Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin (18 page)

In addition to experience, Knowles possessed great superiority in money and ad buys. A month ahead of the November 7 general election, campaign finance-disclosure statements showed that he and his running mate, Ethan Berkowitz, had raised $401,978. Together with Knowles's war chest left over from the primary, they had $637,025 to spend as of September 1. By contrast, Palin and her eventual running mate, Sean Parnell, had only $366,613. What money couldn't buy, however, was the fact that Sarah had captured voters' imaginations, and her name was on everyone's lips. Papers sold more copies when her name made the headlines or when the front page carried her photo. And this cost us nothing.

To the extent we could afford to, we used advertisements to hammer home electorate discontent. In one television commercial, Sarah spoke into the camera and said, “Alaska's former governor says we should gamble on his experience? I say we already have. His administration put resource development on life support, making Alaska's economic growth one of the worst in the country. He tried to grow government for eight years despite billion-dollar deficits, and when we couldn't afford his new programs, he introduced an income tax. I'm Sarah Palin, and I'm ready to lead Alaska. That's no gamble, that's a promise.”

A radio spot had Sarah end by saying, “Alaska wins when
new
leaders step up to govern.” Nobody was fresher or newer than ever-smiling Sarah.

Despite the buzz surrounding our campaign, the relative lack of funding remained frustrating. We attracted those $50 contributors, while Knowles had fat-cat $500 and $1,000 special interest sponsors. Independent Andrew Halcro simply threw his own fortune at his futile run. For Sarah, there were clear villains responsible for the sorry state of financial affairs, namely familiar foe Randy Ruedrich and his state Republican Party machine.

Sarah used this perceived slight as another opportunity to reinforce her role as victim and maverick:
“It's one thing to spin this to the press (not hard). We say it's an extension of the anemic support we got in the primary and that it's a shame
[
Ruedrich
]
can have so much influence on a party that he no longer appears in touch with. But it doesn't help us with $.”

How far did Sarah's distrust of Ruedrich go, and how much did that preoccupy us? Here's an example: the campaign was preparing to send out a flyer regarding her participation in a solstice event and emailed a copy to the Republican Party, requesting that it be sent out to its mailing list. Sarah railed in an email,
“Randy Ruedrich had better not screw us on this. He'd better send it out today or tomorrow!”
Some-thing as minor as a campaign flyer became a potential Ruedrich controversy, and Sarah was not hesitant to explain that
“it's bull crap is what it is. typical Randy.”
The Republican Party leader existed in our
minds as a bogeyman every hour of every day. This bore similarities to our dealings with Palin family rumors, radio critic Dan Fagan, and editorial criticism in any form. Just one more time-killing distraction. There were an infinite number of more pressing priorities. Too bad we didn't have the eyes to see.

Having built her reputation partially on exposing Ruedrich's conflict of interest while on the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, it remained the centerpiece for Sarah's counterattacks on him. When another conservative radio critic, Rick Rydell of KENI-AM, Anchorage, spoke of Ruedrich on his show, Sarah fired off an email letting him know her facts:

Sarah liked her response so much that she asked,
“Should this be sent to
[
Anchorage television station
]
KTUU?”
Randy Ruedrich wore that corruption albatross and Sarah was going to make certain everyone knew.
Period
.

When we reminded people that
Sarah runs marathons, she's a young mom, she fishes and hunts
, it was another way of contrasting her to old, old politicians who drank Chivas Regal (paid for by oil lobbyists) through high-priced dentures. The image was a vital part of who Sarah wanted Alaskans to believe she was. Only days ahead of the election, a woman who went to school in Dillingham with Todd and his brother, J.D., challenged Sarah's claim of being a rugged Alaskan. She wrote in a nasty email to Sarah, among other things, “[
W]hen is
the last time you went commercial fishing in Bristol-bay?? . . . Some one like you would hardly go unnoticed!! . . . is there maybe a fishing season I'm not aware of??”

While the accusation appeared trivial on the face of it, we sure didn't think so, not this close to the election. Sarah, upset, wrote to us,
“Can you believe ANOTHER untruthful email now? . . . The distractions in these last hours of the campaign seem overwhelming. And hurtful to our campaign. Pray through this guys.”

Lies, lies, and more lies. With so many things being said that we believed were evil attacks, all we could do was, as Sarah advised, pray. Fortunately for the campaign, this claim never did make news.

Money concerns and distrust of the state political machine played out on another front as well. In Alaska, during the primaries, the governor and lieutenant governor run separate campaigns. Once into the general election, they run as a ticket. From the outset, Sarah had a distaste for her running mate, Sean Parnell. Strategist John Bitney echoed these sentiments when he wrote,
“On Lt. Governor's race . . . I feel like I'm being asked to pick my favorite Menendez brother. Should I vote the one that stabbed his mother, or the one that shotgunned the father?”

Once we were stuck with Parnell, it infuriated Sarah that he had a $20,000 debt coming into the general. Not a dime, she made clear, of our money would go toward easing his burden. Sarah also harbored a lingering animosity based on Parnell's unwillingness to endorse her during the primary. If all this wasn't bad enough, he expressed an irrational respect for Randy Ruedrich, as Sarah pointed out in a September 4 email:

Understandably, Parnell was offended.
“I don't appreciate the inferences that I somehow would engage in anything but ethical conduct,”
he replied.
“Quite the contrary, I strive to lead a life of integrity that points people to Christ, although I don't always do this perfectly.”

In a long response that backtracked from her finger pointing, Sarah began by writing,
“No inference at all in this, Sean, that you would engage in anything but ethical conduct. Maybe my email wasn't clear . . . what I and many others have observed is unethical conduct in other campaigns . . . not in yours.”

Ruffle feathers, smooth feathers, then move on in classic Palin fashion.

Stuck with him, Sarah came to accept that Parnell had some plusses to go with his list of minuses. He began his political career in 1992 at the age of thirty, when elected to the Alaska House of Representatives. He served two terms and later won a seat in the Alaska State Senate. He had experience as a member of the Energy Council and cochaired the Senate Finance Committee. His resume added legitimacy to the ticket. However, he also had a chunk of baggage that we feared might tarnish our reputation. After his stint in the state senate, Parnell joined the oil company ConocoPhillips as its director of government relations. Later, in 2005, he worked at Patton Boggs as a full-time lobbyist, focusing on the development of oil and gas projects
with clients such as ExxonMobil (his new firm being involved in the ongoing litigation over the 1989
Exxon Valdez
oil spill). One of Sarah's ongoing attacks on Ruedrich was his cozy relationship with oil lobbyists. Now she found herself straddled with a former lobbyist, his name alongside hers on a new sea of red.

To deal with the money gap and to delay having to associate her name with his, Sarah chose to downplay Parnell on the PR until he figured a way to carry his own load. In August, when sending out invitations to 1,800 people for a fund-raiser, Sarah and Ivy Frye debated whether or not to include Parnell's name. The decision? No, wrote his running mate, not
“UNTIL Sean gets rid of his
[
debt
]
.”

And so it fell to me, as with many other between-the-crack tasks, to play Parnell's debt hound. Ten days after the primary, on direct orders from Sarah, I phoned him, awaking an ill candidate for lieutenant governor at eighty thirty in the evening.

“Sean, we need to know your plan to pay off your debt so we can get in line and begin to raise money jointly for the combined campaign.” Until that moment, Parnell seemed to be under the misapprehension that we'd bail him out, at first refusing to discuss the issue. “No. That's not gonna happen,” I said. “Our funds are separate from yours.”

Parnell pledged to turn over every money-raising stone he could find. When I reported our conversation back to Sarah, the part of the story striking her as most significant was hearing that her running mate, sniffles or not, was sleeping at half past eight, a time most of us at Camp Palin were choking down high-salt, high-calorie fast food in the office. She added “lazy” to the negative side of the Parnell ledger.

Less than a month later, Sean continued to provoke animosity from Sarah.
“Sean is not my husband, father, mentor, speechwriter nor boss,”
she complained.
“He threw some surprising comments before and after my many speaking engagements/meet & greet functions where it was confirmed that we'll have to diplomatically remind him that he is running for Lt. Gov. Period.”