Sarah Palin
née Sarah Louise Heath (born 1964)
“The difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull? Lipstick.”
Years in political office: 1992–2004, 2006–2009
Position: governor of Alaska, 2006–2009; chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, 2003–2004; mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, 1996–2002; member of the Wasilla City Council, 1992–1996
Party affiliation: Republican
Hometown: Sandpoint, Idaho
Top causes: antiabortion causes, natural gas drilling, and gun rights
Life Story
This future governor’s family moved to Alaska when she was three months old and eventually settled in Wasilla, a small town 45 miles (72 km) north of Anchorage. Sarah was the cocaptain and point guard of her state championship–winning high school basketball team. After getting a bachelor’s degree in communications, she married champion snowmobiler and oil production operator Todd Palin, who has Yupik Eskimo heritage and with whom she would have five kids. One of her first jobs postgraduation was as a sports reporter, working for both a print publication and as a TV anchor on a local NBC affiliate.
Wasilla’s population was growing rapidly, and many of the newcomers were evangelical Christians. Hockey and PTA mom Palin, a born-again Protestant herself, helped to form Watch on Wasilla, a group of the town’s prominent citizens who worked to get the community its own police force and succeeded in 1993. She joined the city council, and four years later, concerned with high taxes, ran for mayor.
That race set the tone for her later career. In a supposedly nonpartisan election that traditionally focused on local issues like road quality and the police force, Palin showcased how she differed from her more liberal three-term incumbent opponent, John C. Stein, on hot-button topics such as abortion and gun rights. The town proved eager for its first born-again mayor, and with the financial support of the state’s Republican Party, Palin triumphed. Once in office, she forced out city employees who had supported Stein and talked with the town librarian about banning books due to inappropriate language.
After Palin reached the end of her mayoral term limit, she worked for Alaska’s powerful oil and gas commission, and then decided to run for governor. Her Christian sensibilities faded into the background, her religion no longer her major talking point. On a state level, the issue of the day was government corruption, and Palin shifted gears to tackle the fat cats. Her opponent in the Republican primary was incumbent Frank Murkowski, who had passed over Palin in favor of his own daughter Lisa Murkowski (page 132) as his replacement in the Senate when he was elected governor. Palin defeated him by 30 percent and went on to win the race.
As governor she showed she was willing to rethink the system, breaking with the precedent set by previous officeholders by declining to automatically give lucrative drilling contracts to the oil industry’s top corporations—Exxon, BP, and ConocoPhillips. Palin also took on policy makers that she saw as having questionable ethics, even within her own party. But her rise was complicated when allegations were raised that she had fired a public safety commissioner because he refused to dismiss a state trooper who was going through a messy divorce with Palin’s sister. (Officials didn’t buy Palin’s explanation that she had only given him the axe to subsequently offer him a job heading another agency, to which she thought he would be better suited.)
Despite the “Troopergate” scandal, the charismatic hockey mom undeniably became a rising star in the Republican Party. In 2008 Palin was at the Alaska State Fair when Republican presidential candidate and political moderate John McCain called to ask her to be his vice-presidential nominee. She had only been in the governor’s office for a year and a half. But in the remarkably self-assured Palin, McCain saw a fellow maverick. He liked that she was unafraid of reform and that she even went after the establishment Republicans in her state. Despite her popularity, Palin’s comparative lack of experience became clear during interviews on the campaign trail. Most famously, she answered questions regarding her experience in foreign relations by telling a reporter that it was possible to see Russia from certain parts of her home state.
The McCain-Palin slate lost to the Barack Obama–Joe Biden ticket. Palin would not be quick to fade from the spotlight, though her story became more complex. In 2009 she stepped down from the governor’s office, saying that she was unable to do her job properly while legally defending herself against fifteen alleged ethics violations. “It hurts to make this choice but I am doing what’s best for Alaska,” she said.
She remained an influential voice in Republican politics for many years. Palin started her own political action committee, SarahPAC; became a best-selling author; and joined Fox News as a correspondent. She was an important voice in the rise of the antigovernment, conservative Tea Party movement, and she courted speculation in 2016 that she would run for president herself, though she eventually handed over her support to Donald Trump.
What’s on Her Agenda
When McCain, who prided himself on being able to work on bipartisan issues, chose Palin as his running mate, he put her particular, folksy brand of conservatism on the national stage. Many US residents who saw themselves as having been forgotten by Obama-era Washington power players liked what they saw and identified with the phrases she coined. “Lamestream media” (a play on “mainstream media”) and “Normal Joe Sixpack Americans” were among the terms that she popularized in her speeches, which resonated with many people’s sense that the US elites were not acting in the best interests of rural, mainly white citizens.
Though McCain pushed back when some of his supporters made racist and xenophobic remarks about Obama, Palin was accused of tolerating and even encouraging them. “I am just so fearful that this is not a man who sees America the way that you and I see America,” she once told a crowd of supporters. Critics believed that by aligning herself with citizens who saw Obama, who has an international, mixed-race heritage, as “un-American,” Palin encouraged fear and dislike of a candidate who looked and thought differently. Her supporters called Obama an Islamic extremist, a communist, a threat to the country—and worse.
Though she failed to make it to the White House, in many ways Palin’s ideals and public speaking style are echoed by Donald Trump’s populist, elite disparaging stump speeches. Indeed, she even showed up to support him during the 2016 presidential campaign, at times wearing a spangly silver bolero jacket. She’s been out of office for many years, but her rhetoric and ideas remain immensely influential in today’s political scene.
Awesome Achievements
- She was the first Alaskan and second woman to be nominated by a major US party for the presidential slate.
- During her first term in the governor’s office, Palin announced that she had given birth to her fifth child. She was back at work three days later.
- Her classmates elected her Miss Wasilla, and she took second place at the 1984 Miss Alaska contest.
- Her business acumen in dealing with Alaska’s oil contracts got results—in 2008 Palin’s administration was able to send $1,200 to every qualifying Alaskan from the state’s surplus petroleum revenues.
Quotables
“We say keep your change; we’ll keep our God, our guns, our Constitution!”
“This government isn’t too big to fail; it’s too big to succeed.”
“Mr. President, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a nuke is a good guy with a nuke.”
“Only dead fish go with the flow.”