatred for that city. She disliked the excessively wet weather and the citizenry's Democratic majority, along with the political atmosphere, where it seemed everyone was nosing into everyone else's business, especially hers. She referred to the atmosphere as “evil” and the city itself as a “hellhole.” We often ended email exchanges by asking,
“What's in the juneau drinking water anyway??”

Her animosity wasn't lost on the city's residents, as gubernatorial absences sparked rumors that she wished to move the capital permanently to Anchorage. Or better yet, to Wasilla. If it weren't such a political bombshell, no question she'd have made the attempt.

Were it not for the fact that Sarah billed taxpayers a per diem for 312 nights spent in Wasilla during her first nineteen months in office, the absences wouldn't have been a major issue. But she did. In other words, the governor submitted her own Wasilla home as “Lodging” and received reimbursement for choosing to live there instead of the governor's mansion; the allowances added up to $17,000. The man she defeated in the governor's race, Tony Knowles, said of this, “I gave a direction to all my commissioners if they were ever in their house, whether it was Juneau or elsewhere, they were not to get per diem because, clearly, it is and it looks like a scam—you pay yourself to live at home.”

Sarah's administration also billed the state an additional $45,000 for daughter and husband expenses, most of these travel related. In effect, Sarah was making the claim that on several excursions (one to New York in October 2007 to
Newsweek
's Women and Leadership Conference), her family was helping to conduct governmental business. The list of what looked to be frivolous, nonstate family junkets was long and expensive.

To counteract the publicity, Sarah ordered us to analyze former governor travel expenses wanting to know why they didn't pay taxes on the “stuff.” If she did something wrong—same way we rationalized earlier campaign abuses—she would claim others were even worse, and she was simply a victim of what she called, “double-standard scrutiny.”

Despite these efforts to deflect guilt onto others, in February 2009, it was announced that state officials had determined Sarah owed thousands of dollars in back taxes on her housing reimbursements. When it was patiently explained to her that this was never an issue before because other governors lived in Juneau instead of their original homes as she did, Sarah didn't understand or care. She simply told me that it sucked to be made to look like the guilty one. Without admitting guilt, she agreed to pay more than $8,000 to cover assorted costs related to nine trips taken by her children in 2007 and 2008.

Shortly after, she asked me to “talk her off the ledge.” She lamented at the way her own Juneau crew would “allow her to make mistakes,” then sit comfortably outside the media spotlight while she bore the heat for their lack of support.

The victims were not the Alaskan citizens who believed they'd elected a crusader for fiscal conservatism. Sarah was the aggrieved party because bureaucrats did not adequately explain the issues, and the media clobbered her over others' mistakes—much in the same way it was school administrators and coaches at fault when her children received poor grades. The distractions lasted for weeks.

For someone like Sarah who was not generous with her time or her money, paying back taxes came as a nasty blow, despite the prospects of millions in book advances and speaking fees on the horizon. Worse still, this story of per diem expenses for staying in her own house was first reported by the
Washington Post
, which meant it became a national story. Always hypersensitive to criticism, this became a deep emotional bruise and would take only a trivial event—similar to Walt Monegan's warning of a child seat violation—to set off Sarah. The governor had said of Wayne Anthony Ross's nomination that there were “politics of personal destruction involved in this, and that's a
shame.” Yet without an ounce of self-realization and led by Sarah, we would shortly embark on our own politics of personal destruction against a new, nearly defenseless foe. As in most cases, it took next to nothing to set the guns a-blazing.