The Sarah Palin I knew

As a longtime Alaska journalist and resident who once knew Gov. Sarah Palin and followed her political rise, I have to wonder what John McCain was thinking when he asked her to be his vice presidential nominee.

Sure, she’s a lot of things McCain is, was or needs. The 44-year-old is a political maverick, a Republican who challenged the Alaska GOP’s old-boy network and won. She is a fiscal and social conservative who opposes abortion rights. She’s a photogenic former beauty queen with five kids, including one just born with Down syndrome and another in the Army heading to Iraq. She’s a commercial fisherman and a moose hunter and her husband races snowmobiles.

In many respects she’s the perfect choice, a combination of exotic and salt-of-the-earth to balance concerns that McCain is too old, too white and too rich. But there are so many questions surrounding his decision that I can hardly imagine how Palin will strengthen the McCain candidacy. And I like her.

Or at least I did when I knew her in the 1990s. She and her husband, Todd, had a commercial salmon fishing operation in Bristol Bay, and I operated the tender boat that steamed by their site daily and purchased their fish. Sarah and Todd were smart, polite and cheerful — not exactly common traits among setnetters — and I counted them among my favorite fishermen, not to mention my top salmon producers.

At the time, I also was a journalist in Alaska and Sarah Palin was on the Wasilla City Council, so we talked politics when she delivered the day’s catch. She had grown up in Wasilla, a conservative bedroom community of about 9,000 near Anchorage. The fall after my last season in Bristol Bay, she challenged the incumbent mayor and won.

I never talked to her again, but followed with interest her political career. She won a second stint as Wasilla’s mayor, then popped up in the news as president of the Alaska Conference of Mayors. In 2002, she took on a well-known Republican in the race for lieutenant governor, and suffered her first major electoral defeat. What happened next was a string of decisions that would come to haunt the Alaska GOP — and arguably could be her ticket to the White House.

U.S. Sen. Frank Murkowski won that 2002 gubernatorial race, which not only ended his 22-year career in Washington, D.C. but allowed him to pick his own successor. He considered Palin, then chose his own daughter, Lisa Murkowski. The outrage was palpable throughout the state, even among those who thought Lisa Murkowski had done a credible job as state senator.

Murkowski then appointed Palin to the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, and the fireworks began. She lasted about a year before resigning in protest over ethical lapses of a fellow commissioner, Randy Ruedrich — who also had been appointed by Murkowski and who happened to be chairman of the Republican Party of Alaska. She had heard numerous complaints that he was using his commission office to conduct party business.

She told The Anchorage Daily News afterward that Republicans had blocked her efforts to handle the ethics concerns internally, and that members of Gov. Murkowski’s administration had been no help. The ensuing ethics investigation forced the state attorney general to resign. Ruedrich also resigned and later was fined $12,000.

Two years later, in 2006, Palin challenged Frank Murkowski in the gubernatorial primary — she being painted as the maverick, he considered part of the corrupt, closed-door GOP. She beat him, then went on to defeat the popular and former two-term Democratic governor Tony Knowles in the general election.

Since then, the Alaska Republican Party has been under steady assault. Prominent members of the Alaska Legislature have been sent to prison on federal corruption charges, and the Alaska businessman charged with bribing them will be sentenced soon. Longtime U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens goes to trial in late October on federal charges he failed to disclose $250,000 in gifts from the same businessman. And Congressman Don Young is under investigation by the FBI. Palin’s lieutenant governor, Sean Parnell, challenged Young in Tuesday’s GOP primary and the two are in locked in a dead heat; the outcome will likely be decided only after a recount in September.

Not surprisingly, many cheered her on as she cut the state budget, sold the jet her predecessor bought over the public’s objections and has reversed some controversial administrative decisions. Though she initially supported the controversial "Bridge to Nowhere," she drove the final nail in its coffin when Congress funded it at half-strength.

Still, when word leaked in March that Palin was considered a possible VP nominee it took many by surprise. Sure she was popular, but was she ready for the big time? Even she, at the time, said it would be a stretch.

But in recent months Palin has had some ethical difficulties of her own. The Alaska Legislature has hired a private investigator to look into claims her office pressured the state Public Safety Department into firing an Alaska State Trooper — Palin’s former brother-in-law. While the trooper was eventually suspended, the head of the department was fired. Palin recently acknowledged that one of her staff members had called the troopers about the brother-in-law, but said she wasn’t behind the call.

The McCain/Palin ticket will have some built-in tension, including over the issue of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — she wants to drill, he doesn’t. She’s been a thorn in the side of many prominent Republicans in Alaska, and while some are in prison or perhaps heading that direction, they may not have kind words for her elsewhere around the country. The current president of the Alaska Senate and a resident of Palin’s home town, Republican Lyda Green, told  the Daily News she thought it was a joke when she first heard the news.

And there’s the question of her age and his. Writers in the Huffington Post and elsewhere have suggested her inexperience on the international arena makes her a potentially risky vice-presidential pick for the oldest candidate ever to run for a first presidential term. Lyda Green put it this way: "She’s not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president?"

As for the idea that Palin might pick up disaffected supporters of Sen. Hillary Clinton, the answer is no, California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer told The Los Angeles Times. "The only similarity between her and Hillary Clinton is that they are both women," Boxer said. "On the issues, they could not be further apart."

On the other hand, evangelical Christians are celebrating McCain’s choice, which could buoy his support among a group into which Sen. Barack Obama has hoped to make inroads. Ralph Reed, the former head of the Christian Coalition, called Palin’s selection "a home run," The New York Times reported.

Closer to home, it could leave Alaska in an interesting situation. If Palin and McCain win, and if her lieutenant governor prevails in his bid for Congress, the state’s two top executives will be together again in Washington, D.C., leaving state Attorney General Talis Colberg at the reins.

But my big question is who will mind the fishing site next summer?