Sarah Palin

Popular Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin got her start in politics in 1992, when she won a seat on the Wasilla city council. In 1996, at the age of 34, she emerged victorious from her campaign for mayor, in a race that emphasized social issues and her evangelical Christian beliefs, including opposition to abortion rights. During her tenure, she won praise for cutting property taxes and improving the city's infrastructure. She also faced criticism when she suggested that selected books be banned from the public library and began making sexual assault victims pay to get forensic exams. Elected governor 10 years later in a campaign that portrayed her as a reformer who would root out corruption in Alaska politics, Palin signed a new ethics bill into law. Palin has aggressively supported drilling for oil in Alaska. As governor, Palin had one of the highest approval ratings in the country. Sen John McCain (T-AZ) announced Palin as his VP pick on August 29, 2008.

Palin moved to Alaska in 1964. She attended five different universities, ultimately receiving an undergraduate degree in communications-journalism from the University of Idaho in 1987.

Trooper-Gate

Trooper-Gate began in July 2008, when Palin fired Walt Monegan, the state's public safety commissioner, without a clear explanation. Monegan later said he believed he was ousted for refusing to fire Mike Wooten, a state trooper and the ex-husband of Palin's sister.

The controversy prompted two investigations, the first by the state's legislative council, which began its inquiry in July, after a 12-0 bipartisan vote which gave the independent investigator, Steve Branchflower a budget of $100,000, and the second by Alaska Attorney General Tavis Colberg, a Palin appointee who initiated the probe at her request. Palin said she would cooperate fully with the probes.

Palin denied having pressured Monegan, but e-mails from her private e-mail account and recorded telephone calls later surfaced which showed that both Todd Palin and another official within her administration had repeatedly brought up the matter with Monegan. The new evidence prompted the Alaska trooper's union to file an ethics complaint of its own against Palin, alleging that the information about Wooten's record passed on during one of the phone calls proved that Palin's office had improperly accessed Wooten's personal file. Palin has claimed executive privilege over e-mails relating to this civil suit.

When GOP presidential candidate and Arizona Sen. John McCain announced Palin as his pick for vice-president, Trooper-Gate took a turn for the worse. Shortly afterward, Palin hired an outside lawyer, who said that the legislative inquiry was too politicized and demanded that the investigation be turned over to the state's three-person personnel board, all Palin appointees. (Democratic state Sen. Hollis French had said the report might produce the "October surprise" of this year's election.) Five GOP legislators filed a similar complaint. An Alaska superior court judge combined the two suits, then dismissed them. In addition, the two parties wrangled over whether state employees who were subpoenaed for the legislative inquiry would testify. Palin, who had initially pledged full cooperation, said she would not appear for the deposition. Her husband, Todd Palin, who made one of the calls, refused a subpoena from the legislative inquiry, but said he would participate in the administration probe. Moreover, her lawyer announced that he would launch an investigation into the state's investigator.

The Branchflower report, released on October 10, 2008, found that while firing Monegan was not illegal, it did violate state ethics laws, since she used her post for personal reasons.

Insider Hiring and Firing

Palin has come under scrutiny in other areas for using her office to promote or demote personal friends. John Bitney, a gubernatorial aide, has said he was fired after Palin learned that he was dating the soon-to-be-ex wife of a close friend of Todd Palin.. In addition, Palin appointed several former high school classmates to positions, including the Division of Agriculture and an oil department, for which they were dubiously qualified.

Earmarks and Pork

As Wasilla mayor and as governor, Palin engaged in the same lobbying activities she would denounce in the 2008 campaign season. In 2000, she hired Steven Silver, a former chief of staff to GOP senator Ted Stevens, who at one time worked with Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist convicted on corruption charges. For the 2009 budget, Alaska sought $2 million in federal monies to study crab mating habits; $494,900 for the recreational halibut harvest and $3.2 million for seal genetics research.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Palin repeatedly claimed that she had said "thanks, but no thanks" to the Bridge to Nowhere, an infamous example of pork barrel politics. In fact, it was later widely reported that she had initially supported the project.

Researched and written by Natalie Sherman