Heirs of Liberty Press

Sarah Palin

C. Gialluca, Columnist / Reporter

Palin was born in Sandpoint, Idaho, and moved to Alaska when she was an infant. Palin attended Wasilla High School in Wasilla, north of Anchorage. She was the head of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter at the school. After graduating from high school in 1982, she enrolled at Hawaii Pacific College in Honolulu. She left after one semester and transferred to North Idaho College, a community college, where she spent two semesters as a general studies major in 1983. In August 1984, she transferred to the University of Idaho, where her older brother, Charles W. Heath, was majoring in education. After two semesters at UI, Palin returned to Alaska and attended Matanuska-Susitna College, a community college, for one term in the fall of 1985. She returned to the University of Idaho in January 1986, where she spent three semesters completing her bachelor's degree in communications-journalism, graduating in May 1987. In 1988, she worked as a sports reporter for KTUU-TV and KTVA-TV in Anchorage, and for the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman as a sports reporter. She also helped in her husband’s commercial fishing family business.

Palin's first foray into politics was in 1992, when the then 28-year-old ran for Wasilla city council against John Hartrick, a local telephone company worker. She won 530 votes against John Hartrick’s 310. On the council, she successfully opposed a measure to curtail the hours at Wasilla's bars by two hours. This surprised Hartrick because she was then a member of a church that advocated abstinence from alcohol. Palin was elected twice to the city council of Wasilla, in 1992 and 1995. Wasilla city councilors serve three-year terms. Palin says she entered politics because she was concerned that revenue from a new Wasilla sales tax would not be spent wisely. Palin did not complete her second term on the city council because she ran for mayor in 1996. Throughout her tenure on the city council and the rest of her career, Palin has been a registered Republican.

In 1996, Palin defeated three-term incumbent mayor John Stein, on a platform targeting wasteful spending and high taxes. Stein says that she introduced abortion, gun rights, and term limits as campaign issues.

Shortly after taking office in October 1996, Palin consolidated the position of museum director and asked for updated resumes and resignation letters from some top officials, including the police chief, public works director, finance director, and librarian. Palin stated this request was to find out their intentions and whether they supported her. She temporarily required department heads to get her approval before talking to reporters, saying that they first needed to become acquainted with her administration's policies. She created the position of city administrator, and reduced her own $68,000 salary by 10%, although by mid-1998 this was reversed by the city council.

Using income generated by a 2% sales tax that was enacted before she was elected to the city council, Palin cut property taxes by 75% and eliminated personal property and business inventory taxes. Using municipal bonds, she made improvements to the roads and sewers, and increased funding to the Police Department. She also oversaw new bike paths and procured funding for storm-water treatment to protect freshwater resources. At the same time, the city reduced spending on the town museum and stopped construction of a new library and city hall.

In 2002, former Senator and newly elected governor of Alaska Frank Murkowski considered appointing Palin to replace him in the Senate. Instead he appointed Palin to the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. She chaired the Commission beginning in 2003, serving as Ethics Supervisor. Palin resigned in January 2004, protesting what she called the "lack of ethics" of fellow Republican members. After resigning, Palin filed a formal complaint against Oil and Gas Conservation Commissioner Randy Ruedrich, also the chair of the state Republican Party, accusing him of doing work for the party on public time and of working closely with a company he was supposed to be regulating. She also joined with Democratic legislator Eric Croft to file a complaint against Gregg Renkes, a former Alaskan Attorney General, accusing him of having a financial conflict of interest in negotiating a coal exporting trade agreement, while Renkes was the subject of investigation and after records suggesting a possible conflict of interest had been released to the public. Ruedrich and Renkes both resigned and Ruedrich paid a record $12,000 fine.

Despite being outspent by her Democratic opponent, she won the gubernatorial election in November, defeating former governor Tony Knowles in 2006.

Since taking office on December 4, 2006, her top priorities have been resource development, education and workforce development, public health and safety, and transportation and infrastructure development. Her first legislative action after taking office was to push for a bipartisan ethics reform bill. She signed the resulting legislation in July 2007, calling it a "first step", and declaring that she remained determined to clean up Alaska politics.

Palin promoted oil and natural gas resource development in Alaska, including drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Proposals to drill for oil in ANWR have been the subject of a national debate.

In June 2007, Palin signed a record $6.6 billion operating budget into law. At the same time, she used her veto power to make the second-largest cuts of the construction budget in state history. The $237 million in cuts represented over 300 local projects, and reduced the construction budget to $1.6 billion. In 2008, Palin vetoed $286 million, cutting or reducing funding for 350 projects from the FY09 capital budget. Palin followed through on a campaign promise to sell the Westwind II jet, a purchase made by the Murkowski administration for $2.7 million in 2005 against the wishes of the legislature. In August 2007, the jet was listed on eBay, but the sale fell through, and the plane was later sold for $2.1 million through a private brokerage firm.

Palin lives in Juneau during the legislative session and lives in Wasilla and works out of offices in Anchorage the rest of the year. Since the office in Anchorage is far from Juneau, while she works there, state officials say she is legally entitled to a $58 per diem travel allowance, which she has taken (a total of $16,951), and to reimbursement for hotels, which she has not, choosing instead to drive about 50 miles to her home in Wasilla. She also chose not to use the former governor's private chef. Democrats criticized Palin for taking the per diem and $43,490 in travel expenses for the times her family accompanied her on state business. In response, the governor's staffers said that these practices were in line with state policy, that Palin's gubernatorial expenses are 80% below those of her predecessor, Frank Murkowski. In February 2009, the State of Alaska, reversing a policy that had treated the payments as legitimate business expenses under the Internal Revenue Code, decided that per diems paid to state employees for stays in their own homes will be treated as taxable income and will be included in employees' gross income on their W-2 forms. Palin herself had ordered the review of the tax policy.

In December 2008, an Alaska state commission recommended increasing the Governor's annual salary from $125,000 to $150,000. Palin stated that she would not accept the pay raise. In response, the commission dropped the recommendation.

Governor Palin’s other accomplishments include the passage of community revenue sharing, an omnibus crime package, aviation safety, the reduction of business license fees, and an overhaul of the state’s ethics laws. She took steps to address Alaskans’ emergency energy needs by establishing a renewable energy fund, making rebates available for home weatherization and increasing the availability of bulk fuel loans to small communities and utilities.

Alaska's federal congressional representatives cut back on pork-barrel project requests during Palin's time as governor. While there is no sales tax or income tax in Alaska, state revenues doubled to $10 billion in 2008. Palin’s decreasing support for federal funding has been a leading source of friction between herself and the state's congressional delegation; Palin has requested less in federal funding each year than her predecessor Frank Murkowski requested in his last year.

Palin opposes same-sex marriage and supported a non-binding referendum for an Alaskan constitutional amendment to deny state health benefits to same-sex couples; however, early in her gubernatorial term she vetoed such a bill, citing its current unconstitutionality. Palin has called herself "as pro-life as any candidate can be" and has called abortion an "atrocity." Palin has stated that abortion should be banned in nearly all cases, including rape and incest, except if the life of the mother is endangered. Palin has stated that she does not support embryonic stem cell research. A lifetime member of the National Rifle Association (NRA), she believes the right to bear arms includes handgun possession, and is against a ban on semi-automatic assault weapons. She has supported gun safety education for youth. She supports capital punishment for adults who murder children.

Palin has promoted oil and natural gas resource exploration in Alaska, including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. On global warming, Palin has said that "a changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I'm not one though who would attribute it to being man-made."

Regarding foreign policy, Palin supported the Bush Administration's policies in Iraq, but is concerned that "dependence on foreign energy" may be obstructing efforts to "have an exit plan in place". Palin supports preemptive military action in the face of an imminent threat, and supports U.S. military operations in Pakistan. She declined to give a yes or no answer regarding whether U.S. military forces should make cross-border attacks into Pakistan without the approval of the Pakistani government. She supports NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia, and affirms that if Russia invaded a NATO member, the United States should meet its treaty obligations.

On January 27, 2009, Palin formed the political action committee SarahPAC. The organization, which describes itself as an advocate of “energy independence,” supports candidates for federal and state office.